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by
Mark Manson
Started reading
June 25, 2025
Self-improvement and success often occur together. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the same thing.
Self-improvement & success are not the same thing.
The key to a good life is not giving a fuck about more; it’s giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important.
You should only give a fuck about what is true & immediate & important since the key to a good life is giving a fuck about less instead of more.
The Feedback Loop from Hell has become a borderline epidemic, making many of us overly stressed, overly neurotic, and overly self-loathing.
The Feedback Loop From Hell is a borderline epidemic that makes people overly:
· Stressed
· Neurotic
· Self-loathing
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.
Wanting to have a positive experience will make you have a negative experience, but accepting your negative experience gives you a positive experience.
Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience.
Positive experience will end up being a negative experience if you're focusing too much on not having a positive experience, but by accepting your negative experience you'll have a positive experience.
As the existential philosopher Albert Camus said (and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t on LSD at the time): “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
Searching for happiness, and looking for meaning in life will never be found, so you won't be happy.
not giving a fuck works in reverse.
Not giving a fuck makes the things you want come naturally.
Being open with your insecurities paradoxically makes you more confident and charismatic around others. The pain of honest confrontation is what generates the greatest trust and respect in your relationships. Suffering through your fears and anxieties is what allows you to build courage and perseverance.
Acknowledging the things that you don't like about yourself, and accepting them makes you think more positively instead of negatively by hating yourself for what you struggle with, which makes it easier for you to be able to change the things you'd like to because you didn't stay in a negative mindset surrounding these things.
Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience.
Embracing negative experience will lead you to successfully get the things that are worthwhile in life you want.
These moments of non-fuckery are the moments that most define our lives.
The moments that define your life the most happen in times that you don't give a fuck.
Most of us struggle throughout our lives by giving too many fucks in situations where fucks do not deserve to be given.
Many people give too many fucks about things that don't deserve to have a fuck given to them.
learning how to focus and prioritize your thoughts effectively—how to pick and choose what matters to you and what does not matter to you based on finely honed personal values.
Focusing, and prioritizing your thoughts to pick, and choose the things that matter to you, and the things that don't matter to you can be done by basing this distinction on your personal values.
when you give too many fucks—when you give a fuck about everyone and everything—you will feel that you’re perpetually entitled to be comfortable and happy at all times, that everything is supposed to be just exactly the fucking way you want it to be.
Giving a fuck about everyone, and everything will make you think that you're entitled to feeling comfortable, and happy at all times, and that you should always get your way.
Subtlety #1: Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.
Not giving a fuck isn't about being indifferent, and instead is about being comfortable with being different.
Indifferent people are afraid of:
· The world.
· The repercussions of their own choices.
You must give a fuck about something.
You have to give a fuck about something.
there’s no such thing as a lack of adversity.
There is never going to be a time in your life that lacks adversity.
Subtlety #2: To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity.
You have to give a fuck about something more important than adversity in order to give a fuck about adversity.
finding something important and meaningful in your life is perhaps the most productive use of your time and energy.
The most productive use of your time, and energy is when you spend them on finding something important, and meaningful to you.
Subtlety #3: Whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing what to give a fuck about.
You are always choosing what to give a fuck about even if you don't realize it.
This book will help you think a little bit more clearly about what you’re choosing to find important in life and what you’re choosing to find unimportant.
The book will help you think more clearly about the things that you choose to find important in life, and the things you find unimportant, too.
the idea that some suffering is always inevitable—that no matter what you do, life is comprised of failures, loss, regrets, and even death.
Suffering is always going to be an inevitable part of your life
