The Subtle Art of not giving a F*ck by Mark Manson is one of the best books I have ever read and has changed my life. Aside from the author being funny, the book is an important read for everyone. Of course most people would think they know what it talks about from the title but it is actually the opposite. The main goal of the book is not to encourage you to not care about anything but caring about the things that matter and living a good life because of it. The book takes the concepts and norms that society enforces and how they limit us as individuals.
One important quote is "No truly happy person stands in the mirror and tells themselves that they're happy, they just are". He talks about our culture and its emphasis on positive expectations and how unrealistic they are. They are mostly focused on what we lack. "We learn about the best ways to make money because we feel like we don't have enough money already". "We try our hard to be successful because we feel like we're not successful already". These affirmations puts us in the rat race of constantly having to prove ourselves. Chapter one is called "Don't Try". "The key to a good life is not giving a f*ck about more but giving a f about less". Chapter one emphasizes the backwards law. The main point of the backwards law is that the more we try to do something, the lesser chance we have of being successful at it.
The less we try and care about it, the more we are likely to obtain our goal. A person who is always thinking about being successful is less likely to be successful while the person who just goes with the flow is more likely to obtain success. The difference is one accepting how life is and just doing what they can while another is constantly stressing and aiming to change everything. Another chapter talks about the feedback loop from hell. Our ability to successfully accept negative experiences is a positive experience and our desire to always want positive experiences is a negative experience. The more we desperately want something instantly has an impact on our ability to obtain it. The less we care about something, the better we do at it.
This has been prominent in a lot of aspects of my life. We have to accept the negative aspects of life as they are all part of it. "To try to avoid pain is to give too many F*cks about pain". Not giving a F*ck about the things that don't matter has contributed to a lot of my success. I could talk about the book all day but you should check it out. It changed my life and my way of thinking. "Not giving a F*ck is not about indifference, it's about being comfortable with being different". A lot of this review was inspired by a book review by the author Mark Manson. I will link the video of his review down and some links to buy the book if interested. Checkout his Youtube Channel. You won't regret it.
Author's review: https://youtu.be/lz8sUiXAnbs
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