The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck was both personally relevant and entertaining.
I usually don’t opt self help books because no matter how bad I want to try, I cannot get past the first few pages but this one was the exception. The title of this book piqued my curiosity and it perpetually appeared in front of me, with it’s amusing title and appealed to my snarky, crass kind of humor, reminding me once again that I apparently have the personality and sense of humor of a dude. Thus, I succumbed to the book which was demanding to be read.
As I said, I was pretty stoked for this, and the introductory essay explaining the author’s Not Giving a F*ck theory made a lot of sense to me and made me really happy. Essentially, he says that the internet and the media demand that we give a f*ck about everything, but we only have so much time on Earth and so many f*cks to give and we have to choose who and what we spend those f*cks on.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is the kind of self-help book that won’t treat your mistakes and failures like wake-up calls for self-improvement. Instead, it stresses the fact that failures are failures, and we have to be okay with that. Mark Manson instills in his readers that positive thinking only leads to a miserable life, and we have to instead seek for the things that we really care about, and focus on them.
This book is slowly but surely shifting my world.
“If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.”
I don’t know how to review this book without typing out the whole book, so I’m going to try something different: to be brief. This book provides support for someone who wants to live in reality, someone who doesn’t want to buy into our national capitalist mindset that life is about chasing one high after another. This book encourages you to embrace conflict, to be comfortable feeling uncomfortable, and to be confident in finding out what you truly believe in, then standing up for it. Fuck being likeable. Take responsibility for your own life, stop trying to solve other’s problems (a big one for me to work on!), ask questions, and always try to make things better. “Happiness is a struggle.”
It made me rethink all the times I ever gave a fuck over some of the most irrelevant things in hindsight. It made me realize that it’s sometimes necessary to take a step back and re-evaluate why I think so-and-so on a daily basis.
Overall, this was an eye-opening book that was also informative and entertaining. It’s not a dry, fluffy, bullshit self-help book that will make you feel all warm and fuzzy. It’s more of an in-your-face reality check and I loved it. This is a book that’s worth buying, highlighting, and rereading.
“Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.