The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2023) - IMDb
The real important question of getting ahead in life or improving our lives is not "how to accomplish every single goal?", it's more asking "what sorts of goals should we have in the first place?" and "what sorts of things should we give a fuck about?".
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. The more you desperately want to be rich, the more poor and unworthy you feel, regardless of how much money you actually make. The more you desperately want to be sexy and desired, the uglier you come to see yourself, regardless of your actual physical appearance.
Indifference is impossible. If you give a fuck about nothing, then you're giving a fuck about giving a fuck about nothing. It's impossible to not give a fuck about something, therefore, the question is "what do you want to give a fuck about?"
How To ACTUALLY Not Give A Fuck
To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity. For example, If you're always worried about what people think about you, the problem is not what people think about you, the problem is you don't have anything better to worry about.
Negative emotions have an inherent purpose. They help us. They are signals that we need to do something. If we ignore them or train ourselves to ignore them, we’re limiting ourselves in a lot of ways.
Happiness comes from solving problems. If you pretend you have no problems in your life to solve, then you'll be happy. And if you also find problems in your life that you want and can solve, then you'll be happy. The secret sauce is finding problems that you "want to have", that you "enjoy having".
If I ask you, "What do you want out of life?" and you say something like, "I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like," your response is so common and expected that it doesn't really mean anything. Everybody enjoys what feels good. Everyone wants to live a carefree, happy, and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money and be popular and well-respected and admired... Everybody wants that, it's easy to want that. A more interesting question, a question that most people never consider, is, "What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?" Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.
In today’s world, everything’s designed to make you feel like you’re the most special person on the planet. The ticket to emotional health, like that to physical health, comes from eating your veggies-that is, accepting the bland and mundane truths of life: truths such as "Your actions actually don't matter that much in the grand scheme of things" and "The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that's okay." This vegetable course will taste bad at first. Very bad. But once ingested, your body will wake up feeling more potent and more alive.
There was a number of Japanese soldiers in World War II, they got stranded on random islands in the Pacific and nobody told them the war was over. So, they continued to fight the war into the 1950s, 60s and even 70s, shooting at people, killing people, hiding in the jungle for 27 years. It doesn't matter how disciplined you are, it doesn't matter how motivated you are, it doesn't matter how strong you are, how intelligent you are, how much support you have, if you have the wrong goal, you're fucked. If you have the wrong value, then all of that other stuff, it's just gonna hurt you.
Honesty is a good value because it's something you have complete control over, it reflects reality, and it benefits others (even if it's sometimes unpleasant).
Life’s a series of choices, and whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing.
Same action, different situations, different result. When we choose for something freely and prepare for it, it becomes a glorious and important milestones in our lives. When it is forced upon us agains our will, it becomes the most terrifying and painful experiences in our lives. Reality is that we're always choosing. Whatever happens to you, you are in control how to react and respond to it. You are choosing to run the marathon. You are choosing for the lives of the people you care about to be more important than the pain of the marathon.
Everything we think is so true and important today is gonna be absolutely ridiculous to us at some point and that's actually good thing. We should hope that our present day beliefs look ridiculous to us one day because that means that we've grown and become smarter.
Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.
If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.