The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

by Mark Manson

The responsibility/fault fallacy allows people to pass off the responsibility for solving their problems to others. This ability to alleviate responsibility through blame gives people a temporary high and a feeling of moral righteousness.

“Do, or do not; there is no ‘how.’”

Aaaaaaaaaah soooooo gut

Five hundred years ago cartographers believed that California was an island. Doctors believed that slicing a person’s arm open (or causing bleeding anywhere) could cure disease. Scientists believed that fire was made out of something called phlogiston. Women believed that rubbing dog urine on their face had anti-aging benefits. Astronomers believed that the sun revolved around the earth.

Every step of the way I was wrong. About everything. Throughout my life, I’ve been flat-out wrong about myself, others, society, culture, the world, the universe—everything.

Many people become so obsessed with being “right” about their life that they never end up actually living it.

“I used to think the human brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.”

Haha

“Work expands so as to fill up the time available for its completion.”

Parkinsons Law

The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it.

and the more you will enjoy it when doing it anyway. stop trying to have a fixed personality

This is why people are often so afraid of success—for the exact same reason they’re afraid of failure: it threatens who they believe themselves to be.

When someone admits to herself, “You know, maybe I’m not good at relationships,” then she is suddenly free to act and end her bad marriage. She has no identity to protect by staying in a miserable, crappy marriage just to prove something to herself.

Wichtig

Question #1: What if I’m wrong?

“Am I jealous—and if I am, then why?” “Am I angry?” “Is she right, and I’m just protecting my ego?”

Question #2: What would it mean if I were wrong?

Question #3: Would being wrong create a better or a worse problem than my current problem, for both myself and others?

That’s simply reality: if it feels like it’s you versus the world, chances are it’s really just you versus yourself.

sooooo true

If every project I started failed, if every post I wrote went unread, I’d only be back exactly where I started. So why not try?

You could make plenty of money and be miserable, just as you could be broke and be pretty happy.

Instead, my value was something else. It was freedom, autonomy.

Instead of a broke and unemployed twenty-two-year-old with no experience, I’d be a broke and unemployed twenty-five-year-old with no experience. Who cares?

If someone is worse than you, it’s likely because he hasn’t been through all of the painful learning experiences you have.

If we’re unwilling to fail, then we’re unwilling to succeed.

Dabrowski argued that fear and anxiety and sadness are not necessarily always undesirable or unhelpful states of mind; rather, they are often representative of the necessary pain of psychological growth.

I can’t stress this enough, but pain is part of the process.

Even when you think you do, you really don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. So really, what is there to lose?

Life is about not knowing and then doing something anyway.

Wichtig

“If you’re stuck on a problem, don’t sit there and think about it; just start working on it. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, the simple act of working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head.”

Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it.

Aaaaahhhh soo gut

If you lack the motivation to make an important change in your life, do something—anything, really—and then harness the reaction to that action as a way to begin motivating yourself.

And with simply doing something as your only metric for success—well, then even failure pushes you forward.

But we need to reject something. Otherwise, we stand for nothing.

nice

The point is this: we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something.

To value X, we must reject non-X.

Once upon a time, there were two youngsters, a boy and a girl. Their families hated each other. But the boy snuck into a party hosted by the girl’s family because he was kind of a dick. The girl sees the boy, and angels sing so sweetly to her lady-parts that she instantly falls in love with him. Just like that. And so he sneaks into her garden and they decide to get married the next freaking day, because, you know, that’s totally practical, especially when your parents want to murder each other. Jump ahead a few days. Their families find out about the marriage and throw a shit-fit. Mercutio dies. The girl is so upset that she drinks a potion that will put her to sleep for two days. But, unfortunately, the young couple hasn’t learned the ins and outs of good marital communication yet, and the young girl totally forgets to mention something about it to her new husband. The young man therefore mistakes his new wife’s self-induced coma for suicide. He then totally loses his marbles and he commits suicide, thinking he’s going to be with her in the afterlife or some shit. But then she wakes up from her two-day coma, only to learn that her new husband has committed suicide, so she has the exact same idea and kills herself too. The end.

Unhealthy love is based on two people trying to escape their problems through their emotions for each other—in other words, they’re using each other as an escape.

Healthy love is based on two people acknowledging and addressing their own problems with each other’s support.

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People can’t solve your problems for you. And they shouldn’t try, because that won’t make you happy. You can’t solve other people’s problems for them either, because that likewise won’t make them happy.

The mark of an unhealthy relationship is two people who try to solve each other’s problems in order to feel good about themselves.

Rather, a healthy relationship is when two people solve their own problems in order to f...

Acts of love are valid only if they’re performed without conditions or expectations.

It’s not about giving a fuck about everything your partner gives a fuck about; it’s about giving a fuck about your partner regardless of the fucks he or she gives. That’s unconditional love, baby.

The last person I should ever have to censor myself with is the woman I love.

This is what’s so destructive about cheating. It’s not about the sex. It’s about the trust that has been destroyed as a result of the sex.

Consumer culture is very good at making us want more, more, more. Underneath all the hype and marketing is the implication that more is always better. I bought into this idea for years. Make more money, visit more countries, have more experiences, be with more women. But more is not always better. In fact, the opposite is true. We are actually often happier with less.

And you have to stay committed to something and go deep to dig it up. That’s true in relationships, in a career, in building a great lifestyle—in everything.

but now I gave a fuck about something more important than my insecurities and my baggage.

Yet, in a bizarre, backwards way, death is the light by which the shadow of all of life’s meaning is measured. Without death, everything would feel inconsequential, all experience arbitrary, all metrics and values suddenly zero.

His book The Denial of Death, would win the Pulitzer Prize and become one of the most influential intellectual works of the twentieth century, shaking up the fields of psychology and anthropology, while making profound philosophical claims that are still influential today.

That we will be remembered and revered and idolized long after our physical self ceases to exist.

all the meaning in our life is shaped by this innate desire to never truly die.

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

omg das isses