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by
Mark Manson
There’s a saying in Texas: “The smallest dog barks the loudest.” A confident
By not giving a fuck that you feel bad, you short-circuit the Feedback Loop from Hell; you say to yourself, “I feel like shit, but who gives a fuck?” And then, as if sprinkled by magic fuck-giving fairy dust, you stop hating yourself for feeling so bad.
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.
Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law”—the
“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.”
While not giving a fuck may seem simple on the surface, it’s a whole new bag of burritos under the hood. I don’t even know what that sentence means, but I don’t give a fuck. A bag of burritos sounds awesome, so let’s just go with it.
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.
I think what most people—especially educated, pampered middle-class white people—consider “life problems” are really just side effects of not having anything more important to worry about.
Subtlety #3: Whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing what to give a fuck about.
“That’s what you get for giving a fuck when it wasn’t your turn to give a fuck.”
“Sure, making a lot of money makes you feel good, but it won’t make your kids love you,”
“Don’t hope for a life without problems,” the panda said. “There’s no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problems.”
Psychologists sometimes refer to this concept as the “hedonic treadmill”: the idea that we’re always working hard to change our life situation, but we actually never feel very different.
What is the pain that you want to sustain?
Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.
our struggles determine our successes.
In fact, in my experience, the more uncomfortable the answer, the more likely it is to be true.
Problems may be inevitable, but the meaning of each problem is not.
We’re apes. We think we’re all sophisticated with our toaster ovens and designer footwear, but we’re just a bunch of finely ornamented apes. And because we are apes, we instinctually measure ourselves against others and vie for status. The question is not whether we evaluate ourselves against others; rather, the question is by what standard do we measure ourselves?
If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.
While there is something to be said for “staying on the sunny side of life,” the truth is, sometimes life sucks, and the healthiest thing you can do is admit it. Denying negative emotions leads to experiencing deeper and more prolonged negative emotions and to emotional dysfunction. Constant positivity is a form of avoidance, not a valid solution to life’s problems—problems which, by the way, if you’re choosing the right values and metrics, should be invigorating you and motivating you.
As Freud once said, “One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
This, in a nutshell, is what “self-improvement” is really about: prioritizing better values, choosing better things to give a fuck about. Because when you give better fucks, you get better problems. And when you get better problems, you get a better life.
taking responsibility for everything that occurs in your life, regardless of who’s at fault.
“With great responsibility comes great power.”
lot of people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because they believe that to be responsible for your problems is to also be at fault for your problems.
nobody makes it through life without collecting a few scars on the way out.
We are always in the process of approaching truth and perfection without actually ever reaching truth or perfection.
Because here’s something that’s weird but true: we don’t actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. Some of the best and most gratifying experiences of our lives are also the most distracting and demotivating.
“I used to think the human brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.”
As the old adage goes, the man who believes he knows everything learns nothing.
“Work expands so as to fill up the time available for its completion.”
What would it mean if I were wrong?
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
That’s simply reality: if it feels like it’s you versus the world, chances are it’s really just you versus yourself.
Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.
Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it.
Inspiration → Motivation → Action → Inspiration → Motivation → Action → Etc.
The mark of an unhealthy relationship is two people who try to solve each other’s problems in order to feel good about themselves. Rather, a healthy relationship is when two people solve their own problems in order to feel good about each other.
Yet, in a bizarre, backwards way, death is the light by which the shadow of all of life’s meaning is measured. Without death, everything would feel inconsequential, all experience arbitrary, all metrics and values suddenly zero.
“the bitter antidote,”
