5 Counterintuitive Life Lessons Everyone Should Consider
From the book: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, by Mark Manson
There are seriously so many incredible lessons in this book, but I think I’ve narrowed it down to my top 5 most interesting things I learned. Still, if you want an even better perspective (or just want to laugh, because it’s really funny), you should read it yourself; like right now! Because this article couldn’t possibly cover it all. So, here’s where I found some free formats online. If you want a quick recap, keep reading:
It’s All About Your Values
One of the most important lessons one can take away from this book is how important our values actually are in our lives and how they have much more influence on our choices and how our lives play out than we realize. And in Mark’s video book summary he mentioned his intention was to make the book about VALUES, which are essential in choosing what you want to give a f*ck about and how you can figure this out.
It’s easy to tell someone to ignore things in life that will distract or hurt us. But it is REALLY hard to actually make it happen. This is where your values come in…
Your values, your ideals, metrics, the things you care about. But things that are a bit more general than just things you enjoy (chocolate cake, your dog, the smell of gasoline — I still never understood this one), such as family, happiness, comfort, sticking up for others, honesty, curiosity, violence, being positive all the time, wealthy just because you like the money, etc. Still, your values are a little more tricky than just picking and choosing; some are easy to spot in yourself, like friends, you truly enjoy the time you spend with your friends, while others take a little self-digging to find and change, especially if they are unhealthy. Like wanting to be the most popular anywhere you go; when in reality, most events in your life are going to be completely out of your control. For example, you are not going to know everyone everywhere you go. Also, popularity isn’t realistic, in that you have no idea what other people think of you at any given moment.
Overall, some values take a little self-digging because they tend to stick with you for a very long time, and can be extremely difficult and often confusing to change. (This is a great website to help figure out your values.)
“Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.”
After all, your values influence your actions, and thus, make up who you are because your values are about your priorities in life. And you will have certain values you prioritize over others, so these “higher” values more greatly influence your choices in life, what your willing to give a f*ck about, what you are willing to sacrifice, etc.
Not Giving a F*ck ≠ Being Indifferent
As Mark drills into this book, “Indifference is impossible.”
If you care about nothing, you are caring, or putting forth effort to express that you care about nothing. In other words, you’re giving a f*ck about being indifferent to everything around you.
So, the real question to reflect on is what do you give a f*ck about?
“There’s no such thing as not giving a f*ck. You must give a f*ck about something.” But that something is almost always based on what you value (I have yet to learn about a case that doesn’t). One example of this: You don’t care about the pollution of water and all the environmental issues associated with that, but you do care about drinking water instead because you need it to survive.
Side Note: Even if you are straight up and down certain that you don’t care about anything and that’s it, then you likely haven’t found what you care about yet, what your values are, or you care about indifference above all else.
As you can imagine, you must choose very carefully what you are giving a f*ck about because you are always caring, putting effort to, or giving a f*ck about something every single second of every day. And since giving a f*ck about everything in your life at the same time is the same as not giving a f*ck about anything at all (Mark explains this by making the point that indifferent people often are indifferent because they just give too many f*cks about everything in their lives), if you give a f*ck about a few very important things in your life (like supportive family members/friends, your new business idea, the research you are passionate about, a skill you really want to excel at, etc.), based on your values and goals, of course, then all the other noise, distractions and whatever else that are not a part of these few very important things will seem smaller and thus stop bothering you so much.
And that’s the big idea here: You have to learn to manage your f*cks.
The “Do Something” Principle
Now it sounds really simple (especially when you’re telling someone else to do it), but in the moment of a HUGE decision-making moment (like which cupcake you should pick out of the 20 displayed, with a line of 50 people behind you!), a seemingly life-altering action moment where you have no idea where to start, or you have something you need to get done but are constantly procrastinating over, the Do Something Principle can feel like the hardest thing you’ll EVER experience. Like you know the option is there, but it is on the other side of a really long tight rope over a bottomless mountain range.
At this moment, some people will research what they should do or of others who have already done it successfully, doubt themselves and forget about their great idea, make a list of all the possibilities and see which they like most, or if you’re anything like me you may start making a pros and cons list and rating each pro or con by importance, or just freeze (also me when I’m at the front of the line in a busy bakery trying to pick a cupcake!).
And I am honestly embarrassed to admit that I too have lost countless good ideas by second guessing myself, lost with no idea where to start and staring at that endlessly long tight rope that could snap at any second.
The solution?: JUST DO SOMETHING! 📢
Anything at all, just to get started! Just start working on it, that microscope you’ve wanted to build since you were 10, re-designing your living room, starting a business, that math problem that looks like it’s in some alien language; instead of wasting time overthinking, doubting yourself, planning, and researching, because chances are, you already have all the information you need, you just need to make something of it.
We often find ourselves scared, or unmotivated at the start of that really long tight rope; so just start with something small. And pretty soon, larger tasks will feel like a breeze compared to that first scary step, and the answers, guidance, and ideas you are looking for will follow much quicker than just sitting on the couch like a sack of potatoes (as my grade 11 physics teacher would say).
And as Mark says in the book:
“Do something — anything, really — and then harness the reaction to that action as a way to begin motivating yourself.”
“Action isn’t the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it.”
Because your simple action of just writing out your questions, that alien math problem, or basic idea of what your trying to build, is what creates emotional reactions and inspirations to further motivate your following actions, while reorienting your mind to think like:
Action → Inspiration → Motivation
Instead of: Emotional inspiration → Motivation → Desired action
Learn What to Take Responsibility For
When we choose our problems, they seem easier and more manageable, but when they are thrust upon us without our control, that’s when they are not as easy.
But the reality is that your every experience has a component of choice; whether you willingly choose to be in that situation or it is forced upon you, that component asks you what will you choose? From choosing which cupcake you should pick (I would personally choose all of them if I could afford it, but then I would end up with a huge stomach ache and maybe some cavities if I chose not to brush my teeth for a few weeks) to going to a football game and sitting there bored out of your mind, or having the time of your life.
At the football game, you are choosing to be bored because you are actively choosing not to be interested in the game, and you can complain all you want and end up ruining your friend’s night who invited you to this dumb game, or you can ask yourself why don’t I change how I define fun? Why don’t I teach myself to pay more attention to the movement of the football in the air, and the role of aerodynamics in its motion? Why? Why? Why?
As you can see, the component of choice in some of these situations is more obvious than in others, but the main idea is that you are ALWAYS CHOOSING even when you don’t realize it. And you have to take responsibility for each choice you make, like going to the dentist because you now have a bunch of cavities you need to deal with from all those cupcakes and not brushing your teeth.
Pain is Meant to Be Experienced, So Don’t Try At All
Now, as soon as you become aware of that choice:
- You get more comfortable with pain
- You are more likely to just do something
Because now, you don’t care who to blame, how unfair something is, or how annoying it sounds because you realize and accept the responsibility of the choice you have and just do it. But LISTEN, it takes a lot of practice to build the habit of constantly taking responsibility, and the only way to build it up is to recognize the choice! However,
“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” — Albert Camus
So why try at all; if you can’t be happy spending your entire life finding out what happiness is? Well, it’s all because of the Backwards Law. You see, not giving a f*ck works opposite of how you think it does:
If you spend your time pursuing a positive outcome all the time, you will end up with a negative result. So following the negative is what must produce the positive outcome. Focusing only on the positive just reminds you again and again of what you’re not, the things you’ve failed at, and what you lack in your life. Since, no truly happy person, someone who knows they are happy or beautiful or rich, feels like they need to stand in front of the mirror telling themselves they are happy, or beautiful, or wealthy, they just are.
For example, my dad, on the night of every big lottery jackpot will say over and over again that this will be his chance, he will finally get to retire and buy a big beach house with a nice sailboat, then wait until the end of the weekend just to find out that he won nothing.
Thus, spending hours of studying, making mistakes and failing, confronting your fears and anxieties, or being in pain at the gym, are what eventually lead to success, because now you have gained all that experience you otherwise wouldn’t have if you hadn’t put in the work to get a better understanding of what you need to be successful. Since,
“Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience.”
And this is why pain is so essential in our lives; if you want to be happy, you need to put in the work to get there, there’s no way around it, “if you don’t play you can’t win”. Now there are shortcuts around pain, but then your success will only be very temporary, and avoiding pain is a form of pain itself, so I guess there aren’t any real shortcuts!
Because in the end:
“To try to avoid pain is to give too many f*cks about pain. In contrast, if you’re able to not give a f*ck about the pain, you become unstoppable.”
