The diction of this book meets the pace of today's everyday jargon. For me, I have ADHD, and a difficult time with a lot of the things covered in "mindfulness" exercises, and this book pushes past that and really makes you ask yourself what is and isn't important in your life. I was in a dark place before I read this, and now I'm in a better place. ( )

Very Good and would recommend. 5* ( )

This is a vrey funny book that appears to me to contain a lot of truth from a perspective that was new for me. Worthwhile. ( )

Although the author says:

Our crisis is no longer material; it’s existential, it’s spiritual.

I think that the book is very non-spiritual. For example, it sees religion as human-invented, ignoring many logical and historical evidences that make that opinion insignificant.

Moreover, I find that the title is somehow misleading, and the contents of the book not so coherent nor well organized. I didn't find much depth in the book, and I didn't enjoy most of it.

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However, there are some good ideas like:

The Feedback Loop from Hell: Back in Grandpa’s day, he would feel like shit and think to himself, “Gee whiz, I sure do feel like a cow turd today. But hey, I guess that’s just life. Back to shoveling hay.”
But now? Now if you feel like shit for even five minutes, you’re bombarded with 350 images of people totally happy and having amazing lives, and it’s impossible to not feel like there’s something wrong with you. We feel bad about feeling bad. We feel guilty for feeling guilty. We get angry about getting angry. We get anxious about feeling anxious.

There’s no way we can process the tidal waves of information flowing past us constantly. Therefore, the only zeroes and ones that break through and catch our attention are the truly exceptional pieces of information. And because we’re all quite average most of the time, the deluge of exceptional information drives us to feel pretty damn insecure and desperate, because clearly we are somehow not good enough. The pervasiveness of technology and mass marketing is screwing up a lot of people’s expectations for themselves.
Once you accept the premise that a life is worthwhile only if it is truly notable and great, then you basically accept the fact that most of the human population (including yourself) sucks and is worthless.

When you assume that your plane is the one that’s going to crash, or that your project idea is the stupid one everyone is going to laugh at, or that you’re the one everyone is going to choose to mock or ignore, you’re implicitly telling yourself, “I’m the exception; I’m unlike everybody else; I’m different and special.”
My recommendation: don’t be special; don’t be unique. Redefine your metrics in mundane and broad ways. Choose to measure yourself not as a rising star or an undiscovered genius. Choose to measure yourself not as some horrible victim or dismal failure. Instead, measure yourself by more mundane identities: a student, a partner, a friend, a creator. The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more everything will seem to threaten you. ( )

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