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

by Mark Manson

giving too many fucks is bad for your mental health.

no matter where you go, there you are.

Subtlety #2: To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity.

Subtlety #3: Whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing what to give a fuck about.

True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.

if everyone were extraordinary, then by definition no one would be extraordinary—is

“The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that’s okay.”

But maybe they’re ordinary for a reason: because they are what actually matters.

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

But if you’re sitting pretty in the middle class in a developed country, an extra ten thousand dollars per year won’t affect anything much—meaning that you’re killing yourself working overtime and weekends for basically nothing.

Constant positivity is a form of avoidance, not a valid solution to life’s problems—problems

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.

We cannot learn anything without first not knowing something.

“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.”

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.