Don't give a F#*K! 😳

A counter-intuitive approach to living a good life - by Mark Manson

You likely have heard of this book at one point in time, probably because of its infamous title that is somewhat unconventional, but so is the book’s approach to the recipe of a healthy and happy life.

It doesn’t actually tell you not to give a f*** (GAF) about everything, but more so what to care about, and why. It’s a book about values and what type of goals we should focus on and have, rather the typical common objectives most people and self-help books refer to.

---

Concept 1: Don’t Try ➕

The big idea here is to not try and always pursue positive experiences and feelings without taking into consideration the negative ones.

He refers to the Backward Law which states:

“The pursuit of positive experience is in itself a negative experience. And the acceptance of a negative experience is itself a positive experience.”

Most people assume they just want to experience positive things in life because they think that’s what brings them most happiness. But it’s actually the tolerance and acceptance of negative experiences that lead to positive experiences.

The more you focus on feeling better all the time about something, the less satisfied you become with its current state, which only reinforces your lack in it in the first place. The more desperately you want to be rich, the more poor and unworthy you feel, regardless of how much money you actually have. The more you want to be sexy and desired, the uglier and more self conscious and critical you become, regardless of how you look.

The Give A f**k framework:

1. Not GAF does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different. Indifference is impossible, if you focus on not caring about everything, then you’re caring about not caring about everything. Therefore, the question is what do you GAF about. If you GAF about few but very important things, then you won’t care about other smaller things.

2. To not GAF about adversity, you must first GAF about something more important than adversity. So if you’re always worrying about what people think about you, the problem isn’t what they think, the problem is you don’t have anything better to worry about. 

3. Wether you realise it or not, you are always choosing what to GAF about. 

Concept 2: Happiness is a Problem 🤨

If you’ve read Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (I’ll be doing a summary on that one soon), the big notion of that book is that life is suffering. It sounds like a gruesome concept, but it’s not as negative or depressing as it might sound.

In life, everything you like and enjoy, you build an attachment towards. And attachment by nature can potentially cause suffering if the thing you are attached to is no longer available. So it’s not that life is all gloom and doom, but that sometimes suffering has some usefulness and practicality to it.

“Negative emotions have an inherent purpose. They are signals within our body to do something. If we train ourselves to ignore them then we are actually limiting ourselves.”

Happiness can be similar to a treadmill if it’s all you are seeking. You can say something like: if I buy a house I’ll be happy. Once you do, you’ll most likely want something more, so it becomes: if I can get a bigger house I’ll be happy, then you’d want a car, then a fancier car, etc. It’s not to say that having goals and objectives is wrong, but tying your overall happiness to specific conditions and limitations can be problematic and leave you always unsatisfied.

“Happiness comes from solving problems. Find problems that you kind of want to have.”

There’s always satisfaction in solving a problem or overcoming a challenge. Even as simple as games and puzzles, why do we enjoy them so much? Probably because we feel good about ourselves that we were able to solve an obstacle. The same can be said for why addicts celebrate sobriety milestones for example; the joy of overcoming their addiction and the positive streak they were able to maintain.

If I ask you what you want out of life and you answer is along the lines of ‘I want to be happy and have a great job and loving family’, your response is so common and generic that it almost doesn’t mean anything really. Everyone wants to feel good and be loved, respected, live an easy and carefree life, have amazing relationships, etc. Everyone wants that. It’s easy to want that. A more interesting question would be ‘what pain are do you want in your life?’ Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives will turn out.

Concept 3: You Are Not Special 💔

“Entitlement means feeling as though you deserve to be happy without sacrificing for it.”

Entitlement and believing that you deserve and are owed to live a happy life full of positives without having to endure some suffering and some negative experiences is not a realistic approach and can have destructive consequences.

There are two forms of entitlement:
1. I’m awesome and the rest of you all suck, so I deserve special treatment (Grandiose mentality)
2. I suck and the rest of you are all awesome, so I deserve special treatment (Victim mentality)

Both have made up beliefs about their place in their social hierarchy, but ultimately both result in very similar behaviours.

We live in a time where all the platforms we use create a delusional belief that the world revolves around us and owes us something. All the ‘every person can be extraordinary and achieve greatness’ mentality is built to stroke your ego. “It’s a message that tastes good going down, but in reality is nothing more than empty calories that make you emotionally fat and bloated, the proverbial Big Mac for your heart and brain.”

The key to emotional health, similar to physical health, is eating your veggies - that is, accepting the harsh and mundane truths of life: truths like ‘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.”

Concept 4: You Are Always Choosing 🔑

Here are two scenarios: someone kidnaps your family and puts a gun to your head that you have to run a full marathon to save them. You’re pretty out of shape. Other scenario is you’ve been training for a marathon for a few months getting ready, you complete it and are surrounded by your family and friends at the finish line. While in both cases the action required is the same, you can argue that one can be described as the worst experience of your life, while the other can be one of the best experiences of your life.

What is different here is the context, and the perception that in the second case you chose to go through that pain and struggle. When we feel like we’re choosing our struggles and what problems we have in our lives, they tend to seem more acceptable to deal with. If we feel like we are forced to deal with them, we suffer and feel powerless.

“You are always choosing whether you realize it or not. There’s no such thing as you not choosing your problems or struggles, the only thing that changes is whether you admit it to yourself or not. People don’t like hearing this and the idea that every problem they have in their life they chose it.”

It’s worth noting that there’s a difference between responsibility and fault. If you get get cancer it is not your fault you got it, but it is 100% your responsibility how you deal with it. Similarly other problems and issues that might surface outside of your control that aren’t necessarily your wrongdoing, but it’s up to you how you choose to handle it: either getting comfortable with the pain it causes, or deciding to do something to change it if you could.

Once you develop that habit or that value of constant responsibility, everything changes.

Concept 5: Why You’re Wrong About Everything (but so am I) ❌

Here’s a thought exercise: think of all the things you believed were true or facts 5, 10, or 20 years ago, that you now have very different thoughts on.
Now think of all the things you are certain are true today, and imagine how ridiculous they could seem in 10 years or in 500 years.

There are always examples of things that the whole world thought were true and took as a given: science used to believe the earth was flat, we didn’t know there was a Western Hemisphere all together, etc.

Certainty can blind us. What we are so sure is true today can be something we laugh at and think is ridiculous at some point in the future. There’s nothing wrong with that because it means we have grown and evolved and become smarter. But only with the willingness and openness to accepting being wrong.

Benefits of uncertainty:

• Opens up space to learn and improve

• Helps guard against extremist ideology 

• Opens room for dialogue with other people

A good exercise to do every now and then is asking yourself what if I’m wrong? What would it mean if I were wrong? Would being wrong create a better or worse problem that my current problem, for both myself and others?

Concept 6: The Importance of Saying NO 🙅🏻‍♀️

For you to value certain things above others is to accept them and reject other things. If you value your career, it means you’re going to have to pass on the nights out and fun times every now and then. By definition, if you don’t reject some things, then you don’t really prioritize what’s important to you.

People who struggle to say no often feel lost and unsure where their priorities and values lie.

A sign of a good relationship is when two people are comfortable saying no to each other without worrying about any consequence. You need to be willing to disappoint the other person while trusting that they will stick with you regardless.

“Because if you’re never willing to disappoint your partner, then you never actually develop trust for them. You never actually know if they’re going to stick with you when shit hits the fan. Then you’ll eventually end up in a toxic place.”

Once your values and priorities are clear to you and those around you, it gives you a sense of freedom. There’s hidden pleasure in fully committing to something. Although most people avoid commitments because they seem limiting, once you actually have laser focus on the few things you truly care about and value above all else, you don’t really GAF about other stuff, and that’s the beauty of it.

Concept 7: And Then You Die 💀

You often hear these stories about people who had near death experiences and how they’ve turned their lives around. Or how someone decided to achieve great things after finding out they have a short amount of time left to live.

“Death is actually the thing that most crystallizes what matter in life. It’s only when you confront death or come close to death that it’s most clear to you when you should be giving a f**k about.”

The stoics have this metaphor Memento Mori, which means remember death. This is a constant part of their practice as they believe that you should always question your own mortality and think about your own death. It allows you to re-center your focus and attention to your values and what truly matters to you in life.

So as scary as it might seem, get in the habit of asking yourself things like: if I die next year, what would I do with my last year? Or if I die tomorrow or got a fatal disease, would I have any regrets or would I feel like I wasted time? If so, for what? 

Let me know if you have any thoughts or comments on this one!

And apologies for the day delay on the post, hope you’re all having a great week.