You can’t have everything in life. You can’t always please everyone all the time. You can’t be a major success in every area of your life. It’s impossible, something has to give.
In the best selling book ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck‘ Mark Manson suggests that we should only give a f*ck about a small number of things in life. Everything else we can just forget about. Which is good, because you can now accept your faults, and you can stop feeling bad about things that are just not important to you.
Not giving a f*ck is not about being indifferent though. It just means that you’re comfortable with being different. Don’t say f*ck it to everything in life, just to the unimportant things.
The key is to gradually reduce the things you care about, so that you only give a f*ck about the most important things. Don’t waste time worrying about the wrong things.
Here’s 4 things I took from the book:
1. Choose What You Give a F*ck About
We must find something important in our lives, something that we really care about and just focus on this. Focus on the big wins in life, not the small meaningless things.
The key here is not about more, but less. We have so many things available to us now that it’s easy to lose track about what it is that we care about. There are always new shiny things to grab our attention that seem like the most important thing at the time. But they are distractions and can make us lose sight of the important things.
Actively choose what you care about, and who’s opinion’s you care about, then let everything else go. Think of what will really matter in 20 years time.
2. What Are You Willing to Struggle For?
We should not try to eliminate suffering completely from our lives. In fact we should get comfortable with it.
Problems are a part of life and they will always appear. We should not avoid them, but seek to solve them. We must choose the problems we want to solve in our lives and then go out and suffer with them. This is what creates true happiness.
The secret in life is not to constantly pursue what makes us happy, but to decide how much we are willing to suffer for our goals. It is our struggles that determine our success.
“Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for“
Mark Manson
We shouldn’t ask, what do I want from life? Because everyone wants happiness and success. We should instead ask ourselves what kind of pain do I want in my life? By pushing through that pain and achieving something great, that’s where fulfilment comes from.
3. Accept Mediocrity
We all like to think that we are special and destined for great things, but the truth is you average at best. If you’re already special, then why do you need to improve in any area of your life? You’re already awesome at it.
In the book, Manson explains that if you look at most ‘successful’ people, they don’t become exceptional because they believe they’re exceptional. They get there because they accept that they are distinctly average and therefore need to improve. They become obsessed with getting better until they eventually get there.
We too must accept that we are average so that we can improve.
4. Take Action, The Rest Will Follow
If you ever feel stuck or lost with something, all you need to do is just get on and make some progress, no matter how small it is. Just start doing something.
Don’t think of a problem you need to tackle as a mammoth task, this puts you off. Instead, break it down into small, easy to complete activities. For example, instead of sitting down to write a whole book, just say to yourself that you’ll sit down and write one sentence. We all know what happens; once you write one sentence you write a little bit more, and then the words just start to flow.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”
Laozi
It’s a great book by Mark Manson and I would highly recommend checking out his blog for more. I hope you enjoyed the article, but if you didn’t that’s fine, because I really don’t give a f*ck.
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#selfhelp #markmanson #subtleartofnotgivingafuck #personaldevelopment
Ben Caufield 