The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Summary

• The key to a good life is not giving a F*ck about more; it’s giving a F*ck about less, giving a F*ck about only what is true and immediate and important.
• The more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become.
• Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires.
• Most of us struggle throughout our lives by giving too many F*cks in situations where F*cks do not deserve to be given.

Do something now, even if it’s really small, and let good actions cascade as a result.

This self help guide teaches us that the key to being happier is to stop trying to be positive all the time and instead to become better at handling adversity.

FUCK POSITIVITY!

Sometimes things are fucked up and we have to accept it.

This book will correct your delusional expectations of yourself and the world. Its like a guide to suffering better, more meaningfully with compassion and humility.

I recommend it to anybody stuck in the feedback loop from hell, which is the psychological epidemic making many of us overly stressed, overly neurotic and overly self loathing.

Most of us struggle through life giving way too many fucks in situations where fucks dont deserve to be given.

Your going to die some day. In the short time you have here, if you go round giving a fuck about everything and everyone, you are going to get fucked.

Learn to prioritise and pick and choose what is fuckworthy to you based on finely honed personal values.

Its part of our biology to give a fuck but when you give too many fucks you become entitled to be comfortable and happy all the time, as if everything is supposed to be exactly the fucking way you want. This is a sickness.

Many of our modern values (success, positivity, greatness etc) can actually make us more insecure & miserable. The way to be happy and fulfilled, Manson says, is to not give a f*ck about everything we’re told to care about. 

Instead, get clear on what truly matters, focus your choices on those few priorities, and accept that in spite of that, you’ll still make stupid mistakes and suffer occasionally.

He takes on the traditional self-help books, claiming that they reinforce the idea within you that you are not good at something, which leads to a “feedback loop from hell”.

Here’s a paradox: the more you pursue the positives, the more negative you’ll feel. Those who desperately want to be rich, worthy or happy will only end up feeling poorer, more unworthy or unhappy. On the other hand, the more you accept the negatives in your life, the better you’ll feel.

We’re surrounded by so many messages about being positive that we tend to feel bad for feeling bad. Manson calls this the “feedback loop from hell”. A false positive desire turns into a negative thought or emotion. This thought or emotion then triggers a chain reaction of other negative thoughts and emotions.

To break the cycle of negativity:

1. ACCEPTANCE: The pain of honest confrontation is what generates the greatest trust and respect in your relationships. Mark invites us to think of our self-awareness as an onion. And to imagine our rational self as a disappointment panda.
2. ACTION: Action creates the motivation, not the other way around. To get out of a rut, doing something, no matter how small is the way fwd. Mark refers to this as the Do Something Principle. 

Humans are the only animals that can conceptualize and think about themselves in an abstract manner. Happiness comes from caring about something greater than yourself.

There are two selves - the physical, and the conceptual. We try to keep our conceptual self alive past the death of our physical self - “immortality projects”, as all the meaning in our life is shaped by our innate desire to never truly die.

“The desire for a more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.” says Mark Manson.

This is referred to as “the backwards law” by Alan Watts. One must be comfortable with being different, not being indifferent. It’s important not to put too much thought and care into adversity in the face of your own goals.

The hedonic treadmill - our innate tendency to revert to default levels of happiness despite temporary spikes in happiness - prevents us from being in a constant state of euphoria; in short, we are wired to be dissatisfied. In fact, without pain, we wouldn’t know what joy is, and without sadness, we wouldn’t know what happiness is.

We should pick problems that we enjoy solving to reach true happiness; once we know what we are willing to struggle for and what pains we want in our lives, we will be much more motivated to succeed. Our struggles determine our successes.

Happiness doesn’t appear out of nowhere. Real happiness sprouts from a chain of struggles and feels more meaningful when worked hard for. So the more interesting question you can ask yourself is, “What are you willing to struggle for?”, “What pain can you sustain in your life?”

Choose one and set your Values and Metrics wisely. Core values we believe or set to ourselves is what defines us on how we perceive what makes us feel good, what is our metrics to say that we are successful with something. Not reaching that metric makes us feel like a failure.

Everyone of us struggles with problems in life. The difference is just what kind of problems. And what do you obtain if you solve them.

Suffering is part of life. But if you suffer due to problems that will make you achieve a goal you care about, the suffering is worth it. If you suffer for shitty values and unimportant problems you waste your significant life-time

We orientate our life according to our values. And we set our goals according to them.

Bad values make you dependent from external factors. Good values are achieved internally

Everybody does mistakes. But in the presence you can take responsibility for them. Fault happend in the past. Focus on the present.

Whatever happend in the past stays in the past. Take responsability for the things that happens in the past, but don't focus on that. Focus on the actions you take today and be responsible for them. All of them.

• Life isn’t meant to go your way all the time, and that’s okay. It’s okay for life to suck sometimes because that’s part of life.

• The desire for more positive experience is a negative experience and the acceptance of negative experience is itself a positive experience. 
• The more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place.

Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a f*ck about what’s truly f*ck-worthy.

A counterintuitive approach to living a good life by focusing on what truly matters.

Accept that life is inherently unpredictable, and find freedom in embracing the unkown rather than seeking absolute certainty.

Identify your core values and prioritize what truly matters to you, aligning your actions and choices accordingly.

• Being open with one's insecurities paradoxically makes one more confident and charismatic around.
• Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.

Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a fuck about what’s truly fuckworthy.

Just because something feels good doesn’t mean it is good. Just because something feels bad doesn’t mean it is bad. Emotions are merely signposts, suggestions that our neurobiology gives us, not commandments. Therefore, we shouldn’t always trust our own emotions. In fact, I believe we should make a habit of questioning them.

• Problems are a constant in life
• They never stop; problems purely get exchanged and/or upgraded
• For Example: You solve your health problem by buying a gym membership; you create new problems; like sweating, then getting showered for work so you don't stink
• If you avoid or feel like you don't have problems - you're going to make yourself miserable
• To be happy we need something to solve; Happiness is a form of action, activity - finally making enough money to buy more stuff doesn't make you happy
• Happiness is a constant work-in-progress

For many people solving problems doesn't feel that simple. They f*** up things up in at least one of two ways:

1. Denial - denying reality or constanlty distracting themselves from reality
2. Victim Mentality - believing that they can do nothing to solve their problems; blaming others for their problems or blaming the outside circumstances

• This people deny and blame others for their problems, because it's easy and feels good - while solving problems is hard and often feels bad