The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Published in 2016, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck offers a realist perspective on how to go about the challenging world we live in. Written by Mark Manson, a self-help author and blogger earning New York Times Best Sellers on his books.
Over the summer I was looking for books to get into. Mainly because I was feeling stuck in the pandemic and didn’t know what to do next in my life. I heard about the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and knew it had rave reviews. I wanted to find out for myself so I purchased it and oh boy was I faced with a lot of personal questions and realities I haven’t picked apart in a while.
In this article, I’ll be sharing some of my favorite quotes and chapters that resonated the most with my life currently. I won’t be writing about every chapter, but I’ll try to go in-depth with the ones I do cover.
The book offers nine chapters:
- Chapter 1: Don’t Try
- Chapter 2: Happiness Is a Problem
- Chapter 3: You Are Not Special
- Chapter 4: The Value of Suffering
- Chapter 5: You Are Always Choosing
- Chapter 6: You’re Wrong About Everything
- Chapter 7: Failure Is The Way Forward
- Chapter 8: The Importance of Saying No
- Chapter 9: …. And Then You Die
Don’t Try
Right away in chapter one, I’m hit with quotes that are straightforward and state exactly what something is at face value:
“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.”
Practicing self-acceptance and seeking happiness is simple at face value but gets muddled by our own intrusive thoughts as well as life stressors that we can’t shake. The quote above stopped me as I was just getting started with reading. It made me think of all the times I tried to convince myself I was happy through distraction, manifestation, journaling, or some shit. Such a simple concept gets so complicated the more we overthink it. If I’m happy I don’t need to say it, I just am.
Chapter one heavily introduces us to our own self-sabotaging behavior with the Feedback Loop and how we become victims of our own success. With an unlimited source of opportunities shared with us through the internet, it can become overwhelming. Allowing ourselves to spiral in understanding how small we are in the grand scheme of things.
Manson references Allan Watt’s Backwards Law stating “…the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces that you lack it in the first place.” The more we want something and see the potential in it, the easier it is to become unsatisfied when we realize how much we don’t have versus what’s in front of us at face value.
I often find myself in situations where I’m constantly thinking about the future and what I want to achieve. Although this is normal healthy behavior, it sometimes spirals into what I need to do, to what I need to develop personally and professionally, which then leads to what I don’t have.
I then find myself feeling inadequate because of how many options I have and feel like I’ll never catch up to where I “need to be.” I forget to appreciate my traits that are already solid and to acknowledge my accomplishments and times I’ve felt proud. I can’t just wish away my life because that serves no purpose at all. Without being comfortable with the negative, there is no positive.
You Are Not Special
This chapter in particular opened a whole can of worms for me. At the beginning of the chapter, Manson recalls knowing someone with a hypothetical name, Jimmy. He goes on to say Jimmy is someone who always talks about their own ventures and spews positivity always. He gives off the impression that he’s accomplished far more than he is. In reality, Jimmy doesn’t work that much. He mooches off his parents, girlfriends, relatives, etc.
Jimmy’s constant self-praise for doing the bare minimum led him to a delusional idea that he was much more successful than he was. “… teaching people to believe they’re exceptional and to feel good about themselves no matter what doesn’t lead to a population full of Bill Gateses and Martin Luther Kings. It leads to a population full of Jimmys.” Focusing on the negative aspects of who you are in addition to the positives is necessary to truly know your own self-worth and success. If we keep feeding ourselves false positives all the time we’ll feel as if we deserve good things without putting any time or real effort into earning that praise and recognition.
“Often, it’s this realization — that you and your problems are actually not privileged in their severity or pain — that is the first and most important step towards solving them.” Our own growing entitlement can lead us to overexaggerate our issues to believe we’re the only ones going through something when that’s usually not the case. This isn’t minimizing anyone’s pain or problem, it’s just bringing to light the fact that we aren’t alone in our issues.
This chapter also delves into the concept of exposure to the extraordinary. All over the news and on social media we are saturated with stories of the exceptional. The problem is that the vast majority of life is unextraordinary and yet we are conditioned to believe exceptionalism is the only right of passage in what society deems as worthy.
One of the quotes from this section that resonated with me was “A lot of people are afraid to accept mediocrity because they believe that if they accept it, they’ll never achieve anything, never improve and that their life won’t matter.” When you are so afraid of not achieving anything less than extraordinary, you are immediately dismissing most of the human population. Great people become great because they realize they’re not. In other words, people who become notable and great aren’t the ones running around saying they’re great. It’s the people who realize they have a lot of improvement to do that slowly work towards greatness.
Understanding how to reject the idea that you HAVE to become something amazing and exceptional to the point of perfection can lift a huge weight off of you. “… the knowledge and acceptance of your own mundane existence will actually free you to accomplish what you truly wish to accomplish, without judgment or lofty expectations.”
This chapter isn’t telling you that you suck and you’ll never be anything. Manson is saying if you are putting this constant pressure on yourself from square one, and telling yourself that you are nothing until you are exceptional, will only pile on the pressure. It’s only when you accept your life at face value and appreciate the mundane when things will feel more attainable. When that unnecessary pressure is lifted, we’re able to see clearer and actually accomplish what we want.
You Are Always Choosing
I’m writing this into existence: I am in charge of my feelings and how I handle them.
“Many people may be to blame for your unhappiness, but nobody is ever responsible for your unhappiness but you. This is because you always get to choose how you see things, how you react to things, how you value things. You always get to measure the metric by which to measure your experiences.”
It would be a lie if I said I’ve never put blame on people or my environment relating to my unhappiness. It’s inherently easier to take responsibility for happiness and success, rather than taking responsibility for our problems. It’s an easy defense mechanism to try to blame our unhappiness on external factors.
The cards that we are dealt in life may not make sense sometimes, but it’s what we do with those cards that can change the outcome. I have the tendency to shut down when bad things happen in my life and I recognize and acknowledge that it’s not healthy to do that. It’s something I’ve been doing since I was little and it’s a pattern I’m actively working on and challenging every day. When I’m dealt cards that are negative and I can’t understand why I have them, it can be hard to make the right decisions. As I get older, I know I have to practice putting those cards in the right place to not sabotage myself.
After reading this section, I wrote down my metaphorical cards. Acknowledging bad events and experiences we go through is important to allow ourselves to grow where we need to. Not that writing anything down will fix everything right away, but taking the time to note what those negative cards are is the first step.
You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I)
For many, understanding the world means searching for the right answer. In this book, that theory is called into question. “We shouldn’t seek to find the ultimate “right” answer for ourselves, 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.”
This book calls into question why we are constantly searching for the right answer or correct thing. Think about how many situations you’ve been in before where you’re searching for the right answer. Whether that be something small and mundane or large and complicated.
For me, something small could be searching for the right recipe for cookies and something large is finding the right job or place to live. Both of them caused me to research a lot but it’s things like job searching or thinking about where you want to live in the future that can make you search so long for the right answer that you start running in circles. “Many people become so obsessed with being “right” about their life that they never end up actually living it.”
The way my brain works is that I’m always searching for answers when anything comes up in my life. That everything has a specific meaning, and therefore I can be comfortable in my own certainty. However, as I get older I realize that the way I think doesn’t always translate to the event or thing happening. I’ll admit that I don’t like to be wrong. It’s one of my downfalls, but without being wrong means I’ll never question my own certainties of my life or the world around me.
The comfort I need to have with being wrong and uncertain is something that’ll be a constant development. Sometimes, I think we’re conditioned at a young age to feel like being wrong or having uncertainty is something you should avoid as much as you can. Only when we get older and realize that the consequences of being wrong or uncertain are actually the feelings we need to experience a lot to find personal growth.
Overall
This book has been one of my favorite reads so far. I usually don’t read for pleasure, but even after finishing this book, I find myself coming back to it to ask myself the same questions. Advice books can be cheesy or a little over the top. If you want a book that’ll help you get clarity, challenge your thoughts, ask tough questions, and make you re-evaluate your thinking, you should read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.
I know I didn’t cover every chapter but maybe I’ll make a part 2 to this post with my thoughts on some of the other chapters. There’s a lot of really good quotes and questions to unpack in the book so if you like this, let me know and maybe I’ll come up with another post!
If you’re interested in purchasing the book follow this link