Skip to main content

"The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" by Mark Manson


Let me set this up for you. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck does not mean you don’t give a f*ck about anything (what would be the point of that?), it means you have to choose what to give a f*ck about.

“The point,” says author Mark Manson, isn’t to get away from all the sh*t. The point is to find the sh*t that you enjoy dealing with.”

Think of Manson as that foul-mouthed friend who tells you to get your sh*t together, by telling you to get your sh*t together. Literally. The logic behind this "counterintuitive approach to living a good life"  is an endless series of decisions as to “which problem is better.” Choosing well, based on your values, is a kind of trading up of problems, where deciding what to care about, and taking action, high-grades your situation for the better. Problems in life are inevitable, but your quality of life, says Manson, “is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.”

That means losing the sense of entitlement, and taking responsibility for yourself in any situation, regardless of who started it. “Action,” says Manson, “is always within reach.”

Expect that at any given time, you’re surrounded by situations that may not be of your choosing and people making choices of their own, some of which are going to land seriously smack in the middle of your own precious plans. Hence more choices, more check-ins with your values, and so it goes—a subtle art form to practise over a lifetime.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"Indian Horse" by Richard Wagamese

“You go somewhere when you’re on the ice,”  Virgil said to me after one practice.  “It’s like watching you walk into a secret place  that no one else knows how to get to.” Hockey is the saving grace of young Saul Indian Horse’s life. Lost to his family and orphaned in his grandmother’s arms, eight-year-old Saul is discovered at an icy railroad stop in northern Ontario and stolen away to spend the next six years at St. Jerome’s Indian Residential School. “St. Jerome’s took all the light from my world,” Saul remembers. He saw children die of abuse or suicide, with whatever they had to take themselves away from hell on earth: a pitchfork; rocks to weigh down a dress in water; rope to swing from the rafters of a barn. Anything, even death, was better than the despair of suffering the school’s daily humiliations. It is a hockey ice rink, built at St. Jerome’s during Saul’s second winter, that saves him. In the years that follow, the crack of light opened by hocke
An Unnatural Choice by Mary Hodder Ross "Adoption is two sides of a single coin. One side is the gift. The other is sacrifice."  -- from An Unnatural Choice by Mary Hodder Ross What we believe we are meant to be is not always what we become. Some lives turn course on a dime  into a defining story that begins with a single, heartrending decision. For Mary Hodder Ross that turn was an unplanned pregnancy at the age of 21.  Born and raised in a small town in Newfoundland, Ross was "child number five" of six. She would be the first in her family to go to university.  It was in her final semester before graduating as an English honours student from Memorial University that Ross learned she was pregnant. She crossed the stage at convocation without the sense of elation and possibility of those around her, but silently grateful for the gown that hid her growing secret. For the first 22 weeks of her pregnancy, Ross "...led a double-life, th

"The Game of Life" by Rosalys Buckles Thorndike Wilson

“The game of life has been enjoyable and rewarding, and I have competed to the best of my ability.”—from The Game of Life by Rosalys Buckles Thorndyke Wilson A long life, as Rosalys “Rosie” Buckles Thorndike Wilson looks back upon it, is like a basketball game. It’s played in four quarters (a sport she learned growing up in rural Indiana, where all you needed was a was a hoop on a wall and a ball that had some bounce) with a little time-out in between. Rosie’s first quarter started out on a small, 20-acre farm near Etna, Indiana. Baths were taken once-a-week in a galvanized tub in front of the kitchen wood stove. There were the requisite chores including chasing down dinner (which, on a fried chicken night, involved catching and decapitating a hen before dipping it quickly in boiling water and then plucking off all its feathers). There was a pony named “Beauty”; “Fluffy” the long-haired cat; “Spot” the rat terrier; “Fuzzy” the baby raccoon and “Duke” a horse retired by the U.S