How to Stop Worrying about Coronavirus (COVID-19) and Everything Else We Cannot Control
Based on The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
The first time I read Mark Manson’s book was back in November 2017, just a few weeks after its initial publication. It literally changed my life! At that time my wife and I had lived overseas for around 3 years and we were due to return to Silicon Valley, but there was nobody waiting for us. My worries about our future were paralyzing me from executing our plan since some of my friends who had recently returned were struggling to get a decent job for several months and it was taking most of them more than a year. Only after reading the book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck the fears of the uncertainty of the new life in one of the most expensive places in the world faded away. This helped us to successfully move back to Silicon Valley where we both joined one of the fastest-growing companies in Silicon Valley within only six weeks of moving back.
I felt like everything was under control and mostly calm ever since then until recently… News, emails, social networks, friends and family who couldn’t stop talking with anxiety about COVID-19. Initially, I wasn’t buying this whole narrative, but at some point, I started to realize that this time the situation had gotten serious… Slowly the level of stress caused by uncertainty about the future rose to levels where I couldn’t stop spending several hours a day going through news, which significantly impacted my cheerful mood and hindered my productivity. Finally, just when I realized that I had to do something about my state, I remembered Mark Manson’s book, but I barely remembered the content and the main takeaways, so I decided to revisit it.
It is a very short book, so I read it in one sitting and suddenly felt a great positive impact on my mood and productivity. Just after a few days, firm pressure of the COVID-19 information was so strong that I started losing my healthy state of mind again, so I decided to go through the book again and create the infographic with the main points as a quick reference to get back into the productive state and get the necessary motivation to keep moving forward in these uncertain times.
Why I think it is crucial not to give a f*ck about Coronavirus:
1. When we’re worrying about something we are giving away our energy and time to worries
2. When we are giving too much energy and time to worries we have very little energy and time to do something about the current situation
3. When we have very little energy and time to do something about the current situation we fail to adapt and do something about this situation
4. When we fail to adapt and do something about this situation we cannot help ourselves or our family or our community
5. When we cannot help ourselves or our family or our community we become the ones who need help and therefore we begin making the situation worse for our family, community, government, and humanity as a whole.
What exactly did Mark Manson mean by Not Giving a F*ck?
1. Not giving a f*ck does not mean being indifferent. It means being comfortable with being different and doing outstanding actions that may not be common within your surrounding that would result in what you really want to do
2. To not give a f*ck about adversity, you must first give a f*ck about something more important than adversity. It means that the only reason that we are paying attention to the situation we cannot do personally anything about is because we haven’t found a more important thing that we can actually do.
3. We all have a limited number of f*cks to give; pay attention to where and who you give them to. It means you only get a limited amount of energy and time throughout our life and the older you get the less you have it, so you must spend it in taking care of the things that you personally can make a real differenceIn other words, not giving a f*ck is letting go of the things you can’t control and focusing your attention on what you can do.
9 steps on how to stop worrying (SCLAFFERS)
1. Stop being always right
2. Choose how to respond
3. Learn how to say no
4. Accept Death
5. Find problems you like solving
6. Focus on things you can do
7. Embrace failure
8. Realize that you are not special
9. Select the right values
Let's dive into the details and the most important action items to successfully complete these 9 steps.
1. Stop being always right
1.1 Understand that our minds are subject to faulty memories, pattern-making, knowledge, and other biases
1.2 Realise that once you become certain about the things and yourself you get stuck and stop growing
1.3 Accept that to escape from becoming a close-minded ignorant person is it critical to constantly challenge your thoughts and beliefs
1.4 Don’t try to find yourself but keep growing by challenging your beliefs about yourself no matter how uncomfortable or painful it may be.
2. Choose how to respond
2.1 Understand that you are not your thoughts and feelings.
2.2 Acknowledge that you may not be responsible for trauma or setbacks, but you are responsible for how you respond to each of them:
You choose how you see things.
You choose how you react to things.
You choose how you value things.
2.3 Identify where you play a victim, accept the situation, think what you could do to get what you want and do it.
2.4 Remember that you are only as powerful or as powerless as you feel
3. Learn how to say no
3.1 Realise that you are constantly getting distracted by endless alternatives which make it hard to commit to any choice
3.2 Understand that freedom is not to keep choosing but to reject alternatives and by doing so we achieve meaning and a sense of importance
3.3 Make a choice of something (partner, profession, hobby, non-profit), set priorities and commit to them.
3.4 Reject and ignore everything that is distracting you from making progress on the things you have prioritized
4. Accept Death
4.1 Realise that we as humans are terrified by the prospect of death and therefore we are mostly driven by fear rather than our values
4.2 Understand that if we are terrified we are unlikely to make the right choices and be truly valuable to both ourselves and to society
4.3 Get freed from the fear of death by accepting that at some point in your life you’ll eventually die anyway
4.4 Clarify your true values and enjoy the purposeful life
5. Find problems you like solving.
5.1 Realise that happiness is not a solvable equation or a must-have checklist
5.2 Understand that true happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving often over and over again.
5.3 Ask yourself three questions:
A. What pain do you want in your life?
B. What are you willing to struggle for?
C. What is the pain that you want to sustain?
5.4 Choose the problems in your life and start working on overcoming them
6. Focus on things you can do
6.1 Release that which you put yourself through, that is, the Feedback Loop from Hell:
A. You get anxious about something or somebody in your life.
B. That anxiety cripples you and makes you wonder why you’re so anxious.
C. This makes you become anxious about being anxious.
D. Now that you’re anxious about your anxiety, it is causing more anxiety.
6.2 Understand that the key to a good life is ignoring destruction and focusing on what is really important, true and immediate that you can do.
6.3 Stop constantly fixing your attention on what you don’t have, what you wish you had or things that are wrong where you can’t have any impact.
6.4 Start doing things that you can no matter how small or seemingly insignificant they are.
7. Embrace failure
7.1 Accept that we cannot grow without experiencing pain or failure
7.2 Realise that it is better to accept your discomfort and go forward instead of pretending that it doesn’t exist and hide.
7.3 Keep in mind that when you face your fear and go forward you’ll realize that most of the pain is self-imagined and it will lessen.
7.4 Take action, no matter how small, since it is not just the effect of motivation but it is also the cause of it
8. Realize that you are not special
8.1 Stop telling yourself to a mirror that you are amazing and deserve everything in this world just because you were born on this planet
8.2 Realise that the expectation of yourself as being special puts a very high bar to yourself that results in disappointment, aggression, and depression.
8.3 Understand that if we feel special, we automatically feel entitled to the fact that we deserve the fruits of success without doing any significant work to achieve it that results in loss of motivation
8.4 Acknowledge your mediocrity to free yourself from resentment of your failures and mistakes as well as to open the shortcomings that you need to improve to become the better version of yourself
9. Select the right values
9.1 Realise that much of the suffering is due to the wrong metrics we are using to judge ourselves.
A. Your understanding of what is considered to be good may not be the same as what others believe, such as what a good partner is.
B. Your self-evaluation may be based on other people’s behavior and achievements, not yours, such as being better than others in anything.
9.2 Understand that good values may lead to production where you may make a difference, unlike bad values which may lead to problems where you can only suffer
A. Example of bad values: pleasure, material success, being always right, staying positive
B. Example of good values: honesty, innovation, vulnerability, standing up for oneself and others, self-respect, curiosity, humility, charity, creativity
9.3 Reflect on yourself and identify which values you need to change to make sure you have adopted the right values that are dependent only on your actions, rather than somebody else’s opinions.
Of course, this infographic with its bullet points outlines only the most important takeaways and doesn’t guide a reader to these conclusions that can tremendously improve one’s life, especially in these challenging times, unlike the book. We hope this would be a helpful sum up for people who do not have time, a reminder for people who already read and drives further curiosity for people who haven’t read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.
Thank you for taking the time to go through this article and infographic. We truly hope it is going to help you to worry less and to have a vigorous life despite any threats.
Please spread the word so that we could all help our communities by being less stressed and more productive in this challenging time!
