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by
Mark Manson
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.
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To not give a fuck is to stare down life’s most terrifying and difficult challenges and still take action.
Subtlety #1: Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.
“Fuck it,” not to everything in life, but rather to everything unimportant in life. They reserve their fucks for what truly matters. Friends. Family. Purpose. Burritos. And an occasional lawsuit or two. And because of that, because they reserve their fucks for only the big things that matter, people give a fuck about them in return.
Subtlety #2: To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity.
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 fucks will be given to meaningless and frivolous causes.
Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a fuck about what’s truly fuckworthy.
The idea of not giving a fuck is a simple way of reorienting our expectations for life and choosing what is important and what is not. Developing this ability leads to something I like to think of as a kind of “practical enlightenment.”
practical enlightenment as 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.
life itself is a form of suffering.
that pain and loss are inevitable and we should let go of trying to resist them.
He’d make us stronger by tearing us down, brighten our future by showing us the darkness.
pain, as much as we hate it, is useful. Pain is what teaches us what to pay attention to when we’re young or careless.
the emotional pain of rejection or failure teaches us how to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
hope for a life full of good problems.”
Happiness comes from solving problems. The keyword here is “solving.” If you’re avoiding your problems or feel like you don’t have any problems, then you’re going to make yourself miserable.
To be happy we need something to solve. Happiness is therefore a form of action; it’s an activity, not something that is passively bestowed upon you,
True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.
solve problems; be happy.
1. Denial. Some people deny that their problems exist in the first place.
This may make them feel good in the short term, but it leads to a life of insecurity, neuroticism, and emotional repression.
Victim Mentality. Some choose to believe that there is nothing they can do t...
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This may make them feel better in the short term, but it leads to a life of anger, helplessness, and despair.
Forms of blame and denial give us a quick high.
Highs come in many forms. Whether it’s a substance like alcohol, the moral righteousness that comes from blaming others, or the thrill of some new risky adventure, highs are shallow and unproductive ways to go about one’s life.
Highs also generate addiction. The more you rely on them to feel better about your underlying problems, the more you will seek them out.
Emotions evolved for one specific purpose: to help us live and reproduce a little bit better. That’s it. They’re feedback mechanisms telling us that something is either likely right or likely wrong for us—nothing more, nothing less.
Emotions are simply biological signals designed to nudge you in the direction of beneficial change.
An obsession and overinvestment in emotion fails us for the simple reason that emotions never last. Whatever makes us happy today will no longer make us happy tomorrow, because our biology always needs something more.
Everything comes with an inherent sacrifice—whatever makes us feel good will also inevitably make us feel bad.
“What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?” Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.
the solution lies in the acceptance and active engagement of that negative experience—not the avoidance of it, not the salvation from it.
I wanted the reward and not the struggle. I wanted the result and not the process. I was in love with not the fight but only the victory.
And life doesn’t work that way.
joy is in the climb itself.
The true measurement of self-worth is not how a person feels about her positive experiences, but rather how she feels about her negative experiences.
you and your problems are actually not privileged in their severity or pain—that is the first and most important step toward solving them.
the knowledge and acceptance of your own mundane existence will actually free you to accomplish what you truly wish to accomplish, without judgment or lofty expectations.
question we should be asking is not “How do I stop suffering?” but “Why am I suffering—for what purpose?”
Self-awareness is like an onion.
Let’s say the first layer of the self-awareness onion is a simple understanding of one’s emotions. “This is when I feel happy.” “This makes me feel sad.” “This gives me hope.”
The second layer of the self-awareness onion is an ability to ask why we feel certain emotions.
Why do you feel angry? Is it because you failed to achieve some goal? Why do you feel lethargic and uninspired? Is it because you don’t think you’re good enough?
This layer of questioning helps us understand the root cause of the emotions that overwhelm us. Once we understand that root cause, we can ideally do something to change it.
The third level is our personal values: Why do I consider this to be success/failure? How am I choosing to measure myself? By what standard am I judging myself and everyone around me?
our values determine the nature of our problems, and the nature of our problems determines the quality of our lives.
by what standard do we measure ourselves?
If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.
1. Pleasure. Pleasure is great, but it’s a horrible value to prioritize your life around.
Pleasure is a false god.
