Episode 178 – Mark Manson – The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

- What's up everybody, Mark Manson here, Times Bestselling Author of "The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck."

looking around YouTube and Google and I found that dozens of people have posted summaries of my book.

Well, fuck you.

If there's gonna be a summary of the book, non fuck giver himself, moi.

prepare yourselves as I take you chapter by chapter through this modern self-help masterpiece.

(upbeat rock music) So, before I actually get into the book chapter in a few minutes, bit and just tell you briefly what my goal is by writing this book.

most people's perceptions, not caring about things.

In fact, it's about the opposite of that.

makes the argument that you have to give a fuck about something.

Therefore, the most important question is, what are you giving a fuck about and why?

little concept on the surface of people bought the book but my goal with this book a book about values.

wanted to be contrarian to the self-help industry.

granted what your values are, your definition of success is.

mansion and a fancy car with three and a half kids and a guitar shaped swimming pool.

Most self-help books just assume that we all want the same thing.

Whereas in my book, I wanted to point out definitions of success, a lot of these cultural values may not be the right fit for us question of getting ahead in life not necessarily figuring out single goal we have, it's more in asking, we have in the first place?

we give a fuck about?

So you'll see, as we go through it, that there are a lot of points in the book where I'm very intentionally contradicting most typical self-help advice.

Part of this, I'm doing for effect, it's to grab people's attention little bit more critically about some of their assumptions but some of it is legitimate.

believe is more correct advice out there.

So without further ado, let's get into it.

Chapter one, Don't Try.

story about Charles Bukowski.

fiction and poetry writer drunk, he was a lowlife, he had drug problems, he had prostitute problems, I mean, he was just a total mess.

open the book with him because he is kind of a counter-argument you see in books like this.

You know, you're used to opening a book life and seeing a story Musk or something like that and I wanted to start with Bukowski you can actually become in life despite yourself.

You can become successful all of the wrong things and committing all of the biggest errors.

So, even beginning on the first page, reader's assumed definition of what success is or what is a good life or a desirable life for themselves.

away from chapter one underlying thing in the book things on Amazon Kindle ever is something called the backwards law comes from Alan Watts, own way and I say that, the pursuit of positive experience is itself a negative experience is itself a positive experience.

So I go on and give a number of examples of the backwards law.

I say that, "The idea is that, feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place.

The more desperately you want to be rich, the more poor and unworthy you will feel, regardless of how much money you have.

want to be sexy and desired, the uglier you will come to see yourself physical appearance.

want to be happy and loved, afraid you will become, regardless of those who surround you.

spiritually enlightened, and shallow you become in trying to get there."

I then follow that up with, "It's like that one time I tripped on acid I walked towards the house, the farther away the house got from me."

(laughs) It was good times, good times.

introduces the central theme of the book, which is that the path to positivity.

is, they just want the positive experiences from life, tolerance and acceptance of the negative experience that leads to the positive experience pretty much the entire book expanding upon this.

So, I go on to finish chapter one by introducing the give a fuck framework of not giving a fuck.

is, not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent, with being different.

One point that I make throughout the book and I dispel very early on is that, indifference is impossible.

then you are giving a fuck about giving a fuck about nothing.

give a fuck about something.

what do you give a fuck about?

that arises is that, few very important things, to bother you so much.

give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity.

about what people think about you, the problem is you don't have anything better to worry about.

about how much money you have, you don't have anything better to worry about.

whether you realize it or not, what to give a fuck about.

This concept of choosing will come back in force in chapter five, chapter is about it.

All right, so that's chapter one, starts off very contrarian, drops a lot of F bombs, that, some people don't.

Happiness Is A Problem.

with the story of the Buddha Buddhist doctrine of Dukkha or the fact that life is suffering, that no matter what you do, where you go, who you hang out with, what you pursue, suffering associated with it becomes attached to things and attachment leads to suffering.

down the Buddhist rabbit hole in another direction and I explain, I say, you know, it's not like we're doomed to suffer, has a certain evolution or usefulness to it.

Like if you think about evolution of thousands of years, a creature that is happy all the time, that creature is not gonna survive.

is a little bit dissatisfied bit anxious all the time, a little bit pissed off at the people around them, that's gonna do the most work to actually survive and replicate.

that we shouldn't have to feel bad ever is completely misguided.

but it goes against our genetic nature.

inherent purpose to them a lot of this chapter is describing how now a lot of the anxiety that we wish to escape from or the anger we wish to overcome, these emotions are actually signals within our body to do something.

and if we ignore them or if we train ourselves to ignore them, ourselves in a lot of ways.

I also talk about a psychology concept called the hedonic treadmill, is, it's like a treadmill.

It's like, you know, you think, and then you get the boat got to pay docking fees could just find a better dock, you find a better dock.

Then you realize that none of your friends want to drive out to that new dock.

could just have some friends to hang out on my boat, then I'd be happy and then you get friends on your boat and they fall overboard life preservers and save them and you're like, man, coast guard, then I'd be happy it's like this carrot you, no matter what you do.

one is to kind of undermine and negative experience, undermine our expectations about positive and negative emotion.

Negative emotions have a lot of utility, they have a lot of purpose, they help us, in a lot of situations that we have challenges or problems that must be overcome.

great, we all wanna be happy.

It's not the only thing in life, there are bad forms of happiness.

make you happy for a while, doesn't mean you should go do it.

very pleased with themselves people over and over again, doesn't mean they should do it.

not necessarily good or bad, it's the meaning around them of creating this framework comes from solving problems.

If you either pretend you have no problems then you won't be happy.

But if you also have problems in your life then you won't be happy.

sauce is finding problems have, or kind of enjoy having and that's how I wrap up the chapter Choose Your Struggle.

the first couple paragraphs it's one of the most important sections of the book and it's resonated with a lot of people.

you want out of your life?'

like, I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like, your response is so common and expected that it doesn't mean anything.

Everybody enjoys what feels good.

carefree, happy and easy life, amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make lots of money well-respected and admired.

it's easy to want that.

A more interesting question, people never consider is, 'what pain do I want in my life?'

'What am I willing to struggle for?'

to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out."

Fucking sweet.

one of my favorite chapters, You Are Not Special.

You're not, nobody is.

it opens up with a story of a guy I knew named Jimmy.

kind of a composite knew, but Jimmy is basically, like pathological liar, schemer, bullshit artist, 24/7 salesman.

year in my mid twenties back when I was starting my first business number of businesses too and the dude, he was just a grifter.

left, right and center and so, I tell this story about Jimmy and I use him as an example for a concept I introduce of entitlement.

I define entitlement in the book you deserve to be happy without sacrificing for it.

of believing you deserve without traversing the negative experiences to get there.

I spend much of this chapter pointing out both from stories about Jimmy, a dickhead in my own life, shouldn't have to go through the positive that causes us and selfish behaviors.

chapter is the story about how I got arrested for selling drugs.

you should buy the book.

two forms of entitlement.

Form number one is, I'm awesome and the rest of you all suck.

have special treatment.

the rest of you are awesome, so I deserve special treatment.

So in the psychological research, this is known as grandiose narcissism and it's basically, they seem to be opposites on the surface, he's better than everybody thinks he's worse than everybody but the behavior ends up being the same have delusional beliefs

about their place in the status hierarchy.

One person thinks he's at the top, one person thinks he's at the bottom but the behavior ends up being the same.

completely self-absorbed, they think everything in the world should be altered and catered to them unbearable to be around and so, I spend much of this chapter, probably the second half of this chapter culture of exceptionalism, media, consumer culture,

always pushing us individually.

Like if you think of beer commercials algorithms are designed, designed to make you feel fucking person on the planet and my argument is that, and socially unhealthy because that drives an attitude and a feeling of entitlement.

It creates delusional beliefs that you are somehow the exception, that the world owes you something, that everything should be rearranged and your happiness, have positive experiences without accepting the negative.

by using a metaphor read a couple of paragraphs.

person can be extraordinary and achieve greatness' stuff is basically just jerking off your ego.

It's a message that tastes good going down more than empty calories that make you emotionally fat and bloated, your heart and your brain.

The ticket to emotional health, like that to physical health, comes from eating your veggies, and mundane truths of life.

actually don't matter that much in the grand scheme of things and the vast majority of your life noteworthy, and that's okay.

taste bad at first, very bad, but once ingested, your body will wake up feeling more potent and alive."

So, that was chapter three.

Chapter four, The Value of Suffering.

actually kind of in two parts, divide it into two parts.

very much about this desire unwillingness to sacrifice or go through the negative experience to get to the positive experience.

Starting with chapter four, the book becomes a lot more about values about what are we willing to sacrifice for it.

the arguments of the first sacrifice for something, that we should struggle for something, makes life more meaningful consistent sense of happiness, is worth struggling for?

What is worth valuing?

What is worth sacrificing for?

with a World War II story who, it's super interesting, soldiers in World War II, random islands in the Pacific and nobody told them the war was over.

So, they continued to fight the war into the 1950s, 60s and even 70s was still fighting World War II surrendered in like 1973 I'd have to look here.

Anyway, his name was Hiroo Onada and I wrote his story here and I used him as an example of how, like, it doesn't matter how disciplined you are, it doesn't matter how motivated you are, it doesn't matter how strong you are, how much support you have,

if you have the wrong goal, you're fucked.

then all of that other stuff, it's just gonna hurt you and I use Onada as an example of that.

a war that didn't exist, literally killing people, island in the Philippines.

He was shooting at people, killing people, hiding in the jungle for 27 years and obviously, he was doing an amazing job but he was like Don Quixote, he was like chasing windmills, right?

So the chapter opens up with that introduce this topic of values.

So if we agree that we should sacrifice, what is worth sacrificing for?

from Megadeath and Metallica as an example of good and bad values and then I kind of finished the chapter up what are good and bad values and I just lay out a few principles.

be one, reality-based, two, socially constructive and three, immediate and controllable.

Bad values tend to be one, superstitious, two, socially destructive and three, not immediate or controllable.

I go on to say, "Honesty is a good value because it's something that you can have complete control over, it reflects reality if it's sometimes unpleasant.

kind of diving into what makes a value good or bad and then I finish this section by saying, five chapters of this book, so chapters five through nine, kind of classes of values or things to give a fuck about that are a little bit counterintuitive

but I have found to be very important and that's where chapter five picks up.

You Are Always Choosing.

the most important chapter.

I would say two, five and nine are the most important chapters.

challenging notions of happiness, five is about responsibility and then nine will be about death.

So you are always choosing, a story about William James reader a thought experiment mafia guy kidnaps your family their head and says, if you don't run a marathon tomorrow, and you're out of shape, the couch in a week, would be absolutely traumatic,

it'd be terrifying.

experience of your life.

nine months, hiring a coach, buying a bunch of gear, practicing, running the marathon, having your family attend to cheer you on, then going and celebrating about and love in your life.

experiences of your life.

is that the actual pain isn't any different.

changed is the context and what I argue in this chapter is that, changed is the perception that you chose to run the marathon or not.

when we feel as though we are choosing our struggles problems we have in our life, they seem much more acceptable and easier for us to deal with.

problems and our struggles are thrust upon us without our control, that's when we suffer, that's when we feel completely powerless.

of this chapter is that, whether you realize it or not.

There's no such thing as a situation where you are not choosing your struggle or not choosing your problem.

The only thing that changes it to yourself or not.

People don't like hearing this point, they don't like hearing the idea their life, they chose it and the second section of this chapter, the reason why is, I point out, responsibility and fault.

responsible for something, it means that it's your fault completely different things.

You know, it's like if I get cancer, it's not my fault that I got cancer, but it is absolutely my responsibility to deal with the cancer.

a newborn baby on my doorstep, somebody left it there but it is absolutely my responsibility, I have to do something about it and every moment of life is this way.

Even if the mob boss kidnaps your family, makes you run a marathon, you are choosing to run the marathon.

of the people you care about the pain of the marathon.

from moment to moment is how to value each experience.

say I go to a baseball game I'm choosing to be bored.

Why?

Because I'm choosing not to be interested in the baseball game.

blame the baseball game, like, oh, you're so fucking boring, why don't you entertain me more?

definition of entertainment?

I find interesting?

ability to pay more attention or appreciate the subtleties of throwing a curve ball or something?

In each experience in life, choice embedded in it and we tend not to be aware of that choice of it, two things happen.

comfortable with pain and two, we actually get off our ass and fucking do something whose fault it is anymore, boring or tedious or unfair.

You fucking do something, moment, you have a choice, to do something or not do something, take responsibility yourself that habit or that value everything fucking changes.

kind of lay that argument out pages and literally, knocking down objections to it.

So, I knocked down the responsibility, fault fallacy, talk about life situation, I talk about surviving trauma, I talk about cultural pressures.

There's no fucking excuse.

that I'm like an extremist about it's responsibility.

sounding too self-important, About Everything, But So Am I.

This chapter starts out with another fun little thought experiment, full credit for this, kind of brought to my attention by a friend of mine named Lydia.

it, but basically it says, like what seemed cutting edge and scientifically true five years ago and I point out that like, people thought, you know, the Earth was flat, Western Hemisphere existed, of a thing called phlogiston out to a personal level.

what you thought was true mentioned a few stupid things I thought was true when I was a kid and then, from there I say, you think is true today that's gonna look 20 years from now or 500 years from now.

so true and important today ridiculous to us at some point and that's actually a good thing.

Like, we should hope that our present day beliefs look ridiculous to us grown and become smarter.

the time with my own writing.

stuff I wrote 10 years ago and I cringe, I'm like, this is awful, like, I can't believe I've published this I'm like, that's great, it means I've become a better writer.

is kind of setting us up about beliefs and uncertainty little bit open-minded for lack of a better term.

little bit on the research and how arbitrary it is the dangers of certainty more fun sections of the book.

for a number of years.

She was non-violent, thank God.

What was remarkable about her was that, she had this unbelievable certainty, like absolutely unshakable certainty in completely bat shit, crazy beliefs.

I mean, she literally told me to my face were supposed to be together, was going to cure death.

These were things that she said to me kind of poke holes in them didn't make a lot of sense, it had absolutely no effect.

didn't change her mind at all.

To me, it was fascinating in that, people I've ever known probably the most certain I've ever met in my life and so, I use her as an example certainty can get us into of examples, you know, from other people's lives the benefits of uncertainty.

you to learn and improve.

like extremist ideology crazy zealot for some cause.

It opens room for dialogue with people, to learn from other people, to make other people feel more heard, which improves relationships.

I've got a section in here that I call Manson's law of avoidance, and name a law after myself.

But Manson's law of avoidance says that, threatens your identity, I bring this up in terms of, what are the pieces of information that from 'cause ultimately, sense of certainty, our ego from perceived threats and so, Manson's law basically says that,

like the more threatening something is, the more we will become certain in things dealing with that truth.

law of avoidance is that, we should define ourselves as loosely and ambiguously as possible because the less defined ourself is, to defense mechanisms or faulty ideas to protect ourselves.

idea, the idea of no self, no such thing as self, then there's nothing to protect you need to be certain about in the first place.

chapter with a few questions uncertain in your life.

Question number one is, what if I'm wrong?

would it mean if I were wrong?

is, would being wrong problem than my current problem, both for myself and others?

And that's chapter six.

Chapter seven, Failure Is The Way Forward.

This is actually, probably the most mill self-help chapters.

If you've made it this far in the book, it's not gonna surprise you that a book that's just spent 150 pages arguing that path to positive experience, sacrifice prevents entitlement, prevents crazy beliefs, that we're now gonna argue that failure

is actually a huge component of success.

just a series of stories about all the ways Picasso failed, talk about a little known psychologist who's from Poland.

studying Holocaust survivors and then the real big Jim of this chapter or the thing that everybody seems to love the Do Something principle humorous little video about it check it out on the channel, principle is very simple the great gurus of all time,

my high school math teacher his name is Mr. Packwood, shout out to Mr. Packwood, what's up.

Whenever we were taking a test, he used to always tell us, he'd say, do, rewrite the problem because when you rewrite the problem, it will help your mind find the next step and it was crazy 'cause it worked, question, and you'd be like, have no idea what to do,

copying out the problem and you'd be like, well, I can do this one little thing here and then something about it, it just made you see the next thing and when I went off to university, for all sorts of things.

on a term paper, I'd be like okay, let's just write the next paragraph and I'd write a paragraph and sure enough, the rest of the paper would come or if I needed to study for an exam, you know, it was like, all right, this chapter tonight and I'd study that chapter

I've studied three chapters and so, I kind of just adopted this little of like, do something, the smallest thing and do it.

from a lot of social anxiety, I used to tell myself, person you want to talk to.

That was it, that was all I had to do, and then what would end up happening is I would walk towards them and I would keep walking and keep walking standing in front of this person 'cause I'm standing there so to prevent the awkwardness, and next thing I know,

and I make a new friend.

of applies universally, it applies all over the place.

It's one of those like just real special you can take and use anywhere.

point out in the book too that you need motivation to have action but I point out that it's the other way around, action actually leads to motivation and that's the Do Something principle.

Importance of Saying No.

chapter of the book.

Again, it logically follows that, if you're willing to traverse the negative to get to the positive, responsibility for your struggles, failure on the way to success, then being able to say no to people, being able to manage conflict, to have for your relationships

pretty much how I would define a healthy relationship, is two people, it in here as two people hearing no from each other.

I have a section in here called Rejection Makes Your Life Better, which on a more philosophical note, of choosing what you value, in order to value one thing, you have to reject the other things.

I want to value my career able to sacrifice other things.

able to reject other things.

dream of becoming a pro gamer or reject the idea that I'm going to or reject the idea on a beach somewhere.

prioritize over everything else, that means by definition, I must be willing to reject other things.

If I'm not willing to reject those things, then I'm not able to actually prioritize what's important in my life who struggle to say no, they often feel very lost they want from themselves.

I talk about this, you know, saying no is kind of like the fundamental basis of boundaries in relationships.

How, if you wanna have a healthy marriage partnership, you need to be able people what you don't like, tell people what your values are, be willing to disappoint the other person gonna stick with you to disappoint your partner, developed trust for them.

if they're gonna stick with you when shit hits the fan.

So, this is why couples that never fight, eventually end in a very toxic place.

by talking about commitment hidden freedom of commitment, or one or two things important than anything else and committing full-heartedly to them.

On the surface, it sounds limiting particularly in my generation, we avoid those sorts of commitments.

I wanna go everywhere, I wanna date all the people.

It's like this constant effort to always keep your options open.

yourself to a few things in your life that you truly care about, there's a new form of freedom subtle level, which is that, fuck about this stuff, about who I'm gonna date, I don't have to give a fuck about what my gaming friends think about me.

These are the things I care about, gonna measure my life, that's what I'm gonna pursue and there's just this abundance of inner mental freedom to pursue it.

nine, And Then You Die.

favorite thing I've ever written.

It's about death obviously, about a friend of mine who died at a party when I was 19 and traumatic, upsetting.

I spent pretty much that entire summer dealing with depression.

it actually ended up experience for me, important experiences of my life.

So this chapter is about how death that most crystallizes what matters in life.

death or come close to death, that it's most clear to you what you should be giving a fuck about and therefore, it makes sense and this kind of goes back to the Stoics, question our own mortality, think about our own death I've kind of instinctually done

for a lot of my life is, I've wondered, you know, if I died a year from now, what would I do with my last year?

If I died tomorrow, or if I got diagnosed would I have any regrets?

Would I feel like I wasted time?

If so, what was the time I wasted?

This is a very important project for us and throughout the chapter, philosophers and scholars, his name is Ernest Becker and then I use a little vignette of, I guess you could call it, when I visit high places.

opposite of a fear of heights, I have like an attraction to heights.

was at the Cape of Good Hope massive cliff over the ocean just walk up to the edge blows the wrong way, have this weird fetish edge of these things and it drives everybody in my life crazy, people wonder if I'm okay.

writing this chapter that I kind of realized why.

a lot of fear in doing it.

up to the edge of a cliff it forces you to reckon if I do trip and fall?

now, this could be it.

little bit intoxicating for me about that thought, not that I want to trip and fall me to think about my life in a way that feels very profound to me.

communicate to the reader in that last chapter and you know, I just, concepts of the book.

tolerating negative experience, uncertain, tolerating failure, the willingness to say and hear no, all up in this nice little bow and how death elucidates everything that is meaningful in life.

So, that's the book.

That's what all the hype's about.

please check out the book.

I use a lot of humor, I use a lot of profanity.

people don't, which is fine, you like these ideas, I encourage you to check out the book.

this was kind of a refresher, I appreciate that and you know, please send this to somebody who you think would enjoy the book or find it meaningful I do weekly videos with life advice of different concepts, philosophers, psychologists, that makes your life better.

Subscribe below, like this video, definitely like this video.

If you have any thoughts about the book, leave it in the comments.

this is Mark Manson, and I'll catch you later.

(upbeat rock music)