Book Summary of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Mark Manson
About Book
If you feel tense and tired, then this book is for you. Not giving a f*ck doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. It’s about the person you really care about, the person you’re willing to fight for no matter what. Don’t worry about everything. Use your time and energy only for those people who are really important to you.
who should read this book
parents, employees, young professionals, people who suffer from stress and anxiety, people who need to laugh
Para1: Don’t Try
Charles Bukowski was an alcoholic. A big gambler and a loser of life, whose advice hardly anyone would want to take. That’s why we are starting with the story of such a person. Bukowski wanted to become a writer from the beginning, but his work was mocked by all the newspapers and magazines by calling it of poor quality. Saddened by this, Bukowski went into deep depression and started resorting to alcohol. Gradually he became a big drunkard. After wasting nearly 30 years of his life in alcohol and gambling, Bukowski got a chance one day.
A small publishing house took interest in his work. Bukowski had got hold of an opportunity with great difficulty which he did not want to miss. He quickly signed that contract. And then he wrote his first book. Then after that he did not look back. He wrote 6 more books one after the other. Along with this, he also wrote many poems and sold more than 2 million copies of his books. This was a huge success for him. In the American Dream it is said, “Always keep trying, never give up,” but Bukowski’s tombstone reads “Don’t try.”
The special thing about Bukowski’s work was not that he kept trying despite losing, but that he accepted himself in the worst of circumstances. It didn’t make much difference to him when success hit him, neither did he become a better and improved person than before, nor did his goodness have any hand in his becoming successful. We all go through such a phase in our life where the situation turns from bad to worse. For example, you get very angry. So angry that you cannot control yourself. And thinking that you are not able to control it, your anger increases further. Wow!
Just think how funny it is that you get angry on the fact that you get angry a lot. You find a way to escape from this anger. Want to but can’t get it out. Then you start hating yourself and your anger problem. Whenever you are sad about your loneliness, thoughts filled with sadness start hovering in your mind. You keep thinking about your sad life and loneliness for hours and think and become even more sad. So my friends, this is called the feedback loop of hell!
Just remember what used to happen during your grandfather’s time? At that time, when someone saw someone better than himself, he would have been sad for a while, but then he would have got busy in his work thinking that this is life. But now if you are sad even for 5 seconds, then you start to think everyone’s life is better than yours. You feel so ashamed of yourself as if you have lost everything. And then because of this shame of yours, you start feeling even more ashamed of yourself. You remain trapped in this roundabout of embarrassment. That’s why it is necessary not to worry at all about these things. If you are sad then there is no shame, it happens to everyone. Get out of the shame loop and say “don’t give a fuck about it” to the things that are bothering you.
It is the worst thing to think that everything should be fine with you. And if philosopher Alan Watts is to be believed, then accepting negative experiences with you is actually a big positive experience in itself. It sounds strange to hear this but it is the truth. The more you run after happiness, the more unhappy you will be. In other words, don’t even try such a thing. Have you ever noticed that when you are careless about something, you get the same thing easily instead of when you run after it. Like when you go to the gym, you have to bear a lot of pain while working out, but you get the reward of this pain in the form of strong muscles. In exchange for a little pen, you get a beautiful body, your health improves.
Similarly, when you are unsuccessful in any of your work, then this defeat acts like a fuel for you and you get involved again with double the enthusiasm in your efforts. Trying to stop the pain only makes you feel more pain later. Whatever pain or defeat you get, don’t let it stop you, just stop caring about it. Then see, no one will be able to stop you. Not caring does not mean that you sit quietly doing nothing or become completely ineffective like a stone. Because only the dead do not feel anything, a living person can feel everything. And we are not asking you to do so. We just want to say that not caring means no matter what the situation comes, just sit comfortably, even if your thinking is different from others. You think differently, it is better to be different than to become a greasy pitcher. You must be understanding a greasy pot, right? On which nothing has any effect. Such people are cowardly and foolish. You don’t have to be a greasy pitcher, you just have to be carefree so that you can avoid unnecessary tension.
But sometimes you have to care about things too, then the question arises that what is it that you should really care about? One such incident happened with the mother of our author. In fact, once one of her friends had duped her of a huge amount. Now, if the author was careless, he would not care at all about what happened to his mother, but the author assured his mother that he would take the help of a lawyer and teach that person a lesson. Yes, he did all this because he did not care about that person. He Don’t give a F*ck about him.
Para 2: Don’t chase after happiness
It was twenty five hundred years ago. There used to be a king in Nepal who loved his son very much and had big dreams for him. He wanted to give everything in the world to his son so that he would never be short of anything. To keep his son happy, he built a huge palace which had high walls all around it. He did not want his son to know anything about the outside world. He wanted to keep her safe from every pain, every trouble. Every comfort was available for the prince in the palace, but the prince was still not happy. He was now getting bored with this luxury. He now wanted to see the world outside the palace.
So one day, seeing the opportunity, he went out of the palace. While roaming in his kingdom, the prince felt pain for the first time when he saw the poor people suffering from hunger and disease. Seeing them, the prince drowned in sorrow. He got very angry with his father who had kept him unaware of this truth till date. He decided that he would leave the palace and live the life of a beggar. And after that the prince quietly left the palace without telling anyone and went to the forest. After spending a few years in the forest, the prince realized that there is no use of his hard penance and being hungry and thirsty. It is not necessary that the thing which is painful should be good and beneficial for you. He came to know that life itself is a pain. The rich man suffers because of his money and the poor man is troubled because he lacks money. The real thing is that there is no measure of happiness.
Achieving something does not mean that now you will be happy forever. We suffer because it inspires us, it brings some changes in us. And change is very important in life. The troubles of our life give us the strength to fight, we struggle to keep ourselves safe in every situation. Pain only teaches us to pay attention to things when we are careless. That’s why happiness and comfort are not always the best option, sometimes pain is also necessary. Even the psychological pen is a very useful thing which teaches us to make better decisions for the future. Happiness can never be found without fighting with troubles. In other words, the other name of problems is happiness. Because when you solve your problem, happiness automatically starts reflecting on your face. So not avoiding your problems in this way is the key to your happiness. The key word to happiness here is actually solving problems.
Emotions are always taken for granted. What are our emotions after all?
Emotions are actually our mind which tells us that something is going wrong and it should be corrected. Simply put, our negative emotions compel us to take action, on the other hand, our positive emotions mean that our brain is rewarding us for doing the right thing. Now the question arises “What do you want to do in your life?”
There is nothing special in this question, it is a very common question. Instead the question should be “What kind of suffering would you like to go through in your life?”
Many people do not, but you choose your own struggle. Most people just want rewards without any problem. What can be worse than this is that you get everything without doing anything. So choose your own troubles because after all life will still give you pain, and it will be more painful for you.
Para 3: You Are No Different
A man named Jimmy was always thinking of some or the other business idea. His life was going well. He was living on the money of his parents. The more he used to spend on his business ideas, the more money he used to spend in the bar. None of his ideas ever became successful but the way he talked and believed in himself was very impressive. This style of her will make you her fan, even if you are not aware of her reality. It was in the 1960s when the idea that “we are all different and unique in ourselves” started. Now at that time everyone used to think that he is something special, but after a few years, people realized that in reality it is not so. Not everyone is made to do the best in this world. Failure is an essential part of our growth that we all have to go through. Feeling special for no reason would be like having another “Jimmy” born.
One of the problems with feelings of self-esteem is that it measures your self-esteem with the scale of how positive you can think, whereas in reality the scale of measuring it should be the understanding of feeling your negative side. How much do you know about your negative side? If you think that you are 100% perfect without suffering any problems then how will you be able to overcome the problems in your life? You will keep on dreaming of your success which is not there in reality. Instead of doing something to make life better, if you just keep thinking, nothing is going to happen. Many times there are some problems in our life, for which there is no solution, then we start feeling different, either in a bad or a good way. We feel either we are the best or very bad. Many people keep swinging between these two feelings of good and evil on such occasions. Although the truth is that there is no such problem “personal problem” or it is happening only with you.
There will be many more such people in the world who must be struggling with the same situation as you. Of course your pain will not reduce by thinking like this, but you will surely come to know that you are no different from others. Nowadays it has become very common that often speakers are banned or a book is removed from the school curriculum because they were hurting someone’s sentiments. To do so is selfish in a way. This is a self-entitlement problem. Not every one of us is born to be unique or offbeat. These sentences are heard saying by many influencers these days that “there is something special in all of us”.
Just think that if we all are unique then we all have become the same then where is the uniqueness left in it? It would be better if we accept ourselves as we are. We are all common and there is nothing to be ashamed of. It does not mean at all that we will not be able to succeed because we are average. The truth is that people become great because they feel the need to improve something in themselves. He became great because he thought he was not great yet. This thinking of him could make him great. Just think about it.
Para 4: The Price of Suffering
In the era of 1944, Japan had suffered a lot in the fighting. It is a matter of two months after this loss. Onada, a leader in the Battle of Japan, stayed on an island that was occupied by the Americans. He kept fighting with the Americans even though Japan had surrendered by then. He did not know this and kept shooting his own farmers on the island. The Japanese government had spent thirty years trying to find him but had never succeeded. No one had ever caught him. Then one day a happy man named Suzuki decided to catch him and only after 4 days He was successful in this too. When people later asked Onoda why he stayed on an island for thirty years, Onoda said that he was ordered never to give up, so he never gave up. It is strange to think about how a person spends a large part of his life on useless and stupid things. For example, lieutenant Onoda, after eating thirty insects of his life, spent his life sleeping in the filth to fight such a battle which was not happening at all.
Understanding yourself is exactly like an onion. It has many layers and as these layers come down, your tears flow. Its first layer is to know and understand one’s own feelings. The second layer would be to understand what is the reason for these feelings. Once we understand them well then it becomes easy to control them. And once we identify our feelings, they can be chosen as per our wish. We can choose our goals on the basis of these feelings, but if we choose the wrong goals, then all these feelings and emotions will be of no use. That is because we value something only when our feelings are attached to it. , there are some common values which are a problem for everyone but they do not have any solid solution and these values are:
Happiness: If seen it is the biggest value but we do not do everything just for the sake of happiness and life is never perfect, although people do try, you will get sorrows and if you do not separate yourself from these sorrows If you try unnecessarily to keep away, then surely you will be more sad. Because sorrows will keep coming, you just have to find a way to learn something from them.
• Material Success: Never measure success by wealth, how much money you have or how beautiful your wife is, instead how honest you are, how hardworking you are, how much love you have for others. Keep not your added money or car, bungalow. People who flaunt their money are not only frivolous but also seem stupid in a way.
• Always being right: Remember that we are humans and not robots who will do everything perfectly. Our mind is not made perfect, we definitely make some mistake or the other, but the important thing is that if we make a mistake, then learn from it and not repeat it again. No human is always right. It is futile to remember the count of times you were right, you will not learn anything new from it.
• Staying positive: It is true that having positive thinking has its own benefits, but thinking that every time everything in life will be positive and good can become a cause of trouble for you. In real life we have to see many ups and downs and you have to accept this truth. Because if you do not believe it, then you will be stuck in the clutches of the feedback loop. If you try hard to stop the negative emotions arising in your mind, then you will be surrounded by even more negative emotions. When something negative comes in your mind, don’t stop it, just think that even if it happens, how will you face it.
Para 5: You Always Choose Yourself
American Philosopher William James used to be very upset with his life. They didn’t have any problems. He was suffering from eye disease, hearing loss and many other fatal diseases. Due to these diseases, most of his life was spent locked in the house. He was very fond of painting, so he used to make paintings all day. Although no one thought that they could make good petting. His father did nothing to get him admitted to medical school, but he left everything and went on an anthropological expedition to the Amazon Rainforest. Surprisingly, his health also supported him. But then he got small pox due to which he survived.
He had to leave his expedition in the middle. All his companions had gone ahead and he was left alone in South Africa. Somehow he got out of there and reached New England where his father who was already disappointed with him was waiting for him. After facing all the troubles of his life, one night James decided that from now on he will take every responsibility of his life himself. And will try everything possible to change your life. He had even thought that if he gives up now, he will surely commit suicide.
Well, shortening the big deal, we want to tell that William James was the person who became the father of American Psychology. This story teaches us that we have to take responsibility for our own actions and not rely on others. Now suppose that your life partner, whom you love a lot, asks you to lose 30 kgs in a week or else he will leave you. Now hearing such a condition, your mind will be shocked. Why isn’t it?
Now imagine that you start going to the gym, start eating healthy and lose 30 kilos. How would you feel? Very nice isn’t it? But now why have your feelings changed for your partner? Because you were told to do this, you did not choose it yourself. But when you choose things on your own, then you give your whole life, no matter how many difficulties may come. And you feel very good after going through those difficulties. That’s why you choose your problems yourself, because no one knows when and how any problem will come in life.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder, commonly known as OCD, is a neurological and genetic disorder. No concrete treatment has been found for this disease yet, although it can be managed to some extent. So the people who are suffering from this disease, how would they be managing this disease? The answer is to change your thoughts. Those who keep washing their hands all day for fear of germs, they have to learn that whatever we do, germs are always around us, they cannot be removed completely.
Some other people who fear that their family will die if they do not tap again and again at the same place, those people need to understand that death is bound to come one day. One who is born must die one day and they cannot stop it under any circumstances. Instead of getting entangled in a single thought, many more meaningful things can be done in life. If such thoughts come, let them come, don’t stop them, but definitely try to change the direction of your thoughts. If such people learn to live with these thoughts instead of losing hope from life, they can make their life better.
Para 6: Whatever You Think Is Wrong You’re Wrong About Everything (And Me Too)
Incomplete memories are a problem in itself, you have full faith in something but that thing turns out to be a lie. Because it is a false memory which you keep in your memories. Meredith Maran who was a writer and journalist once alleged that she was raped by her father when she was a child. He suddenly remembered this thing one day, but his family life was ruined by this thing and after years the truth came out that it was just a fantasy of his mind.
It is not very old when scientists used to believe that fire is actually made from something called Phlogiston and women used to think that rubbing dog’s urine on their face would keep them young forever. When you love someone, you dream of spending the whole life with them. Then when you have a break-up, you lose your faith in the thing called love, but despite this you fall in love again, think of spending life with someone again. In fact, we are all wrong about everything at some point and what shame in admitting it? This happens with everyone. We think something else, something else happens. And if seen, we get a kind of lesson from this.
Firm belief has always been the enemy of development. To learn something new, we have to accept our imperfections. If we assume that we are perfect then we will not be able to learn anything new. We will remain confined within our own limits. For example, nothing is concrete in science, that is, science does not have solid faith for anything, there is a possibility of everything. And if something is said with confidence, then there is scope for some debate on that too.
When you experience something for the first time, you can never say with confidence whether it is positive or negative. It is possible that what you consider to be the worst experience of your life, in reality it proves to be the most positive experience for you. Of course you must have felt very bad at that time but your feelings change with time and you can never trust them completely. Having perfection or full faith in anything takes away the fun of life. Now it is not necessary that what you are doing according to your own opinion is really “right”. Confidence in itself is a very dangerous thing. Just imagine that one of your friends gets promoted while you were sure that you will get the promotion. In such a situation, your strong belief kept you in deception and you also felt bad. And this belief also became the reason for your insecurity.
Para 7: Failing is a Step Forward
The author of this book of ours considers himself very fortunate. Do you know why? When he graduated, the Great Recession was going on at that time. His roommate disappeared after putting three months’ rent on his head. Now the author found it difficult to deal with these things, but he tried not to get too much debt on his head. He considers himself lucky because he had learned the ways of this world despite being a failure. He had experienced everything because he was already at rock bottom, what could be worse than that. Whatever happened to him after that would have been better.
An anecdote of the great painter Picasso is famous. Once old Picasso was sitting in a cafe drinking his coffee. While drinking coffee, he was also doing some painting on the napkin. After making the picture, he was about to throw it away when a woman sitting there requested him to buy that napkin. Picasso agreed and asked for $20,000 in return. That woman was surprised to hear such a huge amount for that small napkin. He refused to pay so much money and said that it took him only 2 minutes to make it. To this Picasso replied that it took him 60 years to learn painting and not 2 minutes. It means to say that to become this worthy, they must have failed many times, they must have been defeated.
He must have kept trying to become so great because success does not come in a day. Children never stop trying to walk even if they have fallen a thousand times. Why? Because they still do not know what it is to fail. Many of us are very afraid of failing, but the truth is that you cannot be successful without failing or stumbling. Choose your goals in such a way that you can control them, whether they are making you money or making people happy or not, because if you don’t have control over your goals, they will control you.
Life is another name for pain, it teaches you how to be better. Then no matter how scary it is, let the pain come into your life. This will make you even stronger. If you want to achieve something but are not fully motivated for it, then think that you are not going to win or lose. Already feel yourself defeated. What is motivation? It’s just a fantasy. A loop that has no end. So to be really motivated, you have to work for it. Only then you will be able to be fully motivated to really achieve something. This is what the author has called the “Do Something Principle”.
Para 8: Learn to say no
Everyone likes the love story of Romeo and Juliet, but what if we say that this is not a special story? Do you know that the family members of Romans and Juliet hated each other, yet both of them fell in love. Both decided to get married and when their family members came to know about this, they tried their best to break the marriage. So Juliet drank a kind of poison that kept her asleep for two whole days. Romeo did not know this, he thought that Juliet had committed suicide, so he also gave his life by consuming poison. Two days later, when Juliet woke up from her sleep, she came to know about Romeo’s death. And then he also committed suicide. What a ridiculous story isn’t it? There is nothing ideal in this. Two people unnecessarily waste their lives.
Some scholars believe that Shakespeare wrote this story only to tell that loving is not a wise act. The truth is that when two people take the support of love to escape from the problems of life, then there is no power in such a relationship. Such people just want to use each other in the name of love to get rid of their problems and nothing else. Those whose love is true, they are aware of their problems and together with their partner, find a solution to those problems. They do not run away from problems but face them.
Every relationship can be maintained within a range only. Learn to accept your problems because they are your responsibility and only you can solve them.
Do you know that denial is also very beneficial. It is not necessary that you say yes to everything, sometimes it is better to say no. Now those people who do not like you are not there, it is your wish that whom you choose as your friend. You have to learn to reject. People who say yes to everything, in reality they are not able to form any correct opinion. It is really special to give your all to one relationship or one career and it happens only when you reject others. As we have said before, the value of something is realized only when you do not care.
When you take support of lies in any relationship, then that relationship does not remain honest. Even if you flatter your partner by praising him falsely, it will be a complete lie. It is better to be honest with yourself and your partner. If you do not like something about your partner, then say it on the face and expect the same honesty from him. We can try to remove the shortcomings only by telling each other’s shortcomings, not by hiding them. It is also necessary to have conflicts in relationships, it strengthens trust. It is also necessary, a person cheats in love only when another person finds him more important than his relationship. Some such need of his which is being fulfilled by another person instead of his partner. What is the use of such a relationship where you have to cheat, lie to your partner. If your partner hesitates to share his feelings with you, then that relationship is only based on lies, there is no point in it. And in such a relationship, you can never trust blindly.
Para 9: And One Day You Will Die
The author had a friend named Josh. One night when both had gone to a party, Josh suddenly thought of jumping from a high place. That place was at such a height that no one could think of jumping from there, but yes, someone under the influence of alcohol could have thought of jumping from that place. So Josh, who was drunk, jumped down from there just as a joke. There was a big lake below where he had jumped. He fell directly into that lake and died by drowning in the water. The effect of this incident was so deep on the writer’s mind that for the whole 12 years he remained immersed in its grief and went into deep depression. One day she dreamed that Josh was saying to her, “Why are you so worried about me dying when you yourself are dying every day?”
The author then realized that the author could not change what happened to Josh. It was not in his hands, yet he himself was ruining his life considering himself responsible for it, because no one has control over death, it has to come to everyone one day. But because of his fear, we cannot stop living our today. The death of his friend actually made the author a more responsible and better person. The biggest reality of life ‘Death’ taught him to live. Of course, he still had many insecurities in his life, but the difference was that he didn’t care about them anymore. He had come to know that life is a guest of two moments, so why not live every moment happily. We are all afraid of death but forget that death cannot be avoided. What is the importance of life if there is no death? Taking out the fear of death from the heart and living every moment to the fullest is the spirit of life.
But the most important thing is how do we live before we die? That the world remember us after death. There is a theory called the Butterfly Theory, according to which a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa can cause a hurricane in Florida. Your one action can bring a big change in this world, but you have to decide what that action will be, most of the people ignore this question because either they find it very difficult to find the answer or they do not know that What should they do in their life, although ignoring this question directly means that we are not thinking anything for ourselves, we are just living according to the circumstances.
Believe that you are great, of course you do not have huge wealth or you are not successful, yet by believing this, you will try to make yourself great and whatever work you do, you will do it with perfection. You will become what you choose for yourself. And one day you will die like everyone else. You cannot turn away from this truth. Just remember that death comes only to those who have lived. Consider yourself lucky that you got a chance to live.
Friends, you will definitely tell by writing in the review section that how did you like this summary and which summary would you not like to hear next week. If you like our hard work then you can show us your love by giving review in google play. Keep listening to Giggle.
Thanks……….