The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck is a self-help book by Mark Manson that challenges the conventional wisdom of positive thinking and happiness. Instead, the book argues that the key to living a good life is to care less about everything, and focus only on the things that truly matter to you. The book also explores the concepts of suffering, values, responsibility, failure, death, and meaning, and how they relate to our happiness and well-being.

The main idea of the book is that we have a limited amount of fucks to give, and we should use them wisely. We should not waste our fucks on trivial things that do not align with our personal values, but rather, give them to the things that make us feel alive and fulfilled. The book teaches us how to choose our problems, accept our flaws, embrace uncertainty, and confront our mortality. By doing so, we can overcome our fears, grow as individuals, and find our purpose in life.

The book is written in a humorous, provocative, and sometimes vulgar style, that aims to engage the reader and challenge their assumptions.

Notes

Positive Thinking's Downside

Don't try | S.4

Ironically, this fixation on the positive - on what’s better, what’s superior - only serves to remind us over and over again of what we are not, of what we lack, of what we should have been but failed to be. After all, no truly happy person feels the need to stand in front of a mirror and recite that she’s happy. She just is.

The Paradox of Happiness

Don’t try → The Feedback Loop from Hell | S.9

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. Or simply: Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience.

The Life/Death Issue of Unrealistic Expectations

Don’t try → So Mark, What the Fuck Is the Point of This Book Anyway? | S.20

I believe that today we’re acing a psychological epidemic, one in which people no longer realize it’s okay for things to suck sometimes. I know that sounds intellectually lazy on the surface, but I promise you, it’s a life/death sort of issue. Because when we believe that it’s not okay for things to suck sometimes, then we unconsciously start blaming ourselves. We start to feel as though something is inherently wrong with us, which drives us to all sorts of overcompensation.

Happiness is Not Solvable

Happiness Is a Problem | S.26

This premise, though, is the problem. 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.

Choosing Your Pain, Choosing Your Life

Happiness Is a Problem → Choose Your Struggle | S.36

A more interesting question, a question that most people never consider, is, “What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?” Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.

The Importance of Loving the Process

Happiness Is a Problem → Choose Your Struggle | S.39

I was in love with the result but I wasn’t in love with the process. And because of that, I failed at it.

You are Defined by Your Struggles

Happiness Is a Problem → Choose Your Struggle | S.40

I wanted the reward and not the struggle. I wanted the result and not the process. I was in love with not the fight but only the victory. And life doesn’t work that way. Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.

Our Struggles Determine Our Successes

Happiness Is a Problem → Choose Your Struggle | S.40

Our struggles determine our successes.

The Paradox of Greatness and Anti-Entitlement

Your Are Not Special → B-b-b-but, If I’m Not Going to Be Special or Extraordinary, What’s the Point | S.62

The rare people who do become truly exceptional at something do so not because they believe they’re exceptional. On the contrary, they become amazing because they’re obsessed with improvement. And that obsession with improvement stems from an unerring belief that they are, in fact, not that great at all. It’s anti-entitlement. People who become great at something become great because they understand that they’re not already great - they are mediocre, they are average - and that they could be so much better.

The Different Levels Of Self-Awareness

The Value of Suffering → The Self-Awareness Onion | S.70

The first layer of self awareness is a simple understanding of one's emotions. "This is when I feel happy. This makes me feel sad. This gives me hope." It takes a lot of practise and effort to get good at identifying blind spots in ourselves ans then expressing the affected emotions appropriately. But this task is hugely important and takes a lot of effort.

The second layer of self-awareness is an ability to ask why we feel certain emotions. These why questions are difficult and often take months or even years to answer consistently and accurately. Such questions are important because they illuminate what we consider success or failure. This layer of questioning helps us understand the root cause of the emotions that overwhelm us. Once we understand that root cause, we can ideally do something to change it.

The third level is our personal values: Why do I consider this to be success/failure? How am I choosing to measure myself? By what standard am I judging myself and everyone around me? Values determine the nature of our problems and the nature of out problems determine the quality of our lives.

Values underlie everything we are and do. If what we value is unhelpful, if what we consider success/failure is poorly chosen, then everything based upont hose values - the thoughts, the emotions, the day-to-day feelings - will all be out of whack. Everyting we think and feel about a situation ultimately comes back to how valuable we perceive it to be.

Problems Are Inevitable, Meaning Is Not

The Value of Suffering → The Self-Awareness Onion | S.76

What is objectively true about your situation is not as important as how you come to see the situation, how you choose to measure it and value it. Problems may be inevitable, but the meaning of each problem is not. We get to control what our problems mean based on how we choose to think about them, the standard by which we choose to measure them.

The Problem With Bad Values For Life

The Value of Suffering → Shitty Values | S.81

There are a handful of common values that create really poor problems for people - problems that can hardly be solved. These include pleasure, material success, always being right, and staying positive. 1. Pleasure. Pleasure is great, but it’s a horrible value to prioritize your life around. Pleasure is the most superficial form of life satisfaction and therefore the easiest to obtain and the easiest to lose. And yet, pleasure is what's marketed to us, twenty-four/seven. It's what we fixate on. It's what we use to numb and distract ourselves. Pleasure is not the cause of happiness; rather, it is the effect. 2. Material Success. Many people measuer their self-worth based on how much money. An issue with overvaluing material success is the danger of priorizizing it over other values, such as honesty, nonviolence, and compassion. When people measure themselves not by their behavior, but by the status symbols they're able to collect, then not only are they shallow, but they're probably assholes as well. 3. Always Being Right. We consistently make poor assumptions, misjudge probabilities, misremeber facts, give in to cognitive biases, and make decisions based on our emotional whims. As humans, we're wrong pretty much constantly, so if your metic for life success is to be right - well, you're going to have a difficult time rationalizing all of the bullshit to yourself. People who base their self-worth on being right about everything prevent themselves from learning from their mistakes. They lack the ability ot take on new perspectives and empathize with others. They close themselves off to new and important information. It's far more helpful to assume that you're ignorant and don't know a whole lot. This keeps you unattached to superstitious or poorly informed beliefs and promotes a constant state of learning and growth. 4. Staying Positive. 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 admint it. Denying negative emotions leads to experiencing deeper and more prolonged negative emotions and to emotional dysfunction. Constant positivity is a form of aviodance, not a vaild 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. Negative emotions are a necessary component of emotional health. To deny that negativity is to perpetuate problems rather than solve them. The trick with negative emotions is to express them in a socially acceptable and healthy manner and express them in a way that aligns with your values. When we force ourselves to stay positive at all times, we deny the existence of our life's problems. And when we deny our problems, we rob ourselves of the chance to solve them and generate happiness. Problems add a sense of meaning and importance to our life. Thus to duck our problems is to lead a meaningless (even if supposedly plesant) existence.

Struggle: The Key to a Meaningful Life

The Value of Suffering → Shitty Values | S.85

As Freud once said, “One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful”. This is why these values - pleasure, material success, always being right, staying positive - are poor ideals for a person’s life. Some of the greatest moments of one’s life are not pleasant, not successful, not known, and not positive.

Defining Good And Bad Values

The Value of Suffering → Defining Good and Bad Values | S.86

Good values are reality-based, socially constructive, and immediate and controllable. Bad values are superstitious, socially destructive, and not immediate or controllable.

Good, healthy values are achieved internally. Something like creativity or humility can be experienced right now. You simply have to orient your mind in a certain way to experience it. These values are immediate and controllable and engage you with the world as it is rather than how you with it were.

Bad values are generally reliant on external events. Bad values, while sometimes fun or pleasureable, lie outside of you control and often require socially destructive or superstitious means to achieve.

When we have poor values - that is, poor standards we set for ourselves and others - we are esentially giving fucks about the things that don't matter, things that in fact make our life worse. But when we choose better values, we are able to divert our fucks to something better - toward things that matter, things that imporve the state of our well-being and that generate happiness, pleasure, and success as side effects.

This, in a nutshell, is what self-improvement is really about: prioritizing better values, choosing better things to give fucks about. Because when you give better fucks, you get better problems. And when you get better problems, you get a better life.

Interpretation Is Key

You Are Always Choosing → The Choice | S.94

We don’t always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond.

Accepting Responsibility For Our Problems

You Are Always Choosing → The Responsibility/Fault Fallacy | S.96

The more we choose to accept responsibility in our lives, the more power we will exercise over our lives. Accepting responsibility for our problems is thus the first step to solving them.

Responsibility Is Not Blame

You Are Always Choosing → The Responsibility/Fault Fallacy | S.97

A 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.

Reducing Wrongness Instead of Searching Truth

You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I) | S.117

We are always in the process of approaching truth and perfection without actually ever reaching truth or perfection. We shouldn’t seek to find the ultimate “right” answers for ourselfs, but rather, we should seek to chip away at the ways that we’re wrong today, so that we can be a little less wrong tomorrow.

Growth Through Being Wrong

You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I) | S.119

Being wrong opens us up to the possibility of change. Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth.

Manson’s Law of Avoidance

You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I) → Manson’s Law of Avoidance | S.130

Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Moore’s Law: “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.” Manson’s Law: “The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it.”

Change Requires Being Wrong

You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I) → How to Be a Little Less Certain of Yourself | S.136f.

It’s worth remembering that for any change to happen in your life, you must be wrong about something. If you’re sitting here, miserable day after day, then that means you’re already wrong about something major in your life, and until you’re able to question yourself to find it, nothing will change.

Being Able to Entertain a Thought Without Accepting It

You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I) → How to Be a Little Less Certain of Yourself | S.137

Aristotle wrote: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” Being able to look at and evaluate different values without necessarily adopting them is perhaps the central skill required in changing one’s own life in a meaningful way.

Achievable Goals Are Not Meaningful

You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I) → The Failure/Success Paradox | S.146

Goals, as they are conventionally defined - graduate from college, buy a lake house, lose fifteen pounds - are limited in the amount of happiness they can produce in our lives. They may be helpful when pursuing quick, short-term benefits, but as guides for the overall trajectory of our life, they suck.

Pain Is Part of the Process

You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I) → Pain Is Part of the Process | S.148

Our most radical changes in perspective often happen at the tail end of our worst moments. It’s only when we feel intense pain that we’re willing to look at our values and question why they seem to be failing us. We need some sort of existential crisis to take an objective look at how we’ve been deriving meaning in our life, and then consider changing course.

Action Causes Motivation

You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I) → The “Do Something” Principle | S.152

Action isn't just the effect of motivation; it's also the cause of it. Most of us commit to action only if we feel a certain level of motivation. And we feel motivation only when we feel enough emotional inspiration. If you want to accomplish something but don't feel motivated or inspired, then you assume you're just screwed. There's nothing you can do about it. It's not until a major emotional life event occurs that you can generate enough motivation to actually get off the couch and so something.

The thing about motivation is that it's an endless loop: Inspiration -> Motivation -> Action -> Inspiration -> Motivation -> Action -> Etc.

Your actions create further emotaional reactions and inspirations and move on to motivate your future actions. If you lack the motivation to make an imporant change in your life, do something - anythin really - and harness the reation to that action as a way to begin motivating yourself.

If we follow the "do something" principle, failure feels unimportant. When the standard of success becomes merely acting - when any result is regarded as progress and importantm when inspiration is seen as a reward rather than a prerequisite - we propel ourselves ahead. We feel free to fail, and that failure moves us forward.

You can become your own source of inspiration. You can become your own source of motivation. Action is always within reach. And with simply doing something as your only metric for success - well, then even failure pushes you forward.

The Importance of Rejection

The Importance of Saying No | S.160

Freedom grants the opportunity for greater meaning, but by itself there is nothing necessarily meaningful about it. Ultimately, the only way to archive meaning and a sense of importance in one’s life is through a rejection of alternatives, a narrowing of freedom, a choice of commitment to one place, one belief, one person.

Generating Meaning Through Rejection

The Importance of Saying No → Rejection Makes Your Life Better | S.165

The point is this: we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something. And to value something, we must reject what is not that something. To value X, we must reject non-X. That rejection is an inherent and necessary part of maintaining our values, and therefore our identity. We are defined by what we choose to reject. And if we reject nothing, we essentially have no identity at all.

Healthy and Unhealthy Forms of Love

The Importance of Saying No → Boundaries | S.168ff.

The truth is, there are healthy forms of love and unhealthy forms of love. Unhealthy love is based on two people trying to escape their problems through their emotions for each other - in other words, they're using each other as an escape. Healthy love is based on two people acknowledging and addressing their own problems with each other's support.

The difference between a healthy and unhealthy relationship comes down to two things 1. how well each person in the relationship accepts responsibility and, 2. the willingness of each person to both reject and be rejected by their partner.

Anywhere there is an unhealthy or toxic relationship, there will be a poor and porous sense of responsibility on both sides, and there will be an inability to give and/or receivece rejection. Wherever there is a healthy and loving relationship, there will be clear boundaries between the two people and their values, and there will be an open avenue of giving and receiving rejection when necessary.

By "boundaries" I mean the delineation between two people's responsibilities for their own problems. People in a healthy relationship with strong boundaries will take responsibility for their own values and problems and not take responsibility for their partner's values and problems. People in a toxic relationship with poor or no boundaries will regularly avoid responsibility for their own problems and/or take responsibility for their partner's problems.

In general, entitled people fall into one of two traps in their relationships. Either they expect other people to take responsibility for their problems or they take on too much resposibility for other people's problems. Entitled people adopt these strategies in their relationships, as with everything, to help avoid accepting responsibility for their own problems. As a result, their relationships are fragile and fake, products of avoiding inner pain rather than embracing a genuine appreciation and adoration of their partner.

If you make a sacrafice for someone you care about, it needs to be because you want to, not because you feel obligated or because you fear the consequences of not doing so. If your partner is going to make a sacrafice for you, it needs to be because he or she genuinely wants to, not because you've manipulated the sacrifice through anger or guilt. Acts of love are valid only if they are performed without conditions or expectations.

It can be difficult for people to recognize the difference between doing something out of obligation and doing it voluntarily. So here's a litmus test: ask yourself, "If I refused, how would the relationship change?" Similarly, ask, "If my partner refused something I wanted, how would the relationship change?"

People with strong boundaries understand that it's unreasonable to expect two people to accommodate each other 100 percent and fulfill every need the other person has. People with strong boundaries understand that they may hurt someone's feelings sometimes, but ultimately they can't determine how other people feel. People with strong boundaries understand that a healthy relationship is not about controlling each other's emotions, but rather about each partner supporting each other in their own individual growth and in solving their own problems.

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.

Opportunity Overload

The Importance of Saying No → Freedom Through Commitment | S.180

But more is not always better. In fact, the opposite is true. We are actually often happier with less. When we’re overloaded with opportunities and options, we suffer from what psychologists refer to as the paradox of choice. Basically, the more options we’re given, the less satisfied we become with whatever we choose, because we’re aware of all the other options we’re potentially forfeiting.

Finding Opportunity Through Rejection

The Importance of Saying No → Freedom Through Commitment | S.182

And what I’ve discovered is something entirely counterintuitive: that there is freedom and liberation in commitment. I’ve found an increased opportunity and upside in rejection alternatives and distractions in favor of what I’ve chosen to let truly matter to me.

The Importance of Commitment

The Importance of Saying No → Freedom Through Commitment | S.182f.

Commitment gives you freedom because you’re no longer distracted by the unimportant and frivolous. Commitment gives you freedom because it hones your attention and focus, directing them toward what is most efficient at making you healthy and happy. Commitment makes decision-making easier and removes any fear of missing out; knowing that what you already have is good enough, why would you ever stress about chasing more, more, more again? Commitment allows you to focus intently on a few highly important goals and achieve a greater degree of success than you otherwise would. In this way, the rejection of alternatives liberates us - rejection of what does not align with our most important values, with our chosen metrics, rejection of the constant pursuit of breath without depth. Yes, breadth of experience is likely necessary and desirable when you’re young - after all, you have to go out there and discover what seems worth investing yourself in. But depth is where the gold is buried. And you have to stay committed to something and go deep to dig it up. That’s true in relationships, in a career, in building a great lifestyle - in everything.

Book Recommendation

S.190f.

Book recommendation: The Denial of Death

How to Not Fear Death

… And Then You Die → The Sunny Side of Death | S.198

Mark Twain said: “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time”.

Being Comfortable With Death

… And Then You Die → The Sunny Side of Death | S.200

The only way to be comfortable with death is to understand and see yourself as something bigger than yourself; to choose values that stretch beyond serving yourself, that are simple, immediate and controllable and tolerant of the chaotic world around you. This is the basic root of all happiness.