The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

Author: Mark Manson

• This is the real story of Bukowski’s success:

• This is the real story of Bukowski’s success: his

• This is the real story of Bukowski’s success: his comfort with himself as a failure. Bukowski didn’t give a fuck about success.

• Fame and success didn’t make him a better person. Nor was it by becoming a better person that he became famous and successful.

• Self-improvement and success often occur together. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the same thing.

• 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.

• A confident man doesn’t feel a need to prove that he’s confident. A rich woman doesn’t feel a need to convince anybody that she’s rich.

• The key to a good life is not giving a fuck about more; it’s giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important.

• We feel bad about feeling bad.

• We feel bad about feeling bad. We feel guilty for feeling guilty. We get angry about getting angry. We get anxious about feeling anxious. What is wrong with me? This is why not giving a fuck is so key. This is why it’s going to save the world.

• 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.

• Our crisis is no longer material; it’s existential, it’s spiritual.

• 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.

• “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.”

• “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.” Or put more simply: Don’t try.

• not giving a fuck works in reverse.

• What’s interesting about the backwards law is that it’s called “backwards” for a reason: not giving a fuck works in reverse. If pursuing the positive is a negative, then pursuing the negative generates the positive.

• Being open with your insecurities paradoxically makes you more confident and charismatic around others. The pain of honest confrontation is what generates the greatest trust and respect in your relationships.

• Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires.

• The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.

• In my life, I have given a fuck about many things. I have also not given a fuck about many things. And like the road not taken, it was the fucks not given that made all the difference.

• We give too many fucks when our coworkers don’t bother asking us about our awesome weekend. Meanwhile, our credit cards are maxed out, our dog hates us, and Junior is snorting meth in the bathroom,

• We give too many fucks when our coworkers don’t bother asking us about our awesome weekend. Meanwhile, our credit cards are maxed out, our dog hates us, and Junior is snorting meth in the bathroom, yet we’re getting pissed off about nickels and Everybody Loves Raymond.

• People who are indifferent are lame and scared. They’re couch potatoes and Internet trolls.

• The people who just laugh and then do what they believe in anyway. Because they know it’s right.

• You can’t be an important and life-changing presence for some people without also being a joke and an embarrassment to others.

• once heard an artist say that when a person has no problems, the mind automatically finds a way

• I once heard an artist say that when a person has no problems, the mind automatically finds a way to invent some.

• Life is just what it is. We accept it, warts and all. We realize that we’re never going to cure cancer or go to the moon or feel Jennifer Aniston’s tits. And that’s okay. Life goes on.

• I know that sounds intellectually lazy on the surface, but I promise you, it’s a life/death sort of issue.

• And, as is so typical of young men, the prince ended up blaming his father for the very things his father had tried to do for him.

• Happiness is not a solvable equation.

• “What you consider ‘friendship’ is really just your constant attempts to impress people.”

• We suffer for the simple reason that suffering is biologically useful. It is nature’s preferred agent for inspiring change.

• So no—our own pain and misery aren’t a bug of human evolution; they’re a feature.

• Therefore, it’s not always beneficial to avoid pain and seek pleasure, since pain can, at times, be life-or-death important to our well-being.

• As anyone who has had to sit through the first Star Wars prequel can tell you, we humans are capable of experiencing acute psychological pain as well.

• Like physical pain, our psychological pain is an indication of something out of equilibrium, some limitation that has been exceeded.

• In some cases, experiencing emotional or psychological pain can be healthy or necessary. Just like stubbing our toe teaches us to walk into fewer tables, the emotional pain of rejection or failure teaches us how to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

• “The solution to one problem is merely the creation of the next one.”

• Happiness comes from solving problems. The keyword here is “solving.” If you’re avoiding your problems or feel like you don’t have any problems, then you’re going to make yourself miserable.

• Some people deny that their problems exist in the first place. And because they deny reality, they must constantly delude or distract themselves from reality.

• Some choose to believe that there is nothing they can do to solve their problems, even when they in fact could. Victims seek to blame others for their problems or blame outside circumstances.

• Emotions evolved for one specific purpose: to help us live and reproduce a little bit better. That’s it.

• Emotions are simply biological signals designed to nudge you in the direction of beneficial change.

• In other words, negative emotions are a call to action. When you feel them, it’s because you’re supposed to do something.

• Positive emotions, on the other hand, are rewards for taking the proper action.

• Decision-making based on emotional intuition, without the aid of reason to keep it in line, pretty much always sucks.

• A fixation on happiness inevitably amounts to a never-ending pursuit of “something else”—a new house, a new relationship, another child, another pay raise.

• We like the idea that we can feel fulfilled and satisfied with our lives forever. But we cannot.

• 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?”

• You can’t win if you don’t play.

• What determines your success isn’t, “What do you want to enjoy?” The relevant question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?”

• What determines your success isn’t, “What do you want to enjoy?” The relevant question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?” The path to happiness is a path full of shitheaps and shame.

• I was in love with the result—the image of me on stage, people cheering, me rocking out, pouring my heart into what I was playing—but I wasn’t in love with the process. And because of that, I failed at it. Repeatedly. Hell, I didn’t even try hard enough to fail at it. I hardly tried at

• I was in love with the result—the image of me on stage, people cheering, me rocking out, pouring my heart into what I was playing—but I wasn’t in love with the process. And because of that, I failed at it. Repeatedly. Hell, I didn’t even try hard enough to fail at it. I hardly tried at all.

• It’s a mountain of a dream and a mile-high climb to the top. And what it took me a long time to discover is that I didn’t like to climb much. I just liked to imagine the summit.

• This is not about willpower or grit. This is not another admonishment of “no pain, no gain.” This is the most simple and basic component of life: our struggles determine our successes.

• It turns out that merely feeling good about yourself doesn’t really mean anything unless you have a good reason to feel good about yourself.

• But a true and accurate measurement of one’s self-worth is how people feel about the negative aspects of themselves.

• But the problem with entitlement is that it makes people need to feel good about themselves all the time, even at the expense of those around them.

• A person who actually has a high self-worth is able to look at the negative parts of his character frankly—“Yes, sometimes I’m irresponsible with money,” “Yes, sometimes I exaggerate my own successes,” “Yes, I rely too much on others to support me and should be more self-reliant”—and then acts to improve upon them.

• My craving for validation quickly fed into a mental habit of self-aggrandizing and overindulgence. I felt entitled to say or do whatever I wanted, to break people’s trust, to ignore people’s feelings, and then justify it later with shitty, half-assed apologies.

• has no problems at all. The truth is that there’s no such thing as a personal problem.

• The truth is that there’s no such thing as a personal problem. If you’ve got a problem, chances are millions of other people have had it in the past, have it now, and are going to have it in the future.

• Most of us are pretty average at most things we do. Even if you’re exceptional at one thing, chances are you’re average or below average at most other things. That’s just the nature of life.

• The fact that this statement is inherently contradictory—after all, if everyone were extraordinary, then by definition no one would be extraordinary—is missed

• The fact that this statement is inherently contradictory—after all, if everyone were extraordinary, then by definition no one would be extraordinary—is missed by most people.

• Sounds boring, doesn’t it? That’s because these things are ordinary. But maybe they’re ordinary for a reason: because they are what actually matters.

• If suffering is inevitable, if our problems in life are unavoidable, then the question we should be asking is not “How do I stop suffering?” but “Why am I suffering—for what purpose?”

• Self-awareness is like an onion. There are multiple layers to it, and the more you peel them back, the more likely you’re going to start crying at inappropriate times.

• These why questions are difficult and often take months or even years to answer consistently and accurately.

• Honest self-questioning is difficult. It requires asking yourself simple questions that are uncomfortable to answer.

• Our values determine the metrics by which we measure ourselves and everyone else.

• If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.

• As humans, we’re wrong pretty much constantly, so if your metric for life success is to be right—well, you’re going to have a difficult time rationalizing all of the bullshit to yourself.

• As Freud once said, “One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”

• Good values are 1) reality-based, 2) socially constructive, and 3) immediate and controllable. Bad values are 1) superstitious, 2) socially destructive, and 3) not immediate or controllable.

• As a rule, people who are terrified of what others think about them are actually terrified of all the shitty things they think about themselves being reflected back at them.)

• “I need to sell 150 million more records;

• “I need to sell 150 million more records; then everything will be great,”

• This, in a nutshell, is what “self-improvement” is really about: prioritizing better values, choosing better things to give a fuck about.

• These five values are both unconventional and uncomfortable. But, to me, they are life-changing. The first, which we’ll look at in the next chapter, is a radical form of responsibility: taking responsibility for everything that occurs in your life, regardless of who’s at fault. The second is uncertainty: the acknowledgement of your own ignorance and the cultivation of constant doubt in your own beliefs. The next is failure: the willingness to discover your own flaws and mistakes so that they may be improved upon. The fourth is rejection: the ability to both say and hear no, thus clearly defining what you will and will not accept in your life. The final value is the contemplation of one’s own mortality; this one is crucial, because paying vigilant attention to one’s own death is perhaps the only thing capable of helping us keep all our other values in proper perspective.

• taking responsibility for everything that occurs in your life, regardless of who’s at fault.

• When we feel that we’re choosing our problems, we feel empowered. When we feel that our problems are being forced upon us against our will, we feel victimized and miserable.

• Whether we consciously recognize it or not, we are always responsible for our experiences. It’s impossible not to be.

• problems. Responsibility and fault often appear together in

• Responsibility and fault often appear together in our culture. But they’re not the same thing.

• Here’s one way to think about the distinction between the two concepts. Fault is past tense.

• Here’s one way to think about the distinction between the two concepts. Fault is past tense. Responsibility is present tense.

• Many people may be to blame for your unhappiness, but nobody is ever responsible for your unhappiness but you.

• because nobody makes it through life without collecting a few scars on the way out.

• Growth is an endlessly iterative process. When we learn something new, we don’t go from “wrong” to “right.” Rather, we go from wrong to slightly less wrong.

• Our values are our hypotheses: this behavior is good and important; that other behavior is not. Our actions are the experiments; the resulting emotions and thought patterns are our data.

• There is no correct dogma

• There is no correct dogma or perfect ideology. There is only what your experience has shown you to be right for you—and even then, that experience is probably somewhat wrong too.

• The comedian Emo Philips once said, “I used to think the human brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.”

• There’s a lot of conventional wisdom out there telling you to “trust yourself,” to “go with your gut,” and all sorts of other pleasant-sounding clichés. But perhaps the answer is to trust yourself less.

• Many people have an unshakable certainty in their ability at their job or in the amount of salary they should be making. But that certainty makes them feel worse, not better. They see others getting promoted over them, and they feel slighted. They feel unappreciated and underacknowledged.

• there is little that is unique or special about your problems. That’s why letting go is so liberating.

• The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more everything will seem to threaten you. For that reason, define yourself in the simplest

• The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more everything will seem to threaten you. For that reason, define yourself in the simplest and most ordinary ways possible.

• When we’re angry, or jealous, or upset, we’re oftentimes the last ones to figure it out.

• Aristotle wrote, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

• beliefs are arbitrary; worse yet, they’re often made up after the fact to justify whatever values and metrics we’ve

• beliefs are arbitrary; worse yet, they’re often made up after the fact to justify whatever values and metrics we’ve chosen for ourselves.

• if it’s down to me being screwed up, or everybody else being screwed up, it is far, far, far more likely that I’m the one who’s screwed up.

• if it feels like it’s you versus the world, chances are it’s really just you versus yourself. CHAPTER 7 Failure Is the Way Forward I really mean it when I say it: I was fortunate.

• if it feels like it’s you versus the world, chances are it’s really just you versus yourself.

• If someone is better than you at something, then it’s likely because she has failed at it more than you have.

• and then consider changing course. You could call it “hitting bottom” or “having an existential crisis.” I prefer to call it “weathering the shitstorm.” Choose what suits you.

• You could call it “hitting bottom” or “having an existential crisis.” I prefer to call it “weathering the shitstorm.” Choose what suits you.

• opaque—existential riddles wrapped in enigmas packed in a KFC bucket full of

• impossibly complex and opaque—existential riddles wrapped in enigmas packed in a KFC bucket full of Rubik’s Cubes.

• Their goal is to get back to “feeling good” again as quickly as possible, even if that means substances or deluding themselves or returning to their shitty values.

• Learn to sustain the pain you’ve chosen.

• Don’t just sit there. Do something.

• Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it.

• absolute freedom, by itself, means nothing.

• Ultimately, the only way to achieve meaning and a sense of importance in one’s life is through a rejection of alternatives,

• But, in the “free” West, my Russian teacher continued, there existed an abundance of economic opportunity—so much economic opportunity that it became far more valuable to present yourself in a certain way, even if it was false, than to actually be that way. Trust lost its value. Appearances and salesmanship became more advantageous forms of expression. Knowing a lot of people superficially was more beneficial than knowing a few people closely.

• But, in the “free” West, my Russian teacher continued, there existed an abundance of economic opportunity—so much economic opportunity that it became far more valuable to present yourself in a certain way, even if it was false, than to actually be that way. Trust lost its value. Appearances and salesmanship became more advantageous forms of expression. Knowing a lot of people superficially was more beneficial than knowing a few people closely. This is why it became the norm in Western cultures to smile and say polite things even when you don’t feel like it, to tell little white lies and agree with someone whom you don’t actually agree with.

• It’s suspected by many scholars that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet not to celebrate romance, but rather to satirize it, to show how absolutely nutty it was. He didn’t mean for the play to be a glorification of love. In fact, he meant it to be the opposite: a big flashing neon sign blinking KEEP OUT, with police tape around it saying

• It’s suspected by many scholars that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet not to celebrate romance, but rather to satirize it, to show how absolutely nutty it was. He didn’t mean for the play to be a glorification of love. In fact, he meant it to be the opposite: a big flashing neon sign blinking KEEP OUT, with police tape around it saying DO NOT CROSS.