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

by Mark Manson

Most people want to have great sex and an awesome relationship, but not everyone is willing to go through the tough conversations, the awkward silences, the hurt feelings, and the emotional psychodrama to get there.

After all, people who date each other tend to have similar values. And if I dated someone with shitty values for that long, what did that say about me and my values?

The beauty of poker is that while luck is always involved, luck doesn’t dictate the long-term results of the game. A person can get dealt terrible cards and beat someone who was dealt great cards. Sure, the person who gets dealt great cards has a higher likelihood of winning the hand, but ultimately the winner is determined by—yup, you guessed it—the choices each player makes throughout play.

People who consistently make the best choices in the situations they’re given are the ones who eventually come out ahead in poker, just as in life.

nobody makes it through life without collecting a few scars on the way out.

Our values are our hypotheses: this behavior is good and important; that other behavior is not. Our actions are the experiments; the resulting emotions and thought patterns are our data.

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

Many or even most of our values are products of events that are not representative of the world at large, or are the result of a totally misconceived past.

Parkinson’s law: “Work expands so as to fill up the time available for its completion.”

I say don’t find yourself. I say never know who you are. Because that’s what keeps you striving and discovering. And it forces you to remain humble in your judgments and accepting of the differences in others.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

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.

Because honesty in my relationship is more important to me than feeling good all the time. The last person I should ever have to censor myself with is the woman I love.