Book Summary — The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck (3)
Chapter 3: You are not Special
Read Chapter 1: Don’t Try and Chapter 2: Happiness is a Problem first if you haven’t :)
Sometime in the 1960s, developing “high self-esteem” — having positive thoughts and feelings about oneself — became all the rage in psychology. In the next decade, the 1970s, self-esteem practices began to be taught to parents, emphasized by therapists, politicians, and teachers, and institued into educational policy.
But it’s a generation later and the data is in: we’re not all exceptional.
People, with high self-esteem, usually feel good about themselves. Feeling that they are doing something great, even when they are not. Well, you can’t blame anyone, it’s part of our society now. Sometimes this is a good thing, because this is somewhat contagious and it helps alleviate and motivate people.
What’s wrong about this high self-esteem movement is that it requires people to feel good, all the time. The metrics used in this movement is how positive they feel and think about themselves. Whereas, a more accurate metrics would be how people feel, think, and accept about their negative selves.
According to Mark, this will make people become narcissist. They will feel entitled to feel all the good things. When good things happen to them, they tend to think, “I deserve this.”. Otherwise, when bad things come to them, they might think something like this, “Somebody is trying to take me down.”. Their view are distorted. Thinking positive all the time also has its drawback, those who do will have insecurities.
Entitled people, they are incapable of acknowledging their own problems openly and honestly, are incapable of improving their lives in any lasting or meaningful way. They are left chasing high after high and accumulate greater and greater levels of denial.
Did you ever have a problem you couldn’t solve? Or a traumatic experience? Did it make you feel like shit? Whether you have it or not, Mark and I are gonna tell you a little something.
Things like that, most likely will make us think, unconsciously that we’re either uniquely special or uniquely defective. Therefore, we will hope that somehow, the universe or God, will understand our suffering and will make a special rules for us. We become entitled. This entitlement comes in 2 ways.
Although they are 2 different mindsets, in the core they are just the same. Thoughts from selfish people.
Now, try to search your problem at Goo*gle. Chances are, you will find people with similar problems. Everyone, from the 7 going to 8 billions of human populations have their own problems. Millions will have similar problems like you. You just have to accept that you are not special and move on.
The Tyranny of Exceptionalism
Internet! Social media! Best time to be alive huh? If you’re still young and can be a bit productive I guess. But at the same time, we are being bombarded with so many informations that we can’t process them. So we are choosing, the best of the best, to be processed in our tiny little brain.
Sadly, most of all are pretty average. We only have a special thing or two. It takes a genius to master things in such a short amount of time. We are trained to believe that only exceptional things are valuable. On the social media, on the internet, people are flaunting their chosen moments. They are telling “Hey, I’m having a great moment here. Are you?”. Then, you start to feel like shit. This constant message they are telling us, are stockpiling our insecurities, and setting our standards that most likely we can’t achieve.
B-b-but, if I’m not Going to be Special or Extraordinary, What’s the Point?
This high self-esteem movement is telling us to feel special all the time. Everyone says it. Celebrity, politicians, famous people, actors/actresses, you name it, they say it. If everyone is special, what’s the meaning of special? You are special, if you’re compared to less special people.
Being “average” has become the new standard of failure. The worst thing you can be is in the middle of the pack, the middle of the bell curve. A lot of people are afraid to accept mediocrity because they believe that if they accept it, they’ll never achieve anything, never improve, and that their life won’t matter.
What’s worse, some people have this strategy to become the extreme low end of the bell curve. They are competing to each other, to tell which one is more miserable, more pitiable, the most victimized.
You should realize that when you’re treating mediocrity as bad, you are at the same time labelling other people’s lives suck. Because, most of us are pretty average. It’s like the Pareto law, or usually known as the 20 80 rule. You could say that only 20% of the population are having a great time, that they are exceptional. So the rest 80% are just mediocre, and maybe they live like shit, envying the 20%.
What you should know and think about starting now, is that being a mediocre is not a bad thing at all. Being mediocre means that you have some rooms of improvement,
The ticket to emotional health, comes from eating your veggies — that is, accepting the bland and mundane truths of life: truths such as “Your actions actually don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things” and “The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that’s okay.”
Accept those facts and try to be grateful, and try not to bash mediocrity all the time. Hopefully, you will have a growing appreciations of the small things in life, e.g. meeting your parents, watching a movie with your friends, a quite and peaceful afternoon, a good nap.
Those things are indeed ordinary, truly ordinary.
But maybe they’re ordinary for a reason: because they are what actually matters.
End of Chapter 3 :>
