The Responsibility/Fault Fallacy

This is an excerpt from my new book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.

Y ears ago, when I was much younger and stupider, I wrote a blog post and

at the end of it I said something like, And as a great philosopher once said: With great
power comes great responsibility. It sounded nice and authoritative. I had forgotten
who had said it. Google turned up nothing. But I stuck it in there anyway. It fit the post
nicely.

About ten minutes later, the first comment came in: I think the great philosopher
youre referring to is Uncle Ben from the movie Spiderman.

As another great philosopher once said, Doh!

With great power comes great responsibility. The last words of Uncle Ben before a
thief who Peter Parker let get away murders him on a sidewalk full of people for
absolutely no explicable reason. That great philosopher.

Still, weve all heard the quote. It gets repeated a lot. Usually ironically and after about
seven beers. Its one of those perfect quotes that sounds really intelligent, but its
basically just telling you what you already know, even if youve never quite thought
about it before.

With great power comes great responsibility.

It is true. But theres a better version of this quote, a version that actually is profound,
and all you have to do is switch the nouns around:

With great responsibility comes great power.

The more we choose to accept responsibility for in our lives, the more power we will
exercise over our lives. Accepting responsibility for our problems is the first step to
solving them.

I once knew a man who was convinced that the reason no woman would date him was
because he was too short. He was educated, interesting, good-looking, but absolutely
certain that the reason he couldnt get a date with an attractive woman was because he
was too short.

And because he felt that he was too short, he didnt actually go out and try to meet
women. The few times he did, he would hone in on the smallest behaviors from the
woman that indicated he wasnt attractive enough for her and convince himself she
didnt like him, even if she really did. As you can imagine, his dating life sucked.

What he didnt realize was that he had chosen a metric that was hurting him: that
women are only attracted to height and therefore he was screwed, no matter what he
did.

This choice of metric is disempowering. Its a metric that gives him a really crappy
problem: not being tall enough in a world meant for tall people. There are far better
values he could adopt in his dating life. For instance, I only want to date women who
like me for who I am would be a nice place to start. But he did not choose this value.
He likely wasnt even aware that he was capable of choosing his values. Even though
the man did not realize it, he was responsible for his own problems.

Yet he went on complaining: But I dont have a choice, theres nothing I can do!
Women are superficial and vain and will never like me! Yes, its every single womans
fault for not liking a self-pitying, shallow guy with shitty values. It couldnt be his fault,
could it?

A lot of people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because they believe
that to be responsible for your problems is to also be at fault for your problems.

Responsibility and fault often appear together in our culture. But they are not the same
thing. If I hit you with my car, I am both at fault and likely legally responsible to
compensate you in some way. Even if hitting you with my car was an accident, I would
still be responsible. This is the way fault works in our society. If you fuck up, youre on
the hook for making it right. And it should be that way.

But there are also problems we arent at fault for, yet we are still responsible for them.

For example, if you woke up one day and there was a newborn baby on your doorstep, it
would not be your fault that baby was put there, but the baby would now be your
responsibility. You would have to choose what to do. And whatever you ended up
choosing (keeping it, getting rid of it, ignoring it, feeding it to your pet parrot), there
would be problems associated with any of those choices and you would be responsible
for those as well.

Judges dont get to choose their cases. He or she did not commit the crime, was not a
witness to the crime, was not affected by the crime, but the judge is still responsible for
the crime (they can choose to recuse, but its rare). The judge must choose the
consequences; he or she must identify the metric against which the crime will be
measured and make sure that metric is carried out.

We are responsible for experiences that arent our fault all the time. This is part of life.
Fault is past tense. Responsibility is present tense. Fault results from choices that have
already been made. Responsibility results from the choices youre currently making
every second of every day. You are choosing to read this. You are choosing to think
about the concepts. You are choosing to accept or reject the concepts. It may be my
fault that you think my ideas are lame, but you are responsible for coming to your own
conclusions. Its not your fault that I chose to write this sentence, but you are still
responsible for choosing whether to read it or not.

Theres a difference between blaming someone else for your situation and them being
responsible for your situation. Nobody else is ever responsible for your situation but
you. Many people may be to blame for your unhappiness, but nobody is ever
responsible for your unhappiness but you. This is because you always get to choose how
you see things, how you react to things. You always get to choose which metric with
which to measure your experiences with.

My first girlfriend dumped me in spectacular fashion. She was cheating on me with her
teacher. It was awesome. And by awesome, I mean it felt like getting punched in the
stomach about 253 times. To make things worse, when I confronted her about it, she
promptly left me for him. Three years together, down the toilet just like that.

I was miserable for months afterward. That was to be expected. But I also held her
responsible for my misery. Which, take it from me, didnt get me very far. It just made
the misery worse.

See, I couldnt control her. No matter how many times I called her, or screamed at her,
or begged her to take me back, or made surprise visits to her place, or did other creepy
and irrational ex-boyfriend things, I could never control her emotions or actions.
Ultimately, while she was to blame for how I felt, she was never responsible for how I
felt. I was.

At some point, after enough tears and alcohol, my thinking began to shift and I began to
understand that although she did something horrible to me and she could be blamed for
that, it was now my responsibility to make myself happy again. She was never going to
pop up and fix things for me. I had to fix them for myself.

When I took that approach a few things happened. First, I began to improve myself. I
started exercising and spending more time with my friends (who I had been neglecting).
I started meeting new people. I took a big study abroad trip and did some volunteer
work. And slowly, I started to feel better.

I still resented my ex for what she did. But at least now I was taking responsibility for
my own emotions. And by doing so, I was choosing better values: how to take care of
myself and feel better about myself rather than how to get her to fix what she broke in
the first place.

(And by the way, this whole holding her responsible for my emotions thing is
probably part of why she left in the first place.)

Then about a year later, something funny began to happen. I looked back on our
relationship and I started to notice problems I had never noticed before, problems that I
was to blame for and I could have done better to solve. I realized that it was likely that I
hadnt been a great boyfriend, and that people dont just magically cheat on somebody
theyve been with.

Im not saying that this excused what my ex didnot at all. But I started to realize that
perhaps I wasnt exactly the innocent victim I had believed myself to be. That I had a
role to play in enabling the shitty relationship to continue on for as long as it did. After
all, people with similar values date each other. And if I dated someone with shitty
values for that long, what did it say about me? Because if the people in your
relationships are selfish and doing hurtful things, its likely you are too, and just not
realizing it.

In hindsight, I was able to look back and see warning signs of her character, signs I had
chosen to ignore or brush off when I was with her. That was my fault. I could look back
and see too that I hadnt exactly been the Boyfriend of the Year to her either. In fact, I
had often been cold and arrogant towards her. Other times I took her for granted and
blew her off and hurt her. These things were my fault.

Did my mistakes justify her mistake? No. But still, I took on the responsibility of never
making those same mistakes again, and never overlooking the same signs again, to help
guarantee that I never suffer the same consequences again. I took on the responsibility
of making my future relationships with women that much better and happier. And Im
happy to report that I have. No more cheating girlfriends leaving me, no more 253
stomach punches. I took responsibility for my problems and improved upon them. I
took responsibility for my role in my unhealthy relationship and improved upon it. I
took responsibility for my reaction to my exs horrible behavior and my life is better for
it.

And you know what? My ex leaving me, while one of the most painful experiences Ive
ever experienced, is also one of the most important and influential experiences of my
life. I credit it with inspiring a significant amount of growth. I learned more from that
single problem than dozens of my successes combined.

We all love to take responsibility for success and happiness. Hell, we often fight over
who gets to be responsible for success and happiness. But taking responsibility for our
problems is far more important, because thats where the real learning comes from.
Thats where the real life improvement comes from. And to simply blame others is only
hurting yourself.
How Do You Measure Your Life?

How Do You Measure Your Life?

September 5, 201310 minute readby Mark Manson

I n the early 1980s, a talented young guitarist was kicked out of his band. The band

had just been signed to their first record contract, and they were preparing to record
their first album. A week before recording began, they fired the guitarist. There was no
warning, no discussion. The guitarist woke up one day and was handed a bus ticket
home.

The guitarist was demoralized. He felt betrayed. No one considered his side of the story.
No one cared how he felt. At the most crucial moment of the bands short career, he was
abandoned by those he trusted the most.

So he vowed to start a band of his own. He would start a band so amazing and so
successful that his old band would regret ever firing him. He would become so famous
that they would spend the rest of their lives thinking about what a horrible mistake they
had made. His ambition would make them pay for their disrespect.

He recruited even better musicians than before. He wrote and rehearsed religiously. His
desire for revenge fueled his passion. His rage ignited his creativity. Within a couple
years, his new band had signed a record contract of their own and was taking off.

The guitarists name was Dave Mustaine, and the band he formed was called Megadeth.
Megadeth would go on to sell over 25 million albums and tour the world many times
over. Today, Mustaine is considered one of the most brilliant and influential musicians
in all of heavy metal music.

Unfortunately, the band he was kicked out of was called Metallica. Metallica has since
sold over 180 million albums worldwide, and they are considered by many to be the
greatest heavy metal band of all time.

And because of this, in a rare intimate interview in 2003, a tearful Mustaine admitted
that he couldnt help but still consider himself a failure at times. Despite all he had
accomplished, he was still the guy who got kicked out of Metallica. Tens of millions of
albums sold. Concerts given to screaming stadiums of fans. Millions of dollars earned.
And yet, a failure.

Apparently this
wasnt always enough.

This is where most articles say, Hey, dont compare yourself to others, be happy, blah,
blah, blah, and then we all circle jerk over how great of a life lesson this is and go back
to sharing funny pictures of Miley Cyrus on Facebook.

But this advice is totally banal and petty. Dont compare yourself to others. Its up
there with, Just be yourself, and Act confident, in terms of how useless it is.

As humans, were wired for comparison. Its an inevitable facet of our being. We are
constantly trying to gauge how we measure up to those around us.

That guy has a better car than me. She is taller than me, but Im prettier. I wonder how
much money Bob makes and if his wife spends it all. Gosh, I wish the people at work
listened to me the same way they listen to Jake.

Comparison and the drive for status are innate parts of our nature and thats unlikely to
change any time soon.

But what we can change is the basis of those comparisons. What yardstick are we
using? We may not be able to stop measuring ourselves against others, but we can
decide which yardstick we use to measure.

A simple example: I dont make as much money as most executives and managers in
the agricultural industry. By one metric you could therefore say that I am less successful
than they are. And in fact, if you put me next to one on an airplane, in a fancy
restaurant, at a business conference, or in an expensive nightclub, those environments
would reinforce my inferiority. By those yardsticks, I would clearly not measure up. Mr.
VP of Monsanto is sitting in first class. Im not. Im crammed in economy class
between two crying babies and an obese pregnant woman.

But I make a comfortable living helping people improve their lives, while Mr. VP up in
first class extorts his money from thousands of poor farmers around the world,
interfering with world food markets and helping perpetuate the poverty of millions of
people in the developing world.

So, first class or not, I am going to feel like I have a leg up on him.

Because its all in how you choose to measure success. I dont measure my success by
displays of monetary wealth. I prefer to measure it based on social and global impact. Is
that totally self-serving and biased? Absolutely. And thats the point: You get to choose
how you measure success.

Most of us are never told this. Its not something we pick up in school or church. In fact,
most of our social systems are built with their own metrics of success built into them
which we are then expected and sometimes forced to follow.

Get good grades. Make tons of money. Go to church. Buy nice things. Raise a nice
family. Watch football. Feign shock when Miley Cyrus shakes her ass on TV.

Many of societys metrics are useful measurements for us. Many of them are not.

Its vital that we remember that theyre not absolute. We shouldnt limit ourselves to
them. Money is nice, but one can choose to see it not as the absolute measure of wealth,
but as a useful tool to help achieve true wealth. Religion gives billions of peoples lives
moral direction, but that doesnt require one to believe in religion to be a good, moral
person. Relationships and family are important, but lacking them doesnt make you any
less valuable as a person.

Again, we get to choose. And the beauty and the frustration is that were all different, so
most of the time our metrics will be different.

How Will You Measure Your Life?

So this raises the question: How will you measure your life? Which metrics for success
will you choose for yourself?

This is not an easy question to answer.

Back in my dating coach days, I worked with a lot of men who had poor metrics for
success in their dating lives.

They wanted to judge their success based on how many women they slept with, how
attractive the women they dated were (often utilizing a 10-scale to do so), how many
women they could date at once, how young of a woman they could date, and so on.

(Its no coincidence that men with these metrics of success are the same ones who
struggle with relationships.)
These metrics of success are problematic because they make harmful and unattractive
behaviors appear economical and rational. For instance, if ones metric for success is to
date someone who is rich/popular, then lying or faking ones identity may become a
rational strategy in order to achieve that success. But these strategies are demeaning and
also lead to poor relationships.

For men like these, I developed something I call Happiness Hypotheticals, which Ive
found to zero in on the utility of a success metric.

For instance, to these men I would often say:

Lets pretend you had a choice to date one of two women. One is stunningly gorgeous
but is immature and not enjoyable to be around. The other one is average-looking
physically, but you are always happy when you are around her. Which one would you
choose to be with?

Or to men who have a fixation on their number of sexual partners, I would say:

What would you rather do? Sleep with 10 girls who dont excite you? Or sleep with
one who blows your mind night after night?

The answers to these questions are blindingly obvious to most people. But clients who
had unhealthy fixations in their dating lives would experience a lot of cognitive
dissonance when trying to answer these hypotheticals.

The reason I bring these up is because once I moved beyond dating, I found that these
hypotheticals apply wonderfully in most areas of life. For instance, heres a classic
question for you to chew on:

Would you rather be rich and work a job you hate, or have an average income and
work a job you love?

This one is a little bit deeper:

Would you rather be someone famous and influential for something that doesnt
matter (like, say, being on a reality TV show), or be anonymous and unknown despite
working on something that is insanely important (like, for instance, researching cures
for cancer)?
Do you consider the Kardashian sisters to be successful? Why or why not?

Or for those who feel like they always need to be dating somebody:

Would you rather have nothing but toxic relationships, or would you rather always be
alone and emotionally healthy and happy?

The Happiness Hypotheticals are powerful tools because they can show us what metrics
of success actually matter for us. Many of us think relationships will make us happy, but
emotional health should be the goal and relationships the side effect. Many think
popularity will make them happy, but one should do something important and noble and
let the fame be the side effect.

As humans, were all driven by happiness and meaning, but we often get caught up in
unnecessary status concerns and superficial comparisons. When we create hypothetical
either/or situations between those comparisons and happiness, it can quickly sort our
priorities out for us. Tools such as these show us ways in which we can measure our
own success.

Im not famous, but I improve peoples lives. That makes me successful. Youre single
and alone right now, but youre happy and proud of yourself. That makes you
successful.

We must take care in choosing the way in which we measure success because the
metrics we choose will determine all of our actions and beliefs.

For instance, if you decide that watching 12 hours of television per day is your lifes
ultimate purpose and your greatest metric of success, then within a few months youll
find yourself fat, lonely and miserable (and successful). If you decide becoming the
biggest drug dealer on your block is your definition of success, then you may find
yourself shot.

The metrics of success which we choose lead to long-term real life consequences,
and they determine everything.

I challenge you to take a moment and set up Happiness Hypotheticals with some of your
biggest drives and desires in your life and see what answer comes up. What youll
notice is that bringing your yardstick off of external measures of success and onto
internal states of happiness and meaning will lead to a more purposeful and fruitful life.

Heres a recent example of mine:

Earlier this year, I found that I was getting really hung up on how many people were
reading my book and my blog. I was getting frustrated because for the first time in my
career, my readership had plateaued. I found myself tempted to pander to the lowest
common denominator just to get more traffic. I had to ask myself, Would I rather be
read by a massive audience for something I dont care writing about, or a smaller
audience for something I do care writing about?

That quickly put things in perspective. I need to write about the things which are
important to me in my life first, and look to cater that information to help others second.
Thats the only way that what I write will feel true.

In the case of Dave Mustaine, he felt like a failure after decades of massive material
success because his metric for success was a superficial one: being better and more
popular than Metallica. But what if Mustaine had instead chosen happiness as his
metric? What if he decided to measure his success based on how widely and
enthusiastic his music was received by people, and how well he felt he was expressing
himself artistically?

That would have changed everything.