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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Mark Manson
Read between
May 31 - June 13, 2025
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.
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.
Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience.
Subtlety #1: Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.
Subtlety #2: To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity.
we become more selective about the fucks we’re willing to give.
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.
If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.
Learn to sustain the pain you’ve chosen.
Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it.
we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something.
The saver solves and solves—not because she actually cares about the problems, but because she believes she must fix others’ problems in order to deserve attention and affection for herself.
That would actually be a demonstration of love: taking responsibility for your own problems and not holding your partner responsible for them.
For savers, the hardest thing to do in the world is to stop taking responsibility for other people’s problems.
Acts of love are valid only if they’re performed without conditions or expectations.
People with strong boundaries are not afraid of a temper tantrum, an argument, or getting hurt.
People with strong boundaries understand that a healthy relationship is not about controlling one another’s emotions, but rather about each partner supporting the other in their individual growth and in solving their own problems.
it’s about giving a fuck about your partner regardless of the fucks he or she gives.
You don’t feel loved until you trust that the love being expressed toward you comes without any special conditions or baggage attached to it.
as if penises fell into various orifices completely by accident.
Commitment allows you to focus intently on a few highly important goals and achieve a greater degree of success than you otherwise would.
You are already great because in the face of endless confusion and certain death, you continue to choose what to give a fuck about and what not to.
