Book Notes: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck, by Mark Manson, was a surprisingly deep book. I have heard a lot about it over the past few years, yet I didn’t pick it up as the title sounded a little “clickbaity”.

Boy, was I wrong. The book delves into many important topics around mental health and wellbeing…and the title is literal and quite true to its content. What you should and should not give a fuck about is subtle, and it is an art.

This isn’t a book about being indifferent. It’s a book about being mindful of what to care about and what isn’t worth caring about. Ultimately, the book gives great advice and stories on how to do just this.

Be Genuine and Authentic

• Society tries to dictate what you should strive to be and what is ideal. This is done through social media and advertising as two examples. If you use this warped, filtered reality to dictate what you should care about and what standard you should hold yourself to, you’ll be miserable.
• Instead, strive to be comfortable in your own skin, flaws and all. You don’t have to fit the mold of what everyone else tells you is beautiful or successful or ideal.
• People appreciate and gravitate to those who are genuine and relatable. Not those who are lofty or fake.
• You learn from your vulnerabilities and failures instead of trying to be perfect all the time. People appreciate those that are willing to be vulnerable. It makes you more human and relatable.
• You decide what is important and what to care about, not other people.
• Accept that you are a work in progress, and are inadequate in certain things.
• This gives you the ability to forgive yourself, healthily deal with emotions, and be better able to manage pain.
• Habits will eventually influence the identity you form. This is described in Atomic Habits, by James Clear.
• Actions you take over time will influence your mindset and identity, further solidifying complementary behaviors. This helps fuel motivation, and is similar to the power of autosuggestion, as described in Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill.
  

Rise Above Victimhood

• Your problems, and the pain you are feeling from those problems, are not unique to you. Others suffer from them just like you. The sooner you realize that, and acknowledge the actual problem, the sooner you’ll be able to solve the problem.
• Parents can pass down their issues, problems, and traumas to their kids based on how they raise them. Even if they don’t mean to do so.
• It is narcissistic to believe that the universe is conspiring for you or against you. This is all a version of entitlement. Consider obstacles as challenges to rise above, not curses.
• We’ll feel more satisfied in the long run if we don’t seek to control things outside our control. Instead, we can control our perception of events and how we take them in and deal with them.
• Seeking to control our perception of events is far more rewarding. Seeking to control the events around us themselves will only lead to disappointment since they are indeed not controllable.
• In toxic relationships, you often have the “victim” and the “saver”. The victim loves to play the victim and view themselves as victimized or cursed, and the “saver” loves to be the one to save the victim and enable them.
• The victim creates problems to solve, as they see this as a way to get attention and affection. The saver wants to fix problems, as they believe that is the only way they can gain affection.
• It is far healthier for the saver to help the victim solve their problems, and for the victim to not catastrophize or manufacture problems that need fixing.
  

Embrace Pain

• Embrace the rough spots for the things that truly matter to you.
• Seek to enjoy the pain that comes along with the activities you are passionate about.
• Anything that’s worth doing will require pain associated with it. If you can accept that and lean into it, nothing will be able to stop you from accomplishing what you want.
• You shouldn’t do something if you can’t or won’t enjoy the pain that comes along with that undertaking.
• This relates to The Dip, by Seth Godin, in that you should push through the low points for things that you can be world-class in. If you can’t be world-class, then you likely won’t find happiness in the undertaking and won’t enjoy the pain that accompanies it. Overcoming “The Dip” is the rite of passage that makes you world-class.
• Constant dissatisfaction is a feature of our evolution because we are designed to use it to upgrade ourselves. Learn from it to make you stronger.
• Dissatisfaction is a constant part of the human experience. We shouldn’t avoid it and seek constant happiness and nothing else. Experiencing dissatisfaction and pain is part of why happiness exists.
• Relating to Critical Mass, overnight success is an illusion. It is the result of a lot of hard work that most don’t see because it isn’t as visible. Those who are perceived to have become “overnight successes” suffered through a lot of the accompanying pain already. They’ve been working hard all along, just the meaningful results haven’t been as obvious until recently.
• The perception of overnight success has us indulge in envy and self-loathing in trying to compete with an impossible standard that overnight success exists.
  

Choose What to Care About

• Our attention is precious, and there is an opportunity cost to choosing what occupies our attention. Being intentional with what you choose to think about is an important determination to make.
• You shouldn’t see everything negative that comes your way as some sort of emotional injustice. Instead, embrace the pain that comes with the things you enjoy, and look for the learning that comes with the obstacles.
• If you can love and embrace your flaws, you’ll have a healthier view and relationship with yourself and have more self-love and self-compassion.
• Be comfortable being average and not look to be extraordinary in everything. In most of the things we do, we’ll be average. Only a few things we truly care about are the things we’ll be better than average in.
• We fear that if we are average, then our life won’t matter. That we haven’t made a difference in the world. We need to overcome this fear.
• The ordinary things in life are what truly matter. Appreciating this more will help you find inner peace, be more present, and enjoy the little things. Stop chasing dreams that will never happen, and stop ruminating about how to perfect things.
• Choose what standard we should measure ourselves on. Consider what do we find valuable and truly care about?
• Choose measures that are a true reflection of your happiness. Not measures that compare you to someone else or things you have no control over.
• Once you can get your basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter, you have diminishing returns in happiness regarding additional wealth accumulation. You are not much happier the more wealth you earn.
• Ernest Becker wrote in his book, The Denial of Death, that we take on “Immortality Projects” for our name or identity to live beyond our physical death. This can be putting our names on buildings, businesses, how we influence others, and overcommitting ourselves. This is all because we fear death and exert effort to ensure our “conceptual self” lives on.
• If our immortality projects fail, this can translate to a sort of identity crisis, as we have trouble reconciling the impact we are having on the greater world or society.
• By choosing to reject certain things, we better define our identity, and what is meaningful to us. That will make us happier and liberate us from being overcommitted.
• It is far healthier to embrace the reality of death, and avoid superficial immortality projects. Instead, remember that happiness means caring about something greater than yourself.