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

by Mark Manson

Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience.

doesn’t care about adversity in the face of his goals,

he doesn’t care about pissing some people off to do what he feels is right or important or noble.

the overcoming adversity stuff, the willingness to be different, an outcast, a pariah, all for the sake of one’s own values.

pampered middle-class white people—consider “life problems” are really just side effects of not having anything more important to worry about.

Happiness is not a solvable equation. Dissatisfaction and unease are inherent parts of human nature and, as we’ll see, necessary components to creating consistent happiness.

We suffer for the simple reason that suffering is biologically useful. It is nature’s preferred agent for inspiring change. We have evolved to always live with a certain degree of dissatisfaction and insecurity, because it’s the mildly dissatisfied and insecure creature that’s going to do the most work to innovate and survive. We are wired to become dissatisfied with whatever we have and satisfied by only what we do not have. This constant dissatisfaction has kept our species fighting and striving, building and conquering. So no—our own pain and misery aren’t a bug of human evolution; they’re a feature.

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

Emotions are simply biological signals designed to nudge you in the direction of beneficial change.