'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck', Mark Manson

Rating: 5/10

Overall Thoughts

The author takes a very different approach in writing this book, as unlike other self-help books, Manson does not sugar coat anything.  It took me a while to get comfortable with all the 'f' words being used as well as the crude and vulgar language.

In 'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck', the author encourages readers to limit their concern over things that have little to no meaning or value in their lives.  It provides a brutally honest reality check about our personal problems, fears and expectations towards life.

Manson suggests that "Knowing yourself or finding yourself can be dangerous.  It can cement you into a strict role and saddle you with unnecessary expectations.  It can close you off to inner potential and outer opportunities."  He tells his readers to not find themselves and never know who they are, "Because that's what keeps you striving and discovering."

I do not necessarily agree with this.  And Manson seems to contradict himself a lot, as later on in the book he tells his readers to "Define yourself in the simplest and most ordinary ways possible."  Won't you need to know yourself in order to define yourself?

Further, Manson writes "Conflict is not only normal, then; it's absolutely necessary for the maintenance of a healthy relationship.  If two people who are close are not able to hash out their differences openly and vocally, then the relationship is based on manipulation and misrepresentation, and it will slowly become toxic."  Just because some couples (like me) do not argue, it does not indicate that the relationship is toxic or isn't genuine. 

Conclusion: good read but not my cup of tea.

Lessons From 'A Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

• Self-improvement and success often occur together.  But that doesn't necessarily mean they're the same thing.

• The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience.  And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one's negative experience is itself a positive experience. The idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place.

• Finding something important and meaningful in your life is perhaps the most productive use of your time and energy.  Because if you don't find that meaningful something, your f*cks will be given to meaningless and frivolous causes.

• Practical enlightenment is becoming comfortable with the idea that some suffering is always inevitable - that no matter what you do, life is comprised of failures, loss, regrets, and even death.

• Greatness is merely an illusion in our minds, a made-up destination that we obligate ourselves to pursue, our own psychological Atlantis.

• We are wired to become dissatisfied with whatever we have and satisfied by only what we do not have.

• Don't hope for a life without problems.  There's no such thing.  Instead, hope for a life full of good problems.

• Happiness comes from solving problems.  If you're avoiding your problems or feel like you don't have any problems, then you're going to make yourself miserable.  If you feel like you have problems that you can't solve, you will likewise make yourself miserable.  The secret sauce is the solving of the problems, not in not having problems in the first place.  True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.

• An obsession and overinvestment in emotion fails us for the simple reason that emotions never last.  What makes us happy today will no longer make us happy tomorrow, because our biology always needs something more.  A fixation on happiness inevitably amounts to a never-ending pursuit of "something else".  And despite all of our sweat and strain, we end up feeling eerily similar to how we started: inadequate.

• What determines your success isn't, "What do you want to enjoy?" The relevant question is, "What pain do you want to sustain?"  Our struggles determine our successes.

• The ticket to emotional heath, like that to physical health, is, accepting the bland and mundane truths of life: truths such as "Your actions actually don't matter that much in the grand scheme of things" and "The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that's okay."

• If  suffering is inevitable, if our problems in life are unavoidable, then the question we should be asking is not "How do I stop suffering?" but "Why am I suffering - for what purpose?"

• If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.

• People who base their self-worth on being right about everything prevent themselves from learning from their mistakes.  They lack the ability to take on new perspectives and empathize with others.  They close themselves off to new and important information.

• Denying negative emotions leads to experiencing deeper and more prolonged negative emotions and to emotional dysfunction.  Constant positivity is a form of avoidance, not a valid solution to life's problems.  The trick with negative emotions is to 1) express them in a socially acceptable and healthy manner and 2) express them in a way that aligns with your values.

• When we feel that we're choosing our problems, we feel empowered.  When we feel that our problems are being forced upon us against our will, we feel victimized and miserable.  We don't always control what happens to us.  But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond.

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

• 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, how you value things. 

• Certainty is the enemy of growth.  Instead of striving for certainty, we should be in constant search of doubt.  Being wrong opens us up to the possibility of change.  Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth.

• The more you embrace being uncertain and not knowing, the more comfortable you will feel in knowing what you don't know.

• We can be truly successful only at something we're willing to fail at.  If we're unwilling to fail, then we're unwilling to succeed.

• We need some sort of existential crisis to take an objective look at how we've been deriving meaning in our life, and then consider changing course.

• For a relationship to be healthy, both people must be willing and able to both say no and hear no.

• Death is the only thing we can know with any certainty.  The only way to be comfortable with death is to understand and see yourself as something bigger than yourself; to choose values that stretch beyond serving yourself, that are simple and immediate and controllable and tolerant of the chaotic world around you.