The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Title: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
Genre: Self Help, Self Improvement, Philosophy, Mindset, Personal Development, Self Mastery
Author: Mark Manson
ISBN (for your local library): 978-0062641540
Date Read: June 2, 2021 (Approximately)
Likelihood to Recommend: 5/5
To Purchase For Yourself: Amazon - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
The Book In Three Sentences: A book designed to help one figure out what to give a f*ck about (meaning what to care for/invest time and energy in) in life by giving them the tools to better discover where to NOT place their f*cks. A self-help text that urges you to confront and actively solve the problems in your life rather than numbing yourself from them or avoiding them. A harsh reminder that we ultimately are wholly responsible for how we choose to live our lives, so we must train ourselves to choose more consciously and wisely.
Impressions: While uncomfortable at times, it only made me squirm because I could detect my unhealthy behavioral patterns. Though the language could be too crass or biting for some, the direct verbiage and lighthearted takes on heavy subjects and deep psycho-emotional problem points alleviate some of the resistance in discussing or dissecting them. A worthwhile read and full of great insights I plan on integrating into my personal life and philosophy.
How I Discovered It: A recommended video on YouTube stemming from Mark Manson himself. Likely put into my algorithm by way of my interest in self-help and personal development books.
Who Should Read It?: People who feel victimized or otherwise powerless in their lives. People who believe they are consummate failures and f*ck-ups. People who cannot seem to achieve joy or happiness in their lives (don't expect fluffy or fuzzy solutions to these problems... but instead, brutal truths to help you better endure and transform said feelings).
How the Book Changed Me: This book has forced me to come to terms with my own ego and hubris and has helped me to start shaving some bits off of the shell of false self I've built up over the years. In addition, it has given me the tools to begin stripping away the unrealistic and unhealthy ideas I've had about myself and my place in the world/current life trajectory and replace them with more sustainable ones. As a result, I am now more prepared to rebuild and realize myself in a more constructive and empowering (albeit less self-aggrandizing) way.
Top 3 Quotes or Ideas:
Life is only as worthwhile as the Values we hold ourselves to and the Metrics we use to measure our adherence to said Values. Picking societally poisoned or delusional Values that are beyond our control (fame, fortune, etc.) will only cause us heartache and existential dread in our future. Instead, we must choose more holistic and internally focused Values, things we can control, to better shape and improve our way of thinking about ourselves and our lives.
The Fault/Responsibility Fallacy. We are Responsible for everything in our lives. Even if our trials and tribulations aren't necessarily instigated by our own actions or may even be beyond our control, this only means the situation was not our Fault. How we choose to deal with our issues and contextualize them throughout our lifetimes is still 100% our Responsibility. We have no one to blame but ourselves for any unfavorable reactions to the circumstances in our lives. This means we cannot alleviate the burden of Responsibility by playing the victim or assuming fate will intercede on our behalf. It is up to us.
Not everything in our lives is worth caring about. By narrowing down and eliminating the unnecessary choices, stressors, and complications that one might feel otherwise entitled to or affected by, we can find deeper meaning, truth, and worth in the select few things we DO allow to take up space in our lives. Humans are at their best and evolve the most when they are solving problems and successfully navigating crises. Still, these should ideally be pains that we have chosen for ourselves because they have significance to us. Otherwise, wrestling with minor issues or troubling situations beneath our values does nothing to improve our lives – instead, it only mires us in more profound confusion and misery.
Full Summary Continued Below
Full Summary & Notes:
The opening section of this book is titled "Don't Try." Paraphrasing much of the wisdom in these initial pages essentially boils down to this: it is more detrimental to chase happiness or meaning than simply living your life with no far-reaching, preconceived notions of what will bring you joy or fulfillment. Pursuing happiness inevitably forces us to focus on what we don't have that we believe (often wrongly) will improve our lives, making the lack of those things more evident. This makes us feel poorly about ourselves and second guess our direction, which causes us to search more desperately for happiness or fulfillment... and thus, this painful cycle continues unendingly. Mark describes this as "The Feedback Loop From Hell," a sick trick of the mind which keeps us trapped by our own anxieties and fears by us paradoxically lasering in on our ideas of happiness.
This idea of avoiding the Feedback Loop by Not Trying is the first thematic hook we have to the book's title. By "not giving a f*ck" about the things that don't matter in our lives (the things we falsely believe will deliver us from the pain of existence), we can essentially bypass the Feedback Loop from Hell and make real progress. Progress, by the way, which is frequently not perceivable but nonetheless present. Next, Mark talks about another phenomenon he calls "The Backwards Law."
In theory, it talks about the strange occurrence that happens to people wherein the moment they stop caring or forget about something, the easier that thing is to be achieved or delivered to them. He hypothesizes that because of this pattern, we should instead try to hone in on and better define the problem points in our lives so that our graces and blessings maneuver their way to us under the Backwards Law. As an added bonus, spending time and energy on untangling our issues teaches us valuable life lessons... so it sort of ends up being a net win in the future.
Many pages of this book are dedicated to defining and leaning into our uncomfortableness and biggest hurts. Mark argues that humans are essentially at their best when they solve problems and achieve more personal growth and spiritual evolution after surviving more acute catastrophes. However, avoiding pain at all costs and only investing in our own happiness leads to a particular weakness of the self... a prevailing illusion of entitlement that one should always have a right to be happy and content, which of course, when shattered, absolutely wrecks us. From here, we learn that Not Giving a F**k isn't about not caring about anything... after all, we are paying attention to our problems, aren't we? Instead, Not Giving a F**k is about releasing attachment to the things that do not serve us, the things that are not worth our F**ks, and instead; finding the few critical things in our lives that ARE worth giving a F**k about, and focusing our intent there, instead.
The following section deals with our Value Systems and why some are inherently superior or inferior to others. As a general rule, Values fall into two category classes; "Good" and "Bad."
Good Values:
Reality-Based
Socially Constructive
Immediate and Controllable
Examples: Honesty, Innovation, Vulnerability, Self-Respect, Humility, Creativity
Bad Values:
Superstitious
Socially Destructive
Not Immediate or Controllable
Examples: Dominance of Others, Indiscriminate F*cking, Being Rich, Being Popular
Good values are internal; all they require is an inner shift of intention and focus. On the other hand, Bad Values need validation from outside forces you cannot predict nor command.
Values, in essence, are about prioritization. What things in your life do you put ahead of everything else; that you allow to influence your everyday thinking and decision-making?
By having Bad Values, we are essentially giving f*cks about the things that do not matter, that actually make our lives worse. On the other hand, choosing Good Values means we're giving F*cks about things that benefit us, that improve our state of mind and being.
Mark argues this is essentially what "self-improvement" is: prioritizing better values and thus, choosing better things to give a F*ck about. And so when those things pose us problems, at the very least, they are the problems we CHOSE to have, and once they are solved, they will allow us to live more aligned and actionable lives.
The book is then divided into 5 counterintuitive methods (citing his "Backwards Law") of examining and confronting pain and problems rather than avoiding or diffusing them. In so doing, he claims the growth and lessons from facing and solving the issues we chose to give F*ck about will be our path to better living.
The Tools are as follows:
Radical Responsibility
Uncertainty
Failure
Rejection
Contemplation of Mortality
Mark is big on the aspect of choice in our lives. One example of this is whether or not a particular problem in your life has been thrust upon you. Two people can have the same problem in their lives, like say, having to clean up a yard after a terrible storm. The person who chooses this problem willingly will feel it as constructive and empowering. The person who was forced into this task will feel stressed and powerless.
We are more at ease with ourselves and our lives when we feel we have a sense of control. If you have a problem you cannot solve, you will be suitably frustrated with it.
Regardless of what problems we have and whether or not we signed up for them, Mark says one thing with absolute certainty: We Are Always Choosing. He means that we might not always have direct control over our circumstances, but we always have direct control over interpreting and responding to them individually.
Whether we like it or not, or realize it or not, our experience of any given thing is a product of our own thinking and doing. Therefore, even choosing not to react or engage with a situation in our lives is in and of itself a choice.
This is why it's technically impossible not to give a f*ck about anything because even then, you're giving a f*ck about something (which is, ironically enough, "not giving a f*ck"). So our job then is to make the best possible choices concerning our problems, the problems we have willed into our lives with the f*cks we've chosen to give based upon our (hopefully) good and strong values.
This brings us to the concept of Radical Responsibility. As people, we tend to avoid taking responsibility for the problems in our lives because we do not wish to believe that we are at fault for them. By alleviating ourselves of this guilt or burden, we feel either righteously validated in our pain or can operate in blissful ignorance of our role in our reconstructive process.
While it is true that sometimes we are not at Fault for the complicated things that have arisen in our lives, we are always Responsible for how we proceed with untangling these issues, our reactions to them, and how move forward in spite of them. This ultimately brings us back to the point of You Are Always Choosing. Mark explains the difference between Fault and Responsibility as such; Fault is past tense, born of choices or situations that have already taken place. Responsibility is present tense, the things we currently are doing and deciding every day.
The idea of Radical Responsibility is the act of actively, consciously choosing to take full responsibility for 100% of what transpires in our lives, whether or not we believe we are at Fault for it or not. It is a practice of personal empowerment, of not relinquishing the blame of your negative experience on some outside person or force. While other people or predicaments might cause your unhappiness, nobody is responsible for how you feel and heal but you. You always have a choice in how you experience your life, your emotional spectrum, and current circumstances. Offsetting your feelings onto someone or something else is a roadblock to your own self-improvement, for you shed the opportunity to internalize the lessons gained from your setbacks.
No matter what set of disadvantages or misfortunes a person acquires in their lifetime, ultimately, it's the people who consistently make the best choices with what they're given who end up successful and happy. And they cannot make decisions centered around those problems if they do not fully accept responsibility for them in the first place.
Moving away from the Responsibility section, we start treading the waters of Uncertainty. One hard and fast lesson we all learn multiple times throughout our lives is that, on average, we're wrong about things. Often, we're more routinely incorrect than we are correct. Luckily, growth is an iterative process. When we learn a new piece of information that conflicts with our preconceived ideas about ourselves, our world, etc... we don't simply go from "wrong" to "right." Instead, we go from being "wrong" to "a little less wrong."
And if we keep that momentum going, of little by little becoming less and less wrong about things, we, in fact, become more and more right. In this way, we are always approaching a more truthful and well-informed version of ourselves. But none of this would be possible if we did not operate on some level of Uncertainty first. If we assumed all of our assumptions and inferences were on the money from the get-go, we’d have no reason to question them.
It's important to note here that while we are constantly moving toward truth, there is no such thing as absolute or certain truth. There is no ultimate dogma or ideology. Everyone's life experience and, therefore, interpretation of that experience, is different and thus, we will all have overlapping and conflicting concepts of "correctness." There is no purpose in questing to be always right. You will inevitably be wrong. We all will. In fact, humans are notoriously hardwired for training themselves to invent false patterns and seek meanings in even arbitrary things. Tirelessly working to achieve utter truth from this already flawed platform prevents you from living your life more authentically, and holds you back from being open-minded enough to recognize and capitalize on learning opportunities.
Moreover, there are certain personal truths we as humans have a tendency to hold and cement into ourselves... ideas of our worthiness, attractiveness, intelligence, etc. It is essential to be flexible in your thoughts and question these steadfast beliefs, especially negative ones built to respond to prior traumatic experiences. Holding onto beliefs, even hurtful ones, can feel comforting and safe because they become cornerstones of our self-perception. Such adamant adherence, however, can hamstring our growth and ability to see possibilities outside our own understanding of events and personhood.
Paradoxically, seeking and leaning into Doubt, as opposed to Truth, allows us to better understand ourselves and the world around us. Uncertainty is the liberating force that enables us to shed unyielding judgments of not only ourselves and the familiar but to others and the unfamiliar. We cannot learn anything without first lacking knowledge of it. The more comfortable we are in admitting that we are wrong or lack understanding, the better we can bridge the gap to proper alignment and better understanding. To accept our fallibility is to accept our ability to improve upon ourselves.
Now, we move on to Failure. Which, as Mark plainly states toward the beginning section of this chapter, is a relative concept. We are all quick to label ourselves "Failures" in various facets of our lives... money, relationships, creative endeavors, etc... without really examining the metrics by which we are grading ourselves. Often, we feel "less than" compared to those around us (especially in our culture of overexposure and social media). Our peers, being a pool of other people feeling just as insecure to the point of broadcasting the highlight reels of their lives to stave off their own shame and fear, are a pretty flawed metric to gauge ourselves against, to begin with. This brings us back to refining our value systems; are the values we use to attribute success and failure based on a Bad (external, uncontrollable) Value or a Good One (internal, controllable)?
Remember that pain is part of our process. If someone has become exceptionally talented or successful at something, more often than not (and even if they are pretty naturally gifted)… they did not achieve that level of expertise and acclaim without suffering some setbacks along the way. Moreover, some of our proudest and most formative moments are experienced when overcoming great adversity, obstacles, or challenges. Of course, this kind of goal-conquering does not happen without scraped knees and bruised shins. But, on the other hand, repeated failures make you stronger, more grounded, more able to comprehend what to change and alter to fix it on the next attempt. In other words, pain, failure, and the emotions those sensations cause like anxiety and sadness are not always undesirable or unhelpful mental states; they are our testing grounds and benchmarks for psychological resilience and expansion.
The important thing here is that you should ideally fail at problems you've CHOSEN in your life, from issues that arise because of values that you actually SHOULD give a f*ck about. Failing at anything else and feeling bad about it is not only an unwanted and unnecessary detractor and distraction... but doesn't serve the purpose of your betterment in the long run of life.
When confronted with how to improve upon or reverse your failures, it is easy to enter paralysis by analysis. Unsure of the best way to move forward, we instead decide (through inaction) to not move at all. We believe that with enough forethought, planning, and study, Inspiration will strike and free us from the shackles of our ineptitude.
The truth is, Inspiration does not inspire Action. It is actually the inverse. Only by doing something, by wrapping our hands around our issues and beginning to tinker and toy away at them, are we granted insight on how to dismantle them. Mark calls this the "Do Something" Principle... if you're not sure what to do, just do something, ANYTHING, and that alone will help you break through your procrastination and start gathering valuable data. Data that you can then turn into new methods of performing more precise and well-informed actions, thus, obtain better results... turning Action and Inspiration into more of a continual cycle than a binary process.
And now that we've talked about doing something let's talk about doing nothing. More precisely, let's talk about "Saying No."
In our current exorbitant consumer culture, we are conditioned to believe more is better. More is best. More is more. Having more options, selections, variety, and choice, we believe, is what grants us our freedom. Our autonomy. Our power of the individual experience.
But, Mark argues that while all these tantalizing alternatives and freedoms of choice certainly supply us with the means to a more prosperous, more realized life... freedom, in a vacuum, by itself, means next to Nothing. If you appreciate "Choice" on the worth of choice alone, if all that is sacred to you is having a plethora of options at your fingertips... then essentially, everything and anything in your life is valued at the exact same price. If you care about everything in equal measure, you effectively care about no one thing more than the rest. Having access to "Everything," in essence, means Nothing.
It is only by saying "No," by narrowing our field of options, by making a choice to commit to one thing over another, to file through the process of Rejection, that we begin to truly understand the value of the people, places, and things in our lives. It is how we arrive at meaning; it is how we know what is and is not important. It is how we learn what to give a f*ck about.
If we reject Nothing, then we stand for Nothing. If Nothing is more desirable than anything else, then what purpose do alternatives serve? Appreciation of any one given thing is only achieved by confining yourself to it and focusing upon it. There are levels of substance and significance that a person only reaches in life when they've genuinely invested time and energy... decades of it, even... in a single craft, career, relationship, etc. Such commitment is a deep, profound understanding that cannot be fathomed by those who have only scratched the surface of a million passing fancies... and it cannot be achieved without rejecting alternatives.
Through commitment, you get more significant returns on your investment rather than diminishing returns on a wide breadth of hollow, shallow experience.
When we select the values to live our lives by, we also choose what values to NOT live our lives by. We are paring down the options. This is necessary to get to the core of what matters to us. What matters to us becomes fundamental to the construction of our ideologies, our identities. If everything matters equally to us, then we essentially have no value system. We become rudderless. We become directionless. We fail to develop an identity.
In the end, commitment becomes the higher road to freedom in that you become unburdened by the unimportant and frivolous. It hones you in with laser focus on the things you believe are essential and serves your betterment. It improves your decision-making and liberates you from the fear of missing out... because you know that what you have, what you've chosen for yourself, is enough. And when what you have is enough, what need do you have of "More" for the sake of "More"? Why torture yourself with that endless chase ever again?
Speaking of endless chases, let's discuss "Life" for a moment. Or, more specifically... one particular aspect of life; "Death."
Here we come to the final stretch of the book. Quite fittingly, it centers around the Contemplation of Our Own Mortality and how learning to accept this inevitably helps us act boldly despite it.
This chapter begins with a heartfelt recounting of a tragic loss in Mark's life. I would do it a disservice to try and truncate it here, but needless to say, experiencing the death of someone so close to him forced Mark to better realize his own path in life and what was really important to him. It made him come to grips with the fact that we all will face an utter end one day... and the only thing that matters after an awakening like that is what you choose to do with the time you have left.
After such a tragedy, it is normal for us to contemplate life's smallness and relative insignificance in the grand cosmic scheme of things. While our tiny and inconsequential nature may feel like a dismal and daunting proposition at first... in another sense, it can be quite freeing. After all, if the length of our lives means Nothing to the Universe at large and there is no point in doing anything at all... then, honestly, there is also no reason to NOT do anything.
Standing before the Grim Reaper and the black hollows of space and time, there is no reason to succumb to one's guilt, fear, or shame. It's all irrelevant, anyway. And spending so much of our lives avoiding things that make us feel that way actually denies us chances at exploring our desires and dreams to their most full degree. The acceptance of our own death can serve as a catalyst for the shedding of our inhibitions. Death, in a way, becomes the barometer by which all of our mortal meaning is measured.
The meaning inherent to our lives brings us back to our value systems. Confronted with envisioning our final moments, how do we want to be remembered? What do we want to be remembered for? Will this world be a better place when you've passed on? What beneficial impact will you have made? What is our influence? Our mark? From this vantage point, we can release vapid, fragile, and harmful values in favor of ones that serve the greater good.
Because arguably, that is the only thing that matters in the end. True purpose and fulfillment in life stem from the feeling of contributing to something larger than yourself, from stripping away the entitlement of our own selfishness and self-importance, from relinquishing the idea that we are the center of our Universe.
If this all sounds overwhelming to you... then relish in the fact that you are not alone. We all are aware (some of us more acutely than others) that we will make our last curtain call one day. As a result, some of us might feel pressured to try and create something more powerful than ourselves to give to the world, something to outlast our ever-ticking mortal clock, a gift to the collective that is greater than the individual human spirit.
But the truth is, you already are a powerful and great gift. By merely pushing on every day, existing, living, upholding virtuous values until your last breath... you have already proven yourself to be a worthwhile member of the human experience. As long as you choose to keep giving a f*ck... about what is essential, what is good, what uplifts and empowers the people around you... then you will have succeeded in this game that we call life. And we will all be better for your efforts.