The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck Publisher

CONTENT

CHAPTER i: Don't Try

CHAPTER 2: Happiness Is a Problem Affiliate iii: Yous Are Not Special CHAPTER 4: The Value of Suffering Affiliate v: You lot Are E'er Choosing Affiliate 6: Y'all're Incorrect Almost Everything (But So Am I) Chapter 7: Failure Is the Way Forward CHAPTER eight: The Importance of Proverb No
CHAPTER 9: ... And And so You Die Virtually the Author

CHAPTER 1

C harles Bukowski was an alcoholic, a womanizer, a chronic gambler, a lout, a cheapskate, a deadbeat, and on his worst days, a poet. He's probably the last person on globe you would ever look to for life advice or look to see in any sort of self-help volume.

Which is why he's the perfect place to Start.

Bukowski wanted to be a writer. But for decades his work was rejected by nigh every mag, newspaper, journal, agent, and publisher he submitted to. His piece of work was horrible, they said. Rough. Disgusting. Depraved. And as the stacks of rejection slips piled up, the weight of his failures pushed him deep into an alcohol-fueled depression that would follow him for most of his life.

Bukowski had a twenty-four hours job as a letter of the alphabet-filer at a postal service office. He got paid shit money and spent most of it on alcohol. He gambled away the rest at the racetrack. At night, he would beverage alone and sometimes hammer out poetry on his beat-upward old typewriter. Often, he'd wake up on the floor, having passed out the night before.

Thirty years went by like this, most of it a meaningless blur of alcohol, drugs, gambling, and prostitutes. Then, when Bukowski was fifty, later on a lifetime Of failure and self-loathing, an editor at a pocket-sized contained publishing house took a foreign interest in him. The editor couldn't offer Bukowski much coin or much promise Of sales. But he had a weird affection for the drunk loser, then he decided to take a risk on him. It was the beginning existent shot Bukowski had ever gotten, and, he realized, probably the only one he would ever get. Bukowski wrote back to the editor: "I have i Of 2 choices—stay in the post role and go crazy ... or stay out hither and play at writer and starve. I take decided to starve."

Upon signing the contract, Bukowski wrote his first novel in 3 weeks. It was called simply Post Office. In the dedication, he wrote, "Dedicated to nobody."

Bukowski would make it as a novelist and poet. He would go On and publish half dozen novels and hundreds Of poems, selling over ii million copies Of his books. His popularity defied anybody'south expectations, particularly his ain.

Stories like Bukowski'south are the bread and butter of our cultural narrative. Bukowski's life embodies the American Dream: a man fights for what he wants, never gives up, and eventually achieves his wildest dreams. It's practically a motion-picture show waiting to happen. We all look at stories similar Bukowski's and say, "Meet? He never gave upwards. He never stopped trying. He always believed in himself. He persisted confronting all the Odds and made something Of himself!"

It is then strange that on Bukowski 'due south tombstone, the epitaph reads: "Don't try."

See, despite the book sales and the fame, Bukowski was a loser. He knew it. And his success stemmed not from some determination to be a winner, merely from the fact that he knew he was a loser, accepted it, and then wrote honestly about it. He never tried to be annihilation other than what he was. The genius in Bukowski's work was not in overcoming unbelievable odds or developing himself into a shining literary light. It was the opposite. It was his simple ability to be completely, unflinchingly honest with himself—especially the worst parts of himself—and to share his failings without hesitation or uncertainty.

This is the real story of Bukowski's success: his comfort with himself as a failure. Bukowski didn't give a fuck nigh success. Even after his fame, he still showed up to poetry readings hammered and verbally abused people in his audience. He still exposed himself in public and tried to sleep with every woman he could notice. Fame and success didn't make him a better person. Nor was it by condign a ameliorate person that he became famous and successful.

Self-improvement and success often occur together. Merely that doesn't necessarily mean they're the same thing.

Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive expectations: Be happier. Be healthier. Be the all-time, amend than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier, more than popular, more productive, more than envied, and more admired. Be perfect and amazing and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets earlier breakfast each morning while kissing your selfie-ready spouse and two and a half kids good day. Then fly your helicopter to your wonderfully fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing incredibly meaningful work that's likely to save the planet ane day.

But when yous stop and really think about it, conventional life advice—all the positive and happy self-help stuff we hear all the time—is actually fixating on what you lack. Information technology lasers in on what yous perceive your personal shortcomings and failures to already exist, and then emphasizes them for you. You learn almost the best ways to make money because you lot experience yous don't have enough money already. Yous stand in forepart of the mirror and repeat affirmations maxim that you're beautiful because yous experience as though you're non beautiful already. You follow dating and human relationship communication because you feel that you're unlovable already. You endeavour goofy visualization exercises about being more successful because you feel every bit though you aren't successful enough already.

Ironically, this fixation on the positive—on what'southward better, what'southward superior—only serves to remind us over and over again Of what we are not, Of what we lack, Of what we should have been but failed to be. After all, no truly happy person feels the need to stand up in forepart of a mirror and recite that she's happy. She only is.

At that place'due south a saying in Texas: "The smallest dog barks the loudest." A confident man doesn't feel a need to bear witness that he's confident. A rich woman doesn't experience a need to convince anybody that she's rich. Either you lot are or you lot are non. And if you're dreaming of something all the fourth dimension, and so you're reinforcing the same unconscious reality over and over: that yous are not that.

Everyone and their TV commercial wants you to believe that the cardinal to a good life is a nicer job, or a more rugged motorcar, or a prettier girlfriend, or a hot tub with an inflatable pool for the kids. The world is constantly telling you that the path to a improve life is more, more, more—buy more, Ain more, make more, fuck more, exist more than. You are constantly bombarded with messages to give a fuck about everything, all the time. Give a fuck almost a new . Give a fuck about having a meliorate holiday than your coworkers. Requite a fuck virtually buying that new lawn ornament. Give a fuck about having the right kind of selfie stick.

Why? My judge: because giving a fuck almost more stuff is skillful for business.

And while there's nada incorrect with good business, the trouble is that giving too many fucks is bad for your mental wellness. It causes you to become overly fastened to the superficial and imitation, to dedicate your life to chasing a mirage Of happiness and satisfaction. The key to a good life is non giving a fuck about more; it's giving a fuck almost less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and of import.

The Feedback Loop from Hell

At that place'south an insidious quirk to your brain that, if you let it, tin drive you lot admittedly derailed. Tell me if this sounds familiar to you:

You go broken-hearted about confronting somebody in your life. That feet cripples you lot and you start wondering why you lot're so anxious. Now yous're becoming anxious about beingness anxious. Oh no! Doubly broken-hearted! Now you're anxious nigh your anxiety, which is causing more anxiety. Quick, where'due south the whiskey?

Or let's say you take an anger problem. Y'all become pissed Off at the stupidest, most inane stuff, and yous have no idea why. And the fact that you get pissed off then hands starts to piss you off fifty-fifty more. And then, in your petty rage, you realize that beingness aroused all the time makes you a shallow and mean person, and you hate this; yous hate information technology then much that you lot become angry at yourself. Now look at y'all: you're angry at yourself getting aroused about beingness aroused. Fuck you, wall. Hither, accept a fist.

Or you're so worried about doing the right thing all the fourth dimension that you get worried about how much you're worrying. Or yous feel so guilty for every mistake y'all make that yous begin to experience guilty about how guilty you're feeling. Or y'all become deplorable and alone so oftentimes that it makes you feel even more lamentable and alone just thinking near it.

Welcome to the Feedback Loop from Hell. Chances are y'all've engaged in it more than a few times. Peradventure you lot're engaging in it correct at present: "God, I practise the Feedback Loop all the time—I'k such a loser for doing it. I should stop. Oh my God, I feel like such a loser for calling myself a loser. I should stop calling myself a loser. Ah, fuck! I'thousand doing information technology again! Run into? I'm a loser! Argh!"

At-home down, amigo. Believe it or not, this is part of the beauty of being human. Very few animals on earth take the power to think denoting thoughts to brainstorm with, but we humans have the luxury of being able to have thoughts most our thoughts. And so I can think almost watching Miley Cyrus videos on YouTube, and then immediately think about what a sicko I am for wanting to scout Miley Cyrus videos on YouTube. Ah, the miracle of consciousness!

Now here's the problem: Our lodge today, through the wonders of consumer culture and hey-look-my-life-is-libation-than-yours social media, has bred a whole generation of people who believe that having these negative experiences—anxiety, fright, guilt, etc.—is totally not okay. I mean, if you 100k at your Facebook feed, everybody at that place is having a fucking grand old time. Look, eight people got married this week! And some sixteen-yr-old on Tv set got a Ferrari for her birthday. And another kid just made two billion dollars inventing an app that automatically delivers you more toilet paper when you lot run out.

Meanwhile, you're stuck at home flossing your cat. And you tin't help but think your life sucks even more than you lot thought.

The Feedback Loop from Hell has become a borderline epidemic, making many Of us overly stressed, overly neurotic, and overly self-loathing.

Dorsum in Grandpa'south twenty-four hour period, he would feel like shit and think to himself, "Gee whiz, I sure do feel like a moo-cow turd today. Buthey, I guess that's just life. Dorsum to shoveling hay."

Only now? At present if you lot feel like shit for even v minutes, you're bombarded with 350 images of people totally happy and having astonishing fucking lives, and it's impossible to not feel like in that location'south something wrong with you.

Information technology's this final part that gets the states into trouble. We feel bad most feeling bad. We feel guilty for feeling guilty. Nosotros get aroused well-nigh getting aroused. Nosotros get anxious about feeling anxious. What is incorrect with me?

This is why non giving a fuck is so cardinal. This is why it'south going to save the world. And information technology's going to salvage information technology by accepting that the globe is totally fucked and that's all correct, because it'due south always been that way, and always will be.

Past not giving a fuck that you feel bad, you brusque-circuit the Feedback Loop from Hell; you say to yourself, "I feel like shit, merely who gives a fuck?" And then, as if sprinkled past magic fuck-giving fairy grit, you stop hating yourself for feeling then bad.

George Orwell said that to see what's in forepart Of i'due south nose requires a constant struggle. Well, the solution to our stress and anxiety is right there in front of our noses, and nosotros're too busy watching porn and advertisements for ab machines that don't piece of work, wondering why nosotros're not banging a hot blonde with a rocking half-dozen-pack, to notice.

We joke online almost "first-world problems," just nosotros really have become victims Of our own success. Stress-related health issues, anxiety disorders, and cases of low accept skyrocketed over the past 30 years, despite the fact that everyone has a apartment-screen TV and can have their groceries delivered. Our crisis is no longer material; information technology's existential, information technology'southward spiritual. We accept so much fucking stuff and then many opportunities that we don't even know what to Rive a fuck about anymore.

Because there's an infinite amount Of things we can now encounter or know, there are also an infinite number of ways we can discover that we don't measure upwards, that we're not good enough, that things aren't every bit great as they could be. And this rips u.s.a. apart inside.

Because here's the thing that's wrong with all of the "How to Exist Happy" shit that's been shared eight million times on Facebook in the past few years—hither's what nobody realizes most all of this crap:

The desire for north»re positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one's negative experience is itself a positive feel.

This is a total mind-fuck. and then I'll give you lot a minute to unpretzel your brain and maybe read that again: Wanting positive feel is a negative feel; accepting negative experience is a positive experience. Information technology's what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to every bit "the backwards law"—the idea that the more than you pursue feeling meliorate all the time, the less satisfied you become, every bit pursuing something merely reinforces the fact that you lot lack information technology in the first place. The more y'all desperately want to be rich, the more than poor and unworthy you feel, regardless of how much money yous actually make. The more you desperately want to be sexy and desired, the uglier you come to run across yourself, regardless of your actual physical appearance. The more you badly want to be happy and loved, the lonelier and more than afraid you become, regardless of those who environment y'all. The more you want to be spiritually aware, the more than self-centered and shallow you lot get in trying to get at that place.

It'southward like this i time I tripped on acid and it felt like the more I walked toward a house, the further abroad the house got from me. And aye, I simply used my LSD hallucinations to make a philosophical point most happiness. No fucks given.

As the existential philosopher Albert Camus said (and I'1000 pretty sure he wasn't on LSD at the time): ' 'You lot will never be happy if y'all go on to search for what happiness consists Of. You will never alive if you are looking for the meaning of life."

Or put more than merely:

Don't try.

Now, I know what yous're saying: "Marking, this is making my nipples all difficult, but what about the Camaro I've been saving up for? What most the beach body I've been starving myself for? After all, I paid a lot of money for that ab machine! What almost the large house on the lake I've been dreaming of? If I stop giving a fuck almost those things—well, and so I'll never achieve anything. I don't desire that to happen, exercise I?"

So glad you lot asked.

Ever notice that sometimes when you care less well-nigh something, you practise better at information technology? Find how it's often the person who is the least invested in the success Of something that really ends upwardly achieving it? Notice how sometimes when yous terminate giving a fuck, everything seems to fall into place?

What'due south with that?

What's interesting about the backwards police force is that it's called "backwards" for a reason: not giving a fuck works in reverse. If pursuing the positive is a negative, so pursuing the negative generates the positive. The pain you pursue in the gym results in amend accommodating health and free energy. The failures in business are what pb to a better understanding of what's necessary to be successful. Being open up with your insecurities paradoxically makes you more confident and charismatic effectually others. The pain Of honest confrontation is what generates the greatest trust and respect in your relationships.

Suffering through your fears and anxieties is what allows you to build courage and perseverance. Seriously, I could proceed going, but you get the point. Everything worthwhile in life is won through Seriously, I could keep going, but you become the point. Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires. The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial Of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a course of shame.

Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is not just impossible, merely destructive: attempting to tear it out unravels everything else with information technology. To try to avoid pain is to requite too many fucks about pain. In contrast, if you lot're able to not give a fuck nearly the pain, you become unstoppable.

In my life, I have given a fuck nearly many things. I have also non given a fuck about many things. And like the route not taken, information technology was the fucks not given that fabricated all the difference.

Chances are you know somebody in your life who, at i fourth dimension or some other, did not give a fuck and then went on to accomplish amazing feats. Perhaps there was a time in your own life when you simply did not requite a fuck and excelled to some extraordinary height. For myself, quitting my day job in finance after merely vi weeks to starting time an Internet business ranks pretty high up at that place in my own "didn't give a fuck" hall Of fame. Aforementioned with deciding to sell most Of my possessions and move to South America. Fucks given? None. But went and did it.

These moments Of non-fuckery are the moments that most ascertain our lives. The major switch in careers; the spontaneous selection to driblet out of college and join a rock band; the decision to finally dump that deadbeat swain whom you defenseless wearing your pantyhose a few too many times.

To not give a fuck is to stare down life's most terrifying and difficult challenges and all the same take action.

While non giving a fuck may seem simple on the surface, it's a whole new bag of burritos under the hood. I don't even know what that judgement ways, merely I don't give a fuck. A purse of burritos sounds crawly, so permit's just go with it.

Most of us struggle throughout our lives by giving too many fucks in situations where fucks practise non deserve to be given. Nosotros requite too many fucks most the rude gas station attendant who gave united states of america our change in nickels. We requite too many fucks when a show nosotros liked was canceled on Television receiver. We give too many fucks when Our coworkers don't bother asking us virtually Our awesome weekend.

Meanwhile, our credit cards are maxed out, our dog hates the states, and Inferior is snorting meth in the bathroom, yet we're getting pissed off about nickels and Everybody Loves Raymond.

Expect, this is how it works. You're going to die one day. I know that'south kind Of obvious, but I just wanted to remind you in case yous'd forgotten. You and everyone yous know are going to be dead soon. And in the brusk amount Of time between here and there, you have a express corporeality Of fucks to give. Very few, in fact. And if you lot go around giving a fuck almost everything and anybody without conscious thought or choice—well, and so you're going to get fucked.

In that location is a subtle art to not giving a fuck. And though the concept may audio ridiculous and I may sound like an asshole, what I'm talking about here is essentially learning how to focus and prioritize your thoughts finer—how to selection and choose what matters to you and what does not thing to yous based on finely honed personal values. This is incredibly difficult. It takes a lifetime of practice and discipline to achieve. And y'all will regularly fail. But it is perhaps the almost worthy struggle one can undertake in one's life. It is perhaps the merely struggle in one'due south life.

Because when you lot give as well many fucks—when yous give a fuck almost everyone and everything—you will experience that you're perpetually entitled to exist comfy and happy at all times, that everything is supposed to be just exactly the fucking way you want information technology to be. This is a sickness. And information technology will eat you lot alive. Yous will see every adversity every bit an injustice, every claiming every bit a failure, every inconvenience as a personal slight, every disagreement equally a expose. You will exist confined to your ain petty, skull-sized hell, burning with entitlement and bluster, running circles effectually your very ain personal Feedback Loop from Hell, in constant motility yet arriving nowhere.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

When most people envision giving no fucks whatsoever, they imagine a kind Of serene indifference to everything, a calm that weathers all storms. They imagine and aspire to exist a person who is shaken by nothing and caves in to no 1.

There's a name for a person who finds no emotion or meaning in annihilation: a psychopath. Why y'all would desire to emulate a psychopath, I take no fucking clue.

So what does not giving a fuck mean? Let's look at three "subtleties" that should help clarify the matter.

Subtlety #1: Not giving a fuck does non mean existence indifferent; it means existence comfy with being different.

Allow's be articulate. At that place's absolutely aught admirable or confident virtually indifference. People who are indifferent are lame and scared. They're couch potatoes and Internet trolls. In fact, indifferent people often attempt to be indifferent because in reality they give way also many fucks. They requite a fuck nigh what everyone thinks of their hair, so they never bother washing or combing it. They give a fuck near what everyone thinks Of their ideas, and so they hide behind sarcasm and cocky-righteous snark. They're afraid to let anyone get close to them, so they imagine themselves as some special, unique snowflake who has problems that nobody else would ever understand.

Indifferent people are agape of the world and the repercussions of their ain choices. That's why they don't make whatever meaningful choices. They hibernate in a grayness, emotionless pit Of their ain making, self-captivated and self-pitying, perpetually distracting themselves from this unfortunate thing demanding their fourth dimension and energy called life.

Because here's a sneaky truth most life. There'southward no such thing as not giving a fuck. Yous must requite a fuck about something. It's role Of our biology to e'er care about something and therefore to always give a fuck.

The question, and then, is, What exercise we give a fuck about? What are we choosing to give a fuck virtually? And how can nosotros not give a fuck near what ultimately does not affair?

My mother was recently screwed out Of a large chunk of money past a close friend of hers. Had I been indifferent, I would take shrugged my shoulders, sipped my mocha, and downloaded some other season Of The Wire. Deplorable, Mom.

But instead, I was indignant. I was pissed off. I said, "No, screw that, Mom. Nosotros're going to lawyer the fuck upward and become afterwards this asshole. Why? Considering I don't give a fuck- I will ruin this guy'southward life if I accept to."

This illustrates the get-go subtlety of not giving a fuck. When nosotros say, "Damn, sentry out, Mark Manson simply don't give a fuck," we don't hateful that Marking Manson doesn't care about anything; On the opposite, nosotros hateful that Mark Manson doesn't care about adversity in the face of his goals, he doesn't care about pissing some people off to practice what he feels is correct or important or noble. Nosotros mean that Mark Manson is the type Of guy who would write alX)ut himself in third person just because he idea it was the right thing to do. He just doesn't give a fuck.

This is what is so admirable. NO, not me, dumbass—the overcoming adversity stuff, the willingness to be dissimilar, an Outcast, a pariah, all for the sake Of i's own values. The willingness to stare failure in the face and shove your centre finger back at it. The people who don't give a fuck atx)ut adversity Or failure Or embarrassing themselves Or shitting the bed a few times. The people who just laugh and and then exercise what they believe in anyway. Because they know it's right. They know it's more than important than they are, more important than their own feelings and their own pride and their own ego. They say, "Fuck it," non to everything in life, just rather to everything unimportant in life. They reserve their fucks for what truly matters. Friends. Family unit. Burritos. And an occasional lawsuit or two. And considering of that, because they reserve their fucks for only the large things that matter, people give a fuck them in return.

Considering here's another sneaky trivial truth about life. Yous can't be an important and life-changing presence for some without also being a joke and an embarrassment to others. Y'all just can't. Because there's no such thing every bit a lack of arduousness. Information technology doesn't be. The old saying goes that no matter where you go, at that place you are. Well, the same is true for adversity and failure. No matter where you become, there's a 5-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that's perfectly fine. The point isn 't to become abroad from the shit. The signal is to discover the shit you enjoy dealing with.

Subtlety #2: To not give a fuck about 'Hiversity, you must showtime give a fuck something more important than adversity.

Imagine you're at a grocery store, and you watch an elderly lady scream at the cashier, him for not accepting her thirty-cent coupon. Why does this lady give a fuck? It'due south just thirty cents. I'll tell yous why: That lady probably doesn't have annihilation ameliorate to practise with her days than to sit at home cutting out coupons. She's Sometime and lonely. Her kids are dickheads and never visit. She hasn't had sexual activity in over thirty years. She can't fart without extreme lower-back hurting. Her alimony is on its terminal legs, and she's probably going to die in a thinking she's in Candy Land.

So she snips coupons. That's all she'due south got. It's her and her damn cotilX)ns. It'due south all she tin give a fuck about because in that location is nothing else to give a fuck about. And So when that pimply-faced seventeen-year-one-time cashier refuses to have one of them, when he defends his cash annals's purity the manner knights used to defend maidens' virginity, y'all can bet Granny is going to erupt. Eighty years Of fucks will rain downwards all at in one case, similar a fiery hailstorm Of "Back in my day" and "People used to show more respect" stories.

The problem with who hand out fucks like ice cream at a goddamn summer camp is that they don't accept anything more fuck-worthy to dedicate their fucks to.

If you lot find yourself consistently giving also many fucks about trivial shit that IN)thers you lot—your ex-boyfriend'southward new Facebook moving picture, how quickly the batteries die in the Television remote, missing out on yet another 2-for-one sale on hand sanitizer—chances are y'all don't accept much going on in your life to give a legitimate fuck about. And that'due south your real trouble. Not the hand sanitizer. Not the TV remote.

I once heard an artist say that when a person has no problems, the mind automatically finds a mode to invent some. I recollect what almost people—especially educated, pampered centre-class white people—consider "life bug" are actually just side effects of not having anything more to worry about.

Information technology then follows that finding something of import and meaningful in your life is perhaps the virtually productive apply of your time and energy. Considering if you don't find that meaningful something, your fucks volition be given to meaningless and frivolous causes.

Subtlety #3: Whether yous realize it or not, yous are ever choosing what to requite a fuck most.

People aren't only born not giving a fuck. In fact, we're born giving manner too many fucks. Ever watch a kid cry his optics out considering his hat is the wrong shade Of blue? Exactly. Fuck that child.

When we're young, everything is new and exciting, and everything seems to matter so much. Therefore, we requite tons of fucks. We give a fuck about everything and anybody—about what people are saying about us, about whether that beautiful male child/girl called the states back or non, whether our socks lucifer or not, or what color Our birthday balloon is.

As we get older, with the benefit of experience (and having seen and then much fourth dimension slip by), we begin to notice that well-nigh Of these sorts Of things have lilliputian lasting affect on our lives. Those people whose opinions we cared so much before are no longer present in our lives. Rejections that were painful in the moment take actually worked out for the best. We realize how little attending people pay to the superficial details near u.s., and we choose not to captivate and then much over them.

Essentially, we become more than selective nearly the fucks we're willing to give. This is something chosen maturity. It's nice; you should try information technology sometime. Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a fuck about what'south truly fuckworthy. Equally Bunk Moreland said to his partner Detective McNulty in The Wire (which, fuck you, I still downloaded): "That's what y'all get for giving a fuck when it wasn't your turn to requite a fuck."

And so, as nosotros grow older and enter middle historic period, something else begins to change. Our energy level drops. Our identity solidifies. We know who we are and we take ourselves, including some Of the parts we aren't thrilled about.

And, in a strange mode, this is liberating. Nosotros no longer need to give a fuck about everything. Life is just what it is. We take it, warts and all. We realize that we're never going to cure cancer Or get to the moon or experience Jennifer Aniston'south tits. And that's okay. Life goes on. We now reserve our e'er-dwindling fucks for the almost truly fuck-worthy parts Of Our lives: Our families, Our best friends, Our golf swing. And, to our astonishment, this is enough. This simplification really makes us actually fucking happy on a consistent basis. And we Beginning to think, Peradventure that crazy alcoholic Bukowski was onto something. Don 't endeavor.

And so Marker, What the Fuck Is the Point of This Volume Anyway?

This book volition help you lot think a petty fleck more clearly about what you lot're choosing to observe important in life and what you're choosing to find unimportant.

I believe that today we're facing a psychological epidemic, one in which people no longer realize information technology'south okay for things to suck sometimes. I know that sounds intellectually lazy on the surface, but I promise you, it's a life/death sort of issue.

Considering when we believe that it'due south non okay for things to suck sometimes, then we unconsciously Beginning blaming ourselves. We start to feel equally though something is inherently wrong with usa, which drives u.s.a. to all sorts of overcompensation, like buying forty pairs of shoes or downing Xanax with a vodka chaser on a Tuesday night or shooting up a school motorbus total Of kids.

This belief that it's not okay to be inadequate sometimes is the source of the growing Feedback Loop from Hell that is coming to dominate Our civilization.

The idea of non giving a fuck is a unproblematic manner of reorienting our expectations for life and choosing what is important and what is non. Developing this ability leads to something I like to think of every bit a kind of "practical enlightenment."

NO, not that airy-fairy, eternal bliss, end-of-all-suffering, bullshitty kind of enlightenment. On the contrary, I see practical enlightenment every bit becoming comfortable with the idea that some suffering is always inevitable—that no matter what you lot do, life is comprised Of failures, loss, regrets, and fifty-fifty decease. Because one time you become comfortable with all the shit that life throws at you (and information technology will throw a lot Of shit, trust me), y'all go invincible in a sort Of low-level spiritual mode. Later all, the only way to overcome pain is to first larn how to bear it.

This book doesn't give a fuck about alleviating your issues or your pain. And that is precisely why you will know it's being honest. This book is not some guide to greatness—it couldn't exist, because greatness is merely an illusion in our minds, a made-upwards destination that we obligate ourselves to pursue, Our own psychological Atlantis.

Instead, this book will turn your pain into a tool, your trauma into power, and your problems into slightly better bug. That is real progress. Think Of it as a guide to suffering and how to do it better, more meaningfully, with more compassion and more than humility. It'due south a book about moving lightly despite your heavy burdens, resting easier with your greatest fears, laughing at your tears every bit you cry them.

This book volition not teach you how to proceeds or reach, just rather how to lose and let go. It will teach vou to take inventorv of vour life and scrub out all but the most imDortant items. It volition teach you to close your optics and trust that you can autumn backwards and nonetheless be Okay. It will teach yous to give fewer fucks. It will teach you to not try.

THANKS FOR READING LOVELIES!

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