SOLVED with Mark Manson
Your Questions On Manifestation, Confidence, and Getting Over Your Ex, Solved
29 Apr 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What are the key announcements for the one-year anniversary?
Hey guys, Mark here. So have you ever had a real breakthrough, like actually understand something about yourself and then two weeks later you're doing the exact same shit again? That's the problem with online courses and content in general. They can give you the plan, but they can't coach you through the moment when life gets in the way.
Chapter 2: How can I effectively overcome addiction and prevent relapse?
And then there's another problem with AI tools. They don't actually know you. They just give you generic advice that sounds smart, but doesn't translate into your actual life when it really matters. So I tried to solve both of these problems separately.
Chapter 3: What strategies can help with procrastination, especially for those with ADHD?
I built nine courses on the stuff that people actually struggle with, boundaries, procrastination, emotions. And then I co-created Purpose, an AI coach that actually learns who you are and challenges you when you need it. Now they're together for the first time.
Chapter 4: What is the science behind manifestation and how does it really work?
You do the exercise from the courses, you talk to the coach about what came up, and then the coach already knows your patterns, your blind spots, what you've been working on, and all of the other exercises that you've done. That's how this stuff can actually stick.
So for a limited time, I am selling both of my flagship products, the Solve membership courses and the Purpose AI app together once and for all. So check it out. Go to purpose.app slash solve.
Chapter 5: How can I manage panic attacks and move on from a 'perfect' ex?
Link is in the show notes below. Welcome back, everybody, to The Solved Podcast, the last podcast you will ever need. I'm your host, Marc Manson, and we have a very special episode for you today. Yes, it is our one-year anniversary of The Solved Podcast.
Chapter 6: What is the uncomfortable truth about self-love and gratitude?
It's been an incredible year. We published 20 episodes, had over 20 million downloads, changed countless lives, and made lots of really bad poop jokes. On top of that, we just reached 3 million subscribers on YouTube, so it's even more of a time to celebrate. And to do that, I'm going to do a Q&A episode with our community.
You guys sent in over 200 questions, and we're going to cover a lot of ground today, including advice on overcoming addiction, how to defeat procrastination, even if you have ADHD, getting over a quote-unquote perfect ex, practical tips around gratitude and the limits of self-acceptance, and of course, once again, as always, We will talk about finding your purpose.
That seems to be a popular question with you all.
Chapter 7: How do I balance purpose and financial success in my life?
But before we get to that, I want to take care of a little bit of housekeeping and make some practical announcements about the show, where things are going and what our plans are for the rest of 2026 and beyond.
So for those of you who listen regularly, you have probably noticed that over the past three or four months, we have experimented with doing shorter episodes, more frequent episodes, different sorts of formats, highlight clips, short 20, 30-minute solo episodes of just me. And a lot of this experimentation, to give you a little bit of visibility behind the scenes,
Basically, what it comes down to is what we were running into last year is that when you're only doing one massive five-hour episode every single month, that puts a lot of pressure and expectation on that single episode. And so what myself and Drew and the team were experiencing is just that like... We're throwing hundreds and hundreds of hours each month into this one episode.
And if it doesn't perform, it kind of felt like the sky was falling. And so we started thinking of like, OK, well, maybe we can kind of branch out and do some shorter shows and, you know, have some spinoffs and have highlights that we can revisit and add to the feed. And.
Chapter 8: What insights can be gained from living a nomadic lifestyle and pursuing FIRE?
While that was a useful experiment, the team and I have decided that we are actually going to double down on the super long episodes. Starting in June, we are going back to the single solved episode each month. And that episode is going to be as comprehensive as possible. It will follow the show's promise of attempting to be the last episode you will ever need to listen to on that topic.
And we just decided that we would rather go big or go home. In the meantime, we have a couple more episodes lined up for May. So in a couple of weeks, we have an episode on how to stop being anxious, where we review all of the research on the best interventions for anxiety. That's been a... much requested topic from you guys.
And then a couple of weeks after that, we're going to do an episode on why people stay in bad relationships. Both of those episodes are going to be a little bit shorter, probably in the two to two and a half hour range. And they're going to cover narrower topics. But then in June, we're back to the original format. We're back to the original large episodes.
We're back to going all in and trying to solve one area of your life. Now, when we go back to these episodes, we are going to do it a little bit differently. There's going to be a little bit more promotion involved on the YouTube side. We're going to slice up these episodes into five or six different parts and drip them out over the course of probably a week or 10 days.
A lot of that is simply because the YouTube algorithm punishes five-hour videos. And so we don't want to be punished by the algorithm. But also we've noticed that more people on YouTube like to digest the episodes in smaller chunks at a time. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple or any other podcasting platform, you will still be able to get the entire episode on day one all at once.
And lastly, I'm excited to announce that the PDF guides are coming back. You guys can stop griping in the comments. You can stop sending me angry emails screaming, where are the guides? I want my guide. Why did you stop doing the guides? We stopped doing the guides because the more frequent, shorter episodes, it just became impractical to create them. It takes a lot of work to write them out.
format them, create all the designs and everything. But if we are doing that one larger episode each month, then it does make sense again to make those guides. So the guides will be coming back beginning in June. You will be able to get them for free and work through them at your own leisure. So that should be good news for all of you guys.
All right, so without further ado, I'm going to get straight into your questions. The first question comes from King Eddie. He asks, And try again. This is a great question. And this is incredibly common for anybody who's trying to quit a bad habit or quit any sort of addictive behavior, whatever it might be. The problem is that you're relying on your feelings and not your systems.
So what happens is you want to quit something. Let's say smoking. You get really worked up. You get all hyped. You're like, I'm finally going to do it this time. This is going to be it. This is the time I'm going to change. Maybe you line up a bunch of plans or tell a bunch of people and you do great for the first week or two. But the problem is, is that that feeling eventually wanes.
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