The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck Key Points
Volume Notes: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck
A COUNTERINTUITIVE Approach TO LIVING A Expert LIFE
These notes represent passages from The Subtle Art of Non Giving a Fuck that held meaning and/or were worthy of follow-upwardly (and possibly expanded research) to me personally.
Some passages may speak to you, others will not.
Get the book here.
Completed this book July 2018.
The First
Page 5
"And while there's naught wrong with good concern, the problem is that giving too many fucks is bad for your mental health."
PAGE nine
"The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of i's negative experience is itself a positive feel."
NOTE — Alan Watts, "the backwards law" — How can the "Backwards Law" be applied to other aspects of our work and relationships?
Page 11
"What's interesting most the backwards law is that it'southward called "backwards" for a reason: not a fuck works in reverse."
"Suffering through your fears and anxieties is what allows you lot to build courage and perseverance."
"Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience."
Note — I keep coming dorsum to this idea that "the only style out is through." Very like to Ryan Vacation's The Obstacle is the Way. Reread that book…
PAGE 12
"If you're able to not requite a fuck about the pain, you become unstoppable."
Folio fourteen
"Non giving a fuck does not hateful beingness indifferent; it means being comfortable with existence dissimilar."
PAGE 16
"When nosotros say, 'Damn, lookout out, Marking Manson just don't give a fuck,' we don't mean that Mark Manson doesn't care nigh annihilation; on the reverse, we mean that Mark Manson doesn't intendance about adversity int he confront of his goals, he doesn't care about pissing some people off to do what he feels is right or important or noble."
NOTE -It's "cool to care" but what you care about matters. Caring about everything and everyone is Non the answer.
PAGE 17
"Considering here's another sneaky little truth most life. You can't be an important and life-changing presence for some people without besides existence a joke and an embarrassment to others."
"To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more of import than adversity."
Notation — Humility. Humility. Humility.
Folio 18
"I once heard an artist say that when a person no problems, the mind automatically finds a way to invent some."
Page xix
"Whether yous realize information technology or not, you are ever choosing what to give a fuck about."
Notation — Exist intentional with the things we choose to care nearly. Allowing others to dictate what you care virtually what you don't is the path to giving TOO MANY fucks.
Folio 26
"That pain and loss are inevitable and we should allow go of trying to resist them."
PAGE 31
"The secret sauce is in the solving of the problems, non in non having problems in the commencement place."
Get exclusive manufactures on leadership, peak functioning, and the growth mindset delivered directly to your inbox.
Folio 34
"In other words, negative emotions are a call-to-activity. When you feel them, information technology's because you lot're supposed to practice something."
NOTE — This makes sense, just how do we keep the emotional side of brain, that wants to avoid pain and negativity, from pushing us to the easier path?
Page 36
"A more interesting question, a question that most people never consider, is, "What pain practice you desire in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives plough out."
PAGE 38
"The path to happiness is a path total of shit-heaps and shame."
Page 40
"See: it's a never-catastrophe upward spiral. And if you lot call back at any point you're immune to end climbing, I'm agape you're missing the signal. Considering the joy is in the climb itself."
Folio 56
"It doesn't mean you aren't legitimately a victim in some circumstances. It just means that you lot're non special. Oftentimes, it's this realization — that you and your problems are actually not privileged in their severity or hurting — that is the first and most important step toward solving them."
NOTE — All we can inquire for is to be infrequent at one affair.
PAGE 58
"The vast majority of life is unextraordinary, indeed quite average."
PAGE 59
"In fact, the trend toward entitlement is apparent across all of club. And I believe information technology'southward linked to mass-media-driven exceptionalism."
NOTE — Yous but get to be exceptional at 1 affair, what'south information technology going to be?
PAGE 61
"The rare people who do become truly infrequent at something do so not because they believe they're exceptional. On the contrary, they become amazing because they're obsessed with comeback. And that obsession with comeback stems from an unerring belief that they are, in fact, not that great at all. It's anti-entitlement."
PAGE 62
"You volition have a growing appreciation for life's basic experiences: the pleasures of simple friendship, creating something, helping a person in need, reading a good book, laughing with someone you care nigh. Sound tiresome, doesn't it? That'due south because these things are ordinary. Simply perhaps they're ordinary for a reason: because they are what actually matters."
NOTE — Be OK with ordinary. Discover peace in ordinary.
PAGE 69
"If suffering is inevitable, if our problems in life are unavoidable, and then the question nosotros should exist request is not "How practice I stop suffering? But " Why am I suffering — for what purpose?"
PAGE 71
"Merely there's another, even deeper level of the cocky-awareness onion. And that one is full of fucking tears. The third level is our personal values: Why do I consider this to be success/failure? How am I choosing to measure myself? Past what standard am I judging myself and anybody around me?"
PAGE 73
"…decisions were based on chasing highs, non generating true happiness."
Page 78
"…the question is past what standard do we measure ourselves?"
NOTE — This has always been a moving a target and to be honest, the target has at times not been healthy or truthful to cocky. Work needs to be washed here.
PAGE 83
"The fact is, people who base their cocky-worth on beingness right well-nigh everything to prevent themselves from learning from their mistakes. They lack the ability to take on new perspectives and empathize with others."
NOTE — Embrace ignorance
Folio 84
"While there is something to exist said for "staying on the sunny side of life," the truth is, sometimes life sucks, and the healthiest matter yous can do is admit it."
"To deny that negativity is to perpetuate problems rather than solve them."
Note — It'southward OK to feel similar shit. Information technology's Non ok to NOT act towards removing that feeling from your life.
Page 85
"Every bit Freud one time said, "1 twenty-four hours, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike yous as the most cute."
Page 89
"This, in a nutshell, is what 'self-comeback' is actually about: prioritizing amend values, choosing improve things to give a fuck about. Considering when you lot give better fucks, you lot become better problems. And when you get amend issues, you get a better life."
Page 96
"The more we choose to accept responsibility in our lives, the more power nosotros will exercise over our lives. Accepting responsibility for our problems is thus the first step to solving them."
PAGE 98
"Fault is by tense. Responsibility is present tense. Error results from choices that have already been made. Responsibleness results from the choices you're currently making, every second of every solar day."
Annotation — Stop making excuses for the things you say (and the way y'all say them).
Page 116
"Every footstep of the way I was wrong. Nearly everything. Throughout my life, I've been apartment-out wrong almost myself, others, society, culture, the world, the universe — everything. And I hope that will go along to be the case for the residual of my life. But every bit Present Mark can look back on Pask Mark's every flaw and mistake, on 24-hour interval Time to come Mark will dorsum on Present Marker'south assumptions (including the contents of this book) and notice similar flaws. And that will be a good thing. Because that will mean I have grown."
PAGE 117
"Growth is an endlessly iterative process."
Notation — Maybe I'k wrong for antisocial all the "It's the journey not the destination," porn that exists in the world.
Page 119
"Certainty is the enemy of growth. Nothing is for certain until it has already happened — and even then, information technology'southward however debatable. That'south why accepting the inevitable imperfections of our values is necessary for any growth to accept place."
Page 123
"Almost of our beliefs are wrong. Or, to be more than verbal, all beliefs are wrong — some are merely less wrong than others."
Folio 129
"But perhaps the answer is to trust yourself less. After all, if our hearts and minds are and then unreliable, maybe nosotros should exist questioning our own intentions and motivations more."
Folio 132
"The fact that she does everything 'right' doesn't make her right."
PAGE 134
"It's the backwards law once more; the ore yous try to be sure about something, the more you attempt to be certain most something, the more uncertain and insecure you will feel. But the converse is true as well: the more you embrace being uncertain and non knowing, the more comfortable you will experience in knowing what you lot don't know."
NOTE — Attempt living in a constant state of doubtfulness guided by the pursuit, not the solution (which at present that I nearly it is essentially journey not destination porn again).
PAGE 135
"Uncertainty is the root of all progress and all growth."
"This openness to being wrong must exist for any real alter or growth to accept place."
PAGE 136
"Parkinson's Law: Work expands so as to fill up up the time available for its completion."
"Potato'south Law: Whatever can go wrong will go wrong."
"Manson'southward Law of Avoidance: The more than something threatens your identity, the more you volition avoid information technology."
NOTE — Wait deeper into all three of these laws. At that place has to be more to learn than the same surface bullshit anybody references.
PAGE 139
"I say don't notice yourself. I say never know who you are."
PAGE 140
"Instead, measure yourself by more than mundane identities: a pupil, a partner, a friend, a creator."
Page 141
Three Questions to be Less Certain of Yourself
Q #ane: What if I'm wrong?
Q #2: What would information technology mean if I were incorrect?
"Aristotle wrote, "It is the mark of an educated heed to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Being able to look at and evaluate different values without necessarily adopting them is perhaps the central skill required in changing one's own life in a meaningful way."
Q #3: Would being wrong create a better or a worse trouble than my current problem, for both myself and others?
Page 154
"Dabrowski argued that fright and feet and sadness are non necessarily ever undesirable or unhelpful states of mind."
"Our most radical changes in perspective often happen at the tail end of our worst moments."
PAGE 155
"Pain is part of the procedure."
Folio 158
"Learn to sustain the pain y'all've chosen. When you choose a new value, y'all are choosing to introduce a new form of pain into your life. Bask it. Enjoy it. Welcome it with open arms. Then human action despite it."
Page 160
"Action isn't merely the issue of motivation; information technology's as well the crusade of it."
Annotation — This is #truth. In my deepest, darkest periods of artistic block and subsequent cocky-pity that accompanies "The Block," action was the only way out.
Page 162
"If we follow the 'do something' principle, failure feels unimportant. When the standard of success becomes only acting — when whatsoever result is regarded equally progress and of import, when inspiration is seen as a reward rather than a prerequisite — we propel ourselves alee. We feel gratuitous to fail, and that failure moves us forwards."
Folio 166
"Ultimately, the only way to reach meaning and a sense of importance in one'southward life is through a rejection of alternatives, a narrowing of freedom, a option of commitment to i place, one conventionalities, or (gulp) ane person."
PAGE 169
"Russian club institute the valuable currency to exist trust. And to build trust you have to be honest. That ways when things suck, you say then openly and without amends."
Notation — I wonder how much trust there is to this outside of Manson'southward personal experience.
Page 171
"The bespeak is this: we all must requite a fuck virtually something, in order to value something. And to value something, nosotros must reject what is non that something. To value X, we must reject non-X."
"Entitled people, considering they experience equally though they deserve to experience keen all the fourth dimension, avoid rejecting anything because doing and then might make them or someone else experience bad."
Page 179
"The victim, if he really loved the salvage, would say, 'Look, this is my problem; you don't have to information technology for me. Just support me while I prepare it myself."
Folio 181
"People with strong boundaries are not afraid of a temper tantrum, an argument, or getting injure. People with weak boundaries are terrified of those things and will constantly mold their own beliefs to fit the highs and lows of their relational emotional roller coaster."
"It's not most giving a fuck near everything your partner gives a fuck about; it's nearly giving a fuck almost your partner regardless of the fucks he or she gives. That's unconditional beloved, infant."
PAGE 183
"Conflict is not only normal, so; it'southward absolutely necessary for the maintenance of a healthy relationship."
"Trust is the most of import ingredient in any relationship, for the simple reason that without trust, the relationship doesn't really hateful anything."
Folio 185
"Unfortunately, building a runway record for trust takes fourth dimension — certainly a lot more time than information technology takes to suspension trust."
NOTE — Learn more well-nigh the intricacies of the Paradox of Choice
PAGE 188
"I've found increased opportunity and upside in rejecting alternatives and distractions in favor of what I've called to allow truly thing to me."
PAGE 197
"Because we're able to conceptualize alternating versions of reality, nosotros are also the just brute capable of imaging a reality without ourselves in it. The realization causes what Becker calls 'expiry terrors' a deep existential anxiety that underlies everything we think or do."
THE Stop
Please share any thoughts, ideas or questions in the comments below and if you enjoyed these Book Notes I'd dearest a few 👏 on this articles to assistance others find information technology.
Give thanks you,
Ryan Hanley
skirvingaboughtters.blogspot.com
Source: https://medium.com/@ryanhanley/book-notes-the-subtle-art-of-not-giving-a-fuck-f68a9dfc564f