The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Mark Manson)
I started my holidays last week and wanted something to read. This book caught my eye at the airport.
The writer Mark Manson presents an utterly, engaging, confronting case, that our belief that we must be happy and think positively at all times is in fact a road to unhappiness. He says its actually ok to be ordinary, to not have to constantly achieve.
“I believe today we are facing a psychological epidemic, one in which people no longer realise its ok for things to suck sometimes”
He argues that happiness requires struggle and grows from solving our problems and facing, accepting our inadequacies.
Mark says we can turn our pain, sadness, anger, frustration into power and our problems into better problems. He says we will always have problems. It’s how you face them and address them that will allow you to move lightly through your life despite your burdens. In other words, choosing not to give a f*ck about some things.
“What determines your success isn’t What do you want to enjoy? The relevant question is What pain do you want to sustain? The path to happiness is a path full of shitheaps and shame”
He gives the personal example of dreaming and planning in his mind for over 30 years that he was going to be a famous rock star, but there was always some reason to never actually achieve that. He finally worked out what it was and that was
“I didn’t actually want it, I was in love with the result, I was not in love with the struggle, the process”
The above was so relevant to me and even thought I have a classically trained voice and auditioned over 16 years ago at Opera Australia where they said go away, improve and come back – did I?
No, I continued to fantasise and regret that maybe I could have been an opera star these last 20 years. Now I see that I didn’t want the struggle enough and I too was in love with the result. Takes a while to see sometimes and lose the delusion!!
I could go on and on about this book but will finish with some of the chapter headings in the book.
It is a mesmerising, enlighting and reassuring read for our times.
‘The Value of Suffering’
‘You are not Special’ (loved this one)
‘You are Always Choosing’
‘You’re wrong about everything but so am I ‘
‘Failure is the Way Forward’
‘And then you die ‘
PS My Xmas present to anyone interested are hypnosis MP3’s free for you to download at my website until New Year. Just head over to the shop and follow instructions Merry Xmas
