Mark Manson

I imagine a large percentage of people have like had some sort of experience in their life that has felt extremely transformational in a short period of time.

The experiences themselves are not common, but I think across a lifetime, it's not uncommon.

So really the first person to take this seriously as kind of a scientific subject was William James.

And William James is interesting because he also went through a sudden 180 transformation in his life.

But his was quite a bit different than mine.

So William James, he was maybe the most prestigious American intellectual ever.

Definitely one of the most revered American philosophers ever.

He's often called the father of American psychology.

He's just hugely influential.

And interestingly, he came from a very prestigious and influential family.

His brother was a famous novelist.

I believe his sister was a famous writer as well.

So he came from this family of absurdly high achievers.

And he was kind of the black sheep.

Like, he...

kind of fucked up at everything he tried to do for like the first 30 years of his life so originally he wanted to be a painter his dad highly disapproved of this he was not very good at it it didn't really go anywhere and he kind of just floundered around into his early 20s until finally his dad was like you know what son you gotta you gotta do something with yourself and of course like any good father uh he went and got him placed in harvard medical school

Wouldn't it be nice?

Just shoved him in there.

Wouldn't it be nice if all of our fathers, when they disapproved with us, just made a phone call and got us into Harvard Medical School?

So William James got admitted to Harvard Medical School, and then he kind of just bounced around from program to program.