My brother-in-law gifted me this book for Christmas in 2018. Since I had a few other books already on the go, I didn’t wind up finishing this little beauty until recently. I’m sure glad that I did, because The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is a great book written by Mark Manson. It is supposedly “a counterintuitive approach to living a good life”. If you are looking to increase happiness in your life, you must read this book.

Summary

The main idea of this book is that we only have so many f*cks to give in our lives, so we should give our f*cks wisely. Mr Fundamental is down with this. We should be frugal with our f*cks. We should focus on what matters most (the fundamentals) and not give a f*ck about the rest. This is how we increase happiness. Manson teaches you how to turn your pain into a tool and how to suffer better. He teaches us that it is okay to feel bad sometimes. It is okay to not be special and to not be right all the time. The book is written in a very entertaining manner that Mr Fundamental appreciates. I’m not sure Mr Manson would agree, but I consider him a bit of an OG Fundamentalist. He figured out long ago that focusing your time and energy on the things with the highest ROI is the way to go.

One of my favorite quotes from this book is, “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”. I LOVE this. This fits perfectly with the Mr Fundamental value system. Having enough of everything is what should be making you happy. Your happiness shouldn’t depend on accumulating more and more shit and trying to have more stuff than the next guy. Getting what you want is success, and wanting what you have is happiness.

Okay, I’ve given a long enough summary, so up next are my 3 most important points of the book. I would like to cover more, but as a good Fundamentalist, I have to stick to the most important and fundamental points. I need to not give a f*ck about the rest.

You are not special

Mark Manson was a “self-absorbed, entitled little prick” as an adolescent. These are his words, not mine. He went through some issues involving drugs as a teen. After this, he lost his friends, community, legal rights, and his family (his parents later got divorced). Manson talks about how when bad things happen to people, they start to think they have problems that they are incapable of solving. People start to think that their problems are somehow unique and therefore they are special.

This is where the problem lies. While you might have problems, and even might legitimately be a victim, it doesn’t mean you are special. Chances are there are many other people out there with similar, or worse, problems than yours. If you think your problem is so special, and you are such a victim, it will paralyze you from taking action to improve your situation.

Mr Manson also talks about entitlement, which I think is a particularly large problem today. Most entitled people exhibit it in one of two ways. Here are some great quotes:

“1. I’m awesome and the rest of you all suck, so I deserve special treatment.”

“2. I suck and the rest of you are all awesome, so I deserve special treatment.”

I found these points to be thought provoking, and generally true. The first type is easy and obvious to spot in daily life. The second type is a bit more covert and sneaky. You know how some people are always posting on social media about how difficult their lives are? They have things tougher than everyone else, therefore they deserve (entitled) special treatment. It has turned into a competition.

Many social media posts are a variation on the two points above. Either people are bragging about how awesome they are, or are competing to show how they are more of a victim than anyone else. You see a lot of posts of this variety: “I’m sick, and I had to go to work, and my babysitter cancelled, and it is raining… therefore I deserve to eat a tub of ice cream! Waaa waaa! Please feel sorry for me and tell me it is ok!”

Once you accept that you probably aren’t special, you can relax and spend your time and energy on what really matters. What matters? The simple stuff (fundamentals), like reading a good book, going for a walk, playing with the kids. Manson says, “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 matter.”

Instead of getting stressed trying to convince yourself how special you are, consider that you might just be average at most things. After this realization, you can focus on the fundamentals and start improving yourself in your area of choice. The choice is yours.

The value of suffering

Most people think that suffering is a bad thing. They think it is something to be avoided at all costs. But, is suffering really so bad after all? Manson suggests that suffering is inevitable. Therefore, we need to choose better things to suffer for. He delves into our personal values and states that, “…our values determine the nature of our problems, and the nature of our problems determines the quality of our lives”.

Since there is no avoiding of problems in life, the best we can do is try to have more good problems and fewer bad problems. Manson asserts that our values and our metrics for success determine the nature of our problems. Some values lead to good problems, and some values lead to bad problems. Solving good problems is how you can increase happiness.

Manson summarizes a set of shitty values, which I very much enjoyed. His list of shitty values is as follows:

Pleasure

He says that pleasure doesn’t cause happiness. Instead, it is the effect. “Pleasure is a false God”.

Material success

Once we have enough stuff, getting more stuff doesn’t really increase our happiness. He claims that if people measure themselves by their stuff instead of by their behavior, they are shallow. “… they’re probably assholes as well”.

Always being right

If you convince yourself that you must always be right, then how can you ever learn anything from your mistakes? Instead, you should “assume that you’re ignorant and don’t know a whole lot”. This will help you to continuously learn and grow.

Staying positive

Sometimes you need to acknowledge and admit your problems, instead of denying any and all negative emotion. “Constant positivity is a form of avoidance, not a valid solution to life’s problems”. We should not deny the existence of our problems. Problems provide us with challenges and room for growth. If “…we deny our problems, we rob ourselves of the chance to solve them and generate happiness”. Nothing gives Me Fundamental more satisfaction and happiness in life than taking on a challenging problem and solving it.

It should be obvious from the list above that shitty values lead to bad, unfulfilling, problems. Buying one more thing or being right one more time isn’t actually fulfilling in the long run. If we can find some better values, we’ll naturally have better problems that do provide happiness while we solve them.

In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Manson suggests that good values must be reality-based, socially constructive, and immediate and controllable. His examples of good values include “honesty, innovation, vulnerability, standing up for oneself, standing up for others, self-respect, curiosity, charity, humility, and creativity”. Good values are created internally and don’t really depend on anyone else. They are fully within your control.

Our values define our priorities, and our priorities define where we allocate our f*cks. We should allocate most of our time and energy to the things that really matter to us. This is also what focusing on the fundamentals is all about. Focusing on the things that provide the most bang for your buck, and not worrying so much about the minutiae. I would argue that our values are the fundamentals of happiness. Better values lead to better problems that lead to more happiness.

Manson goes on in this book to define the five values that he believes to be the best. You’ll need to read the book yourself to learn all of them. I will cover my favorite one next, which is…

You’re wrong about everything (But so am I)

The main idea of this point is: you can never really learn anything or improve if you can’t acknowledge that you’re wrong about something. People throughout history have consistently been wrong in hindsight, and there is no reason to expect that to change. 100 years from now, people will look back at us and laugh at how wrong we were about many things.

Manson says that, “certainty is the enemy of growth”. He thinks that instead of trying to always be right, instead we should be examining all of the ways that we might be wrong. We should avoid being too certain of anything, and instead strive for uncertainty. “Uncertainty removes our judgments of others… Uncertainty is the root of all progress and all growth”. Mr Fundamental likes it.

Mr Manson also comes up with a brand new law in this book, dubbed, “Manson’s Law of Avoidance”. This law states that, “The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it”. This basically means that we all have an idea of what our own identity is, and how we fit in the world. We try to live up to this belief and are extremely hesitant to do anything that threatens it. Sometimes people are fearful of taking risks or trying new things, because the potential result (good or bad) threatens to change the identity that they have grown so comfortable with.

The summary here is that you are probably wrong a lot more than you think. I know I am. If you repeatedly find yourself thinking that everyone else is wrong and you are right, you may want to consider that it just might be you. As Manson mentions, it will hurt at first, but you’ll be better off for it.

Conclusion

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is an outstanding book. It teaches us to consider a set of five counterintuitive values. Our values guide our behavior. If we can choose better values, we’ll be giving f*cks about things that matter most of the time. The five suggested values are, “taking responsibility, uncertainty, failure, rejection, and contemplating one’s own mortality”. Values are the fundamentals of our behavior. If we focus on these fundamentals, maybe we can have a life with more happiness and success.

This book is a great read and I highly recommend it. I might be wrong about all of this, but hopefully I’m less wrong about it than I was before I read the book. Feel free to tell me how wrong I am in the comments, and we can try to become less wrong together.

Love,

Mr F

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