The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

"Problems never stop; they merely get exchanged and/or upgraded. Happiness comes from solving problems."

There are SO many awesome quotes in this book, it was super challenging to pick just one to highlight. I chose this one because it represents the central theme of this book.

I've observed a ton of entitlement in the younger generations for decades now...they want it all and they don't want to work for it. Of course, I'm totally generalizing...but, you can't argue that social media has warped out the expectations of the kids who grew up watching children make millions from testing toys on their YouTube Channel or adults make billions by selling a lifestyle.

After a few chapters of this book, I realized I was entitled! I'm not the kind show more of entitled that expects to work a little and have a lot; I'm the kind of entitled that gets miffed when life isn't fair, when problems continually crop up, or when humans keep messing things up.

We're all reading the same global headlines and have experienced the past two years. Our collective butts have been kicked.

Add to that my move to Panamá last year and taking on the challenge of building a retreat here, and my butt has been pretty pulverized.

So, I asked my online book groups for suggestions of books to restore my faith in humanity and life. This book came up multiple times...and, it turns out, I had it in my Kindle library so I dove in.

PERSPECTIVE CHANGED.

Mark doesn’t say anything earth shattering in the book, but what he does say he says in a way that really resonated with me at this point in my life. And, because he speaks my (foul) language, it was fun to read about heavy stuff.

The biggest lesson I am walking away with from this book is that it’s absolutely ridiculous to expect life to go smoothly. Life is really just a series of problems and the key to happiness is doing what you can to make those problems be the kind you want to solve and then solving them.

As I read the book to the sound of monkeys and vision of a lush tropical landscape, I fully realized that I DID’ THIS! I have created an authentic and incredibly beautiful life for myself and I’m literally ruining it by acting like an entitled brat.

In terms of the state of humanity, my biggest problem has been giving WAY too many fucks. It's too heavy to take on all of the pain and struggles going on right now. This is a time of massive transition…hopefully awakening as many claim. But, as Mark Manson says..."giving too many fucks is bad for your mental health" and "...the world is totally fucked and that's all right, because it's always been that way, and always will be." What a relief! 😆 show less

Mark Manson writes like you're having a casual chat with a no-nonsense friend who tells it like it is. No fluff, no sugar-coating, just straight-up advice on how to stop stressing over things that don't really matter & focus on what truly does.
I love how he flips traditional self-help ideas on their head. Instead of telling you to chase happiness, he makes you question what's actually worth your energy.
It's refreshing, laugh out loud funny, & brutally honest!

Manson starts with a chapter that's laugh out loud funny - not quite as fall out of your chair as Bernie Mack's sui generis riff on how motherfucker can be any part of speech, but darn good.

A chapter in which fuck and its variants is pretty much every third word does serve a larger purpose. It says we're going to talk about stuff the way people actually talk. The formal language of self-discovery and meaning-making and authenticity put us at arm's length to the hard stuff. Rather than engage deeply and personally and emotionally with what change requires, we put it into a petri dish and study it as if it's not really about us.

So I liked Manson a lot for creating an immediate, visceral connection with the ways in which we let the wrong show more values run our lives (pleasure, self-esteem, being special, being right, positivity). His discussion of productive values (honesty, self-awareness, creativity, humility, standing up for oneself, standing up for others) wanders a bit into the petri dish - it's kind of hard to talk about existentialism without being more abstract than concrete -but still offers a few simple perspectives and strategies for becoming a person who leads a good life through giving a fuck about what matters.

I also really liked Manson for illustrating how stories can augment rather than pad a narrative - a couple of examples, a few illustrative narratives, and bingo, back to the point. In contrast to the book Amazon recommended I purchase with this one - Barking up the Wrong Tree - Manson has avoided the impulse to lard critical points with disconnected stories that seem to have more to do with proving how well read the author is than illustrating the point.

Yes, this is a particular peeve of mine. show less

This entire book was a journey through the ego of the author- fanciful nonsense with no real substance or real advice offered anywhere. It was mostly stories of him talking about people with undesirable traits (a few of which seem word for word taken from David Mcraneys book/podcast, ‘You are not so smart,’ so I’d be inclined to assume he did the same for other books), and bragging about his very likely made up conquests in his 20’s under the guise of self deprecation- those are interspersed with a bubblegum understanding (and mostly wrong at that) of psychology and evolutionary biology to make anyone, with even a base understanding of these topics, cringe every time he adds his inane personal views on ‘research’.

Better show more titles would be, ‘The subtle art of fundamentally misunderstanding how statistics and research works,’ or ‘The subtle art of having a terrible vocabulary, so use the word fuck as much as you can,’ or ‘The subtle art of I read a book on Stoic philosophy and Buddhism once, misunderstood it, and now I’ll write a book preying on people with low self esteem,’ or ‘The subtle art of if I quote smart people, and word for word take my stories from Wikipedia and plagerise other books, people will think what I’m saying is smart too.’

After reading so many rave reviews, I was expecting this to offer something valuable. It spectacularly failed. I’m glad it seemed to help some people- but I’m sceptical that it helped anything beyond an initial feeling of ‘wow I do that too,’ then forgetting about it entirely a year later.

1/5 fucks given. show less

This is a blunt, useful, occasionally obnoxious book about choosing your problems instead of pretending you can escape them. Mark Manson is not reinventing wisdom here, but he packages it with enough force and comic vulgarity that the familiar truths land harder than expected.
The premise is simple. Stop trying to care about everything. Stop confusing constant positivity with emotional health. Decide what actually deserves your attention, your discomfort, and your life.
What works best is the book’s refusal to flatter the reader. Manson’s whole argument depends on the idea that we are not special, not owed happiness, not exempt from failure, and not improved by pretending pain is a glitch in the system. That sounds harsh, but the book show more is warmer than its title suggests because its real subject is responsibility. Not blame. Responsibility. The difference matters.
Manson is strongest when he talks about values. He pushes the reader away from shallow measurements like popularity, comfort, being right, or looking successful, and toward things that can actually be practiced, like honesty, discipline, curiosity, and the ability to admit when you are wrong. That is the substance beneath the profanity. A good life is not a life without suffering. It is a life where the suffering is attached to something worth choosing.
The voice is also the problem. The swagger is part of the appeal, but sometimes the jokes feel like a man elbowing you to make sure you noticed how irreverent he is being. The book can simplify big emotional and cultural problems into a clean personal responsibility framework, and that will not work for every reader or every life. Still, Manson’s best points are not cruel. They are clarifying.
This is a self help book for people who hate the soft lighting and fake serenity of self help. It is messy, profane, repetitive in places, and genuinely useful. When it hits, it hits because it tells the truth most comfort culture avoids. Choose better things to care about. Then live with the cost. show less

Нечастый случай, когда летний бестселлер Amazon оперативно доступен на русском. В чем его успех? Очевидно, в том, что с нами давно так никто не говорил: саморазвитие без сюси-пуси, без «вы уникальный». Разбирается, что не так с этими мантрами селфхэлпа, которыми нас потчуют 25-летние «коучи №1» по персональному росту: почему высокая само­оценка бессмысленна, когда для нее нет веских причин? Чем вредно show more позитивное мышление «открывайтесь возможностям и говорите всему да»? И почему не стоит ударяться в поиски себя? Фильтровать рекомендуется и внешний фон — из СМИ и соцсетей: «порнографию возмущения», например. Это случается, когда происходит вброс о чем-нибудь оскорбительном, что у части провоцирует возмущение, а у других вызывает «вторичное возмущение» этим возмущением.

В общем и целом книга дает полезную пищу для ума тем, кто реально хочет разобраться в себе, привести голову в порядок и обрести душевный комфорт, не скатываясь в аутотренинг «я самая обаятельная и привлекательная» и «стану миллионером через год». Ведь, как отмечает автор, хотя самосовершенствование и успех часто идут рука об руку, но это не означает, что они — одно и то же. show less

With this attention-grabbing title, Mark Manson sets out a philosophy on life that advocates self-examination to the point of digging as deep as possible to uncover the truths we don’t want to admit about ourselves. And he includes himself in this exercise, writing with brutal honesty about his own past missteps and inconsiderate behaviour. He also talks about the fact that we all have only a certain number of f*cks that can be given about things, so it’s important to save them for the things that it’s really important to give a f*ck about. This idea in particular is something I need to work on! I’d recommend this book if you’re feeling a bit stuck but find most self-help books obnoxiously positive.