The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F How Saying No Is Doing Someone a Favor
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The Book in Three Sentences
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is a volume that challenges the conventions of self-help by inviting the reader to NOT try, say no often and embrace negative thinking.
- Not giving a f*ck is near beingness comfy with existence different and caring about something more of import than adversity.
- You must give a f*ck near something.
The V Big Ideas
- Conventional self-help communication focuses on what you're NOT. Further, information technology zeros in on what you perceive your personal shortcomings and failures to already exist, and highlights them for yous.
- The key to a good life is non giving a f*ck nigh more; it's giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and firsthand and important.
- When you feel angry near feeling angry or anxious near feeling anxious, y'all're stuck in what Manson calls, "The Feedback Loop from Hell."
- All the same, by non giving a f*ck that yous feel bad, y'all short-circuit the Feedback Loop from Hell; you say to yourself, "I feel like due south*it, only who gives a f*ck?"
- Because there's an infinite amount of things we tin can at present see or know, there is besides an infinite number of means we can discover that we don't measure upwardly, that we're non skilful enough, that things aren't as great equally they could exist. And this rips us autonomously inside.
What Not Giving a F*ck Means
- Subtlety #ane: Not giving a f*ck does non hateful being indifferent; it ways being comfy with existence different. A sneaky truth nearly life. There's no such affair every bit not giving a f*ck. You must give a f*ck about something. You can't be an important and life-changing presence for some people without as well being a joke and an embarrassment to others.
- Subtlety #ii: To not give a f*ck most adversity, you must start give a f*ck about something more important than arduousness. If you find yourself consistently giving besides many f*cks about picayune due south*it that bothers you lot, chances are y'all don't take much going on in your life to requite a legitimate f*ck about.
- Subtlety #3: Whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing what to give a f*ck virtually. Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a f*ck about what'south truly f*ckworthy. The idea of not giving a f*ck is a uncomplicated way of reorienting our expectations for life and choosing what is important and what is not.
The Subtle Fine art of Not Giving a F*ck Summary
The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one's negative experience is itself a positive experience.
The more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. Philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as "The Backwards Law."
Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience.
To not requite a f*ck is to stare downwardly life'due south nearly terrifying and difficult challenges and still take activeness.
When you lot give besides many f*cks—when you give a f*ck nearly anybody and everything—yous will feel that yous're perpetually entitled to be comfortable and happy at all times, that everything is supposed to be just exactly the f*cking mode you want it to be.
Pain and loss are inevitable and we should permit go of trying to resist them.
The greatest truths in life are usually the most unpleasant to hear.
Nosotros suffer for the simple reason that suffering is biologically useful. It is nature's preferred agent for inspiring change.
Don't promise for a life without bug. There'south no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of expert bug.
Problems never cease; they just get exchanged and/or upgraded.
Happiness comes from problems you lot enjoy having and solving.
Nobody who is actually happy has to stand in front of a mirror and tell himself that he's happy.
Emotions are just biological signals designed to nudge you in the management of beneficial change.
Negative emotions are a call to action. When y'all feel them, it's because you're supposed to do something. [Notation: Tony Robbins discusses negative emotions at length in Awaken the Behemothic Within .]
Just because something feels skillful doesn't mean it is good.
Everything comes with an inherent sacrifice—whatever makes u.s.a. feel adept will also inevitably brand us feel bad.
A more interesting question, a question that most people never consider, is, "What hurting practice y'all desire in your life? What are you lot willing to struggle for?" Because that seems to exist a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.
What determines your success isn't, "What do y'all desire to savor?" The relevant question is, "What pain exercise yous desire to sustain?" The path to happiness is a path full of s*itheaps and shame.
Who yous are is defined past what you're willing to struggle for.
Our struggles determine our successes.
Our bug birth our happiness, along with slightly better, slightly upgraded problems.
The problem with the cocky-esteem movement is that it measured self-esteem by how positively people felt about themselves. But a true and authentic measurement of 1'southward self-worth is how people feel nearly the negative aspects of themselves.
People who feel entitled view every occurrence in their life every bit either an affirmation of or a threat to, their own greatness.
The true measurement of self-worth is not how a person feels about her positive experiences, but rather how she feels about her negative experiences.
A person who really has a high self-worth is able to look at the negative parts of his character frankly—"Yes, sometimes I'one thousand irresponsible with money," "Yes, sometimes I exaggerate my ain successes," "Yep, I rely likewise much on others to support me and should be more self-reliant"—and then acts to amend upon them.
A lot of people are afraid to take mediocrity because they believe that if they accept it, they'll never achieve anything, never ameliorate and that their life won't thing.
The rare people who practice get truly exceptional at something do and then not because they believe they're infrequent. On the contrary, they become amazing because they're obsessed with improvement. And that obsession with improvement stems from an unerring belief that they are, in fact, not that great at all.
If suffering is inevitable, if our problems in life are unavoidable, and so the question we should be request is not "How do I finish suffering?" just "Why am I suffering—for what purpose?"
Cocky-sensation is like an onion. The first layer is a uncomplicated understanding of i's emotions. The second layer is an ability to ask why we feel certain emotions. This layer of questioning helps usa understand the root cause of the emotions that overwhelm u.s.. In one case nosotros sympathize that root cause, we can ideally do something to change information technology. The tertiary level is our personal values: Why do I consider this to be success/failure? How am I choosing to measure myself? By what standard am I judging myself and anybody around me?
Values underlie everything nosotros are and do. If what we value is unhelpful, if what we consider success/failure is poorly chosen, then everything based upon those values—the thoughts, the emotions, the mean solar day-to-day feelings—volition all be out of whack.
Much of the advice out there operates at a shallow level of simply trying to make people feel good in the brusque term, while the real long-term problems never get solved.
Take a moment and think of something that's actually bugging you. At present inquire yourself why it bugs y'all. Chances are the answer volition involve a failure of some sort.
What is considerately true about your situation is not as important as how you come to encounter the situation, how you choose to measure information technology and value information technology.
Our values determine the metrics by which we measure out ourselves and everyone else.
If you desire to change how y'all encounter your problems, you take to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.
Pleasure is not the cause of happiness; rather, it is the outcome.
Research shows that once one is able to provide for basic concrete needs (nutrient, shelter, and and so on), the correlation betwixt happiness and worldly success quickly approaches zero.
Constant positivity is a form of abstention, not a valid solution to life'due south issues—issues which, by the manner, if you're choosing the right values and metrics, should be invigorating y'all and motivating y'all.
When nosotros force ourselves to stay positive at all times, we deny the existence of our life's problems. And when we deny our problems, we rob ourselves of the chance to solve them and generate happiness.
Problems add together a sense of significant and importance to our lives.
Some of the greatest moments of i's life are not pleasant, non successful, not known, and not positive.
Skillful values are 1) reality-based, 2) socially constructive, and iii) firsthand and controllable. Bad values are 1) superstitious, 2) socially destructive, and iii) not immediate or controllable.
When nosotros have poor values—that is, poor standards nosotros set for ourselves and others—we are substantially giving f*cks about the things that don't matter, things that in fact make our life worse.
Often the just difference betwixt a problem being painful or being powerful is a sense that nosotros chose it, and that we are responsible for it.
If you're miserable in your current situation, chances are it's because y'all experience like some part of it is outside your command—that there'southward a problem you have no ability to solve, a problem that was somehow thrust upon you lot without your choosing.
We don't always command what happens to us. Merely nosotros always control how nosotros translate what happens to us, every bit well as how we answer. [Notation: Ryan Holiday writes virtually perspective at length in The Obstacle Is the Way.)
The more we cull to have responsibility for our lives, the more power we will do over our lives. [Notation: "Accept 100% Responsibility for Your Life" is Principle #1 in The Success Principles by Jack Canfield.)
Accepting responsibleness for our problems is thus the first step to solving them.
A lot of people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because they believe that to be responsible for your problems is to likewise be at fault for your issues.
The responsibility/fault fallacy allows people to laissez passer off the responsibility for solving their problems to others.
Our beliefs are malleable, and our memories are horribly unreliable.
The more than something threatens your identity, the more than y'all will avoid it. Manson calls this, "The Law of Avoidance"
When we let become of the stories nosotros tell well-nigh ourselves, to ourselves, we free ourselves upwardly to actually act (and fail) and grow.
There is niggling that is unique or special about your problems. That's why letting go is so liberating.
The narrower and rarer the identity you cull for yourself, the more everything volition seem to threaten you. For that reason, define yourself in the simplest and most ordinary ways possible.
Questions that will assistance y'all brood more uncertainty in your life.
- What if I'm wrong?
- What would information technology hateful if I were wrong?
- Would being incorrect create a meliorate or a worse problem than my current problem, for both myself and others?
It's worth remembering that for any alter to happen in your life, you must be wrong nigh something.
Beingness able to look at and evaluate different values without necessarily adopting them is perhaps the cardinal skill required in changing i'due south own life in a meaningful style.
Manson tries to live with few rules, merely one that he's adopted over the years is this: if it's downwards to him being screwed up, or everybody else being screwed upwardly, it is far, far, far more likely that he's the i who's screwed upward.
If information technology feels like it's you versus the world, chances are it'south really just y'all versus yourself.
Improvement at anything is based on thousands of tiny failures, and the magnitude of your success is based on how many times you've failed at something. If someone is better than you at something, and then it's probable because she has failed at information technology more than than yous have. If someone is worse than you lot, it'south likely because he hasn't been through all of the painful learning experiences y'all have.
Nosotros can be truly successful only at something nosotros're willing to fail at. If nosotros're unwilling to fail, then nosotros're unwilling to succeed.
Life is nigh not knowing and so doing something anyhow.
Activeness isn't merely the consequence of motivation; it's too the crusade of it.
If you lack the motivation to brand an important change in your life, do something—anything, actually—and then harness the reaction to that activeness every bit a way to begin motivating yourself.
When the standard of success becomes merely interim—when any result is regarded every bit progress and important, when inspiration is seen as a reward rather than a prerequisite—we propel ourselves ahead. We feel free to fail, and that failure moves united states of america frontwards.
Ultimately, the only style to achieve meaning and a sense of importance in one's life is through a rejection of alternatives, a narrowing of freedom, a choice of commitment to one place, i belief, or (gulp) one person.
We all must give a f*ck about something, in order to value something. And to value something, nosotros must decline what is non that something.
The desire to avoid rejection at all costs, to avoid confrontation and disharmonize, the desire to effort to have everything equally and to make everything cohere and harmonize, is a deep and subtle form of entitlement.
The departure between a healthy and an unhealthy relationship comes down to two things: i) how well each person in the relationship accepts responsibility, and 2) the willingness of each person to both reject and exist rejected by their partner.
The marking of an unhealthy human relationship is two people who endeavour to solve each other's problems in club to experience adept most themselves. Rather, a healthy relationship is when two people solve their own bug in order to feel good nigh each other.
Entitled people who arraign others for their own emotions and actions practice so because they believe that if they constantly paint themselves as victims, eventually someone will come forth and save them, and they will receive the dear they've ever wanted. Entitled people who take the blame for other people's emotions and actions exercise so because they believe that if they "set up" their partner and save him or her, they will receive the love and appreciation they've always wanted.
It can exist difficult for people to recognize the deviation between doing something out of obligation and doing it voluntarily. So here's a litmus test: enquire yourself, "If I refused, how would the relationship change?" Similarly, ask, "If my partner refused something I wanted, how would the relationship change?"
It's not about giving a f*ck about everything your partner gives a f*ck about; it'south near giving a f*ck about your partner regardless of the f*cks he or she gives.
Conflict exists to prove us who is there for united states unconditionally and who is just in that location for the benefits.
For a relationship to be healthy, both people must be willing and able to both say no and hear no.
When trust is destroyed, it can be rebuilt only if the post-obit two steps happen: ane) the trust-breaker admits the true values that caused the breach and owns up to them, and ii) the trust-breaker builds a solid track record of improved behavior over time.
Death is the light by which the shadow of all of life'due south meaning is measured.
Confronting the reality of our ain mortality is of import because information technology obliterates all the crappy, fragile, superficial values in life.
You lot are going to die, and that's considering y'all were fortunate enough to take lived.
Recommended Reading
If y'all similar The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, you may also enjoy the following books:
- H ow to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Honey Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It by Kamal Ravikant
- Make Your Bed by William H. McRaven
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