Personal Review

As the title implies, the book is written in a very free style, so the author communicates with the reader as if you were drinking a beer together in a bar, i.e., it is a little bit foulmouthed. Personally, I'm don't speak like that at any moment, unless I'm extremely angry, and I'm more used to reading more "serious" books, or should I say, "books written in a more serious style", so for the first pages of the book I felt a little uncomfortable, but that feeling wore off as I moved forward through the book.

The messages in this book can seem a little obvious for some people, which was my case, but definitely a lot of people, especially in younger generations, could take a lot from this book, if they wanted to pay attention. Therefore, I'd say the book is targeted at young adults.

The purpose of the book is to point the reader in the direction of living a truthful and meaningful life, which in the end means something different for each person. There is no "one size fits all" recipe; the book simply shows "an approach", a way to think about your own life.

Book Summary

How is our current culture?

We live in a consumer culture, where the prevalence of social media has fostered a new generation that views experiencing negative emotions, like fear, anxiety, and guilt, as something completely unacceptable.

We are continuously inundated with messages that convince us that everything is always important.

Why? Because businesses are behind everything, and our society is shaped by what is good for business.

We are pushed to be focused on unrealistically positive expectations be healthier, be happier, be the best, be richer, be sexier, be smarter.

What are the consequences?

People have learned to feel bad about feeling bad, to reject all bad feelings.
If it's not OK for things to be bad, then unconsciously we start blaming ourselves, and we start to think that there is something wrong with us.
The more you try to feel better all the time, the less satisfied you feel.
If you continue to search for what happiness is for you, you will never be happy.
You will forget to live, always looking for the meaning of life.
People become entitled and want everything to be just exactly in the way they want it to be.
People see adversity as injustice.
People see challenge as failure.

What could you do?

Learn "not to care" about everything too much.
Focus on things that are true, and immediately important.
Accept your negative experiences, which in itself is a positive experience; instead of desiring more positive experiences, and only positive experiences, all the time, which is itself a negative experience.

It's OK that not everything is OK all the time.
Suffer through your fears and anxieties.
This is what allows you to build courage and perseverance.
Achieving anything valuable in life involves the process of overcoming challenges and hardships.
Become comfortable with the idea that some suffering is inevitable. Life is full of failures, losses, and regrets.

Learn to lose and let go.

This is more important than directly learning how to gain or achieve, because success only comes from trying and failing many times, and you will need to handle those failures. By learning how to lose, you are indirectly learning how to succeed.

What does it mean "not to care"?

It doesn't mean "to be indifferent". It means to be comfortable with "being different".

Indifferent people are scared of the world and the consequences of their choices.
Indifferent people actually care too much, and they intentionally try to be indifferent.

To be indifferent to adversity. To do that you need to find something meaningful.

If you don't have something meaningful, you will find yourself caring too much about meaningless things.

Choosing something you really care about.

As we grow older, we mature, and we become more selective about what we care about.

How to find happiness?

Accept suffering as something that has been biologically useful for our evolution;

It's the natural method to inspire change.
The dissatisfied creature is going to work to innovate and survive.
Our constant dissatisfaction has driven human species to push forward.
Pain and misery are a feature, not a bug.

Focus on solving problems:

Problems never stop; they are swapped out or evolve.
If you avoid your problems, or feel like you don't have any problems, then you're going to be miserable.
Happiness is in the process of solving every problem that life throws in your way.

Interpret your emotions as feedback, in the form of suggestions:

Negative emotions are a call to action. Your brain is telling you that there is an unresolved problem.
If something makes you feel good, it doesn't necessarily mean that it IS good.
It is a good habit to always question your emotions.

Choose your battles:

Victories and rewards don't come for free. You will have to struggle.
Our struggles determine our successes.
It's not enough to desire the reward, the success. You need to understand the struggle you will have to live through to be able to get that reward. If you can't accept that struggle, then you may need to choose a different reward to pursue.
Our solved problems generate our happiness, and also some new and upgraded problems.

How to be extraordinary?

First, accept that this is not possible. Our current society tries to sell us on the idea that we are all extraordinary, but if everyone were extraordinary, then by definition no one would be.
Even if you are really exceptional at one thing, chances are that you're average, or below, at a lot of other things.
People who become great at something become great because they understand that, at this moment, they are not great, and work hard to become so much better.

How to improve my self-awareness?

There are 3 layers of self-awareness:

Ability to identify our emotions:

This is when I feel happy.
This makes me sad.
This gives me hope.

Ability to find the root cause, asking ourselves why we feel certain emotions:

These questions help us illuminate what we consider success or failure.
Only when we understand the root causes, then we can do something about it.

Our personal values:

Why do I consider this to be a success/failure?
Our values determine the nature of our problems.
Our values determine how we choose to measure ourselves.
If we simply try to change our perceptions and feelings, without changing our underlying values and the metrics by which we assess those values, then we are not accomplishing real change.
If you want to change how you see your problems, you need to adjust your values, or the way you evaluate them.

Which values are not good for us?

Pleasure

Pleasure is not the cause of happiness; it is the consequence.
If you have good values and metrics, then pleasure will occur naturally.

Material success

Studies have indicated that after you are able to meet your basic physical needs, the correlation between happiness and material success rapidly diminishes.

Being right

We are constantly wrong.
People who think they are always right, don't learn properly from their mistakes.
This doesn't allow you to take on new perspectives.

Staying positive

Life can be difficult, and the healthiest thing to do is to accept the negative experiences.
Negative emotions are a necessary component of emotional health.
Denying negative emotions lead to deeper and longer negative emotions.
Constant positivity is a form of avoidance. When we avoid our problems, we miss the opportunity to solve them and create happiness.

Which are the most beneficial values to adopt?

Take responsibility for everything that occurs in your life.

Empowerment

Choose your problems. When we feel that we're choosing our problems, we feel empowered.
The more we embrace responsibility in our lives, the more control we have.
Taking responsibility for our problems in the first step to their resolution.

We can't always control what happens to use, but we can control how we perceive and react to those events.
Taking responsibility Vs. Assuming the fault

Many people think that being responsible for your problems is that same as being at fault for your problems, but those are two very different things.
Fault is past tense. Responsibility is present tense.
Fault results from choices already made. Responsibility results from the choices you are making right now.
In a game like poker, players don't have control over which cards they are dealt, but they can control how they play those cards, and the decisions they make, the risks they decide to take. Life can be like that sometimes. You just have to take responsibility on your choices and stop blaming the dealer.

Acknowledge your own ignorance. Embrace uncertainty.

Certainty is the enemy of growth.

Rather than seeking certainty all the time, we should constantly pursue doubt.

It's good to be wrong:

Every time you realize you were wrong about something, it's a sign that you have grown.
Being wrong opens the possibility of change.
Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth.
Growth is an endless iterative process. Throughout your life, you will realize that you were wrong countless times.
Learning is going from "wrong" to "slightly less wrong".

It's good to embrace uncertainty:

It helps us feeling more comfortable when we realize something we don't know.
It opens us to experience, reducing our judgements of ourselves.
It is the root of all progress and growth.
We can't learn something unless we first admit our ignorance.

The more we admit we don't know, the more opportunities we have to learn.

Question yourself:

What if I'm wrong?

For any change to happen, you first have to be wrong about something.

What would it mean if I were wrong?
Would being wrong lead to a better or worse outcome?

Be open to discover your own flaws and mistakes.

Success only comes after failure:

Improvement is based on a large number of tiny failures.
The magnitude of your success is correlated to how many times you've failed.
If someone is better than you at something, probably that person has failed more than you have.
You have to be willing to fail if you truly want to succeed.

Pain is part of the process:

Pain often makes us stronger and more resilient.
Our most rewarding accomplishments often have come after the toughest challenges.
Physical pain is necessary to strengthen our muscles. In the same way, emotional pain is necessary to build emotional resilience, greater compassion, and overall happiness in life.

Act now:

If you are stuck on a problem, start working on it. It doesn't matter if you don't know what you're doing, just by simply doing something, it will help to bring the flow of right ideas to your head.
Pushing yourself to do something, even the simplest tasks, will make the larger tasks look easier.
Action can be the cause of motivation, not just the effect of it.

Usually, action comes from motivation, which itself comes from feeling an emotional inspiration.
It is not a one-way flow. It can be a virtuous circle:

your actions can create emotional reactions and inspirations, which can motivate your future actions.

Accept rejection. Find the ability to say and hear "no".

To value something, we must reject everything else.
If we valued everything equally, we wouldn't reject anything, and we would have empty and meaningless lives.
When we commit to something or someone, we are rejecting the alternatives.
The paradox of choice

The more options we have, the less satisfied we feel with whatever we choose.
When you worry about the potential of all the options you would be sacrificing if you choose one option, then you avoid choosing anything at all.
You avoid commitment. You want to keep your options open as long as possible.

The power of commitment:

When you are really committed, you are free. You don't have the distractions from trivial and insignificant matters. You can focus and direct your attention towards what makes you happy and healthy.

What's the difference between a healthy and an unhealthy relationship?

How well each person accepts responsibility.
The willingness of each person to reject and be rejected by their partner.

Toxic relationships:

People regularly avoid responsibility for their own problems.
People take responsibility for their partner's problems.
People try to solve each other's problems in order to feel good about themselves:

People shouldn't solve your problems for you. You lose opportunities to generate happiness.
You shouldn't solve other people's problems, because you are not helping them to be really happier.

Healthy relationships:

People take responsibility for their own problems.
People don't take responsibility for their partner's problems.
People solve their own problems to feel good about themselves.
People support each other, only because they choose to, not out of obligation or fear of the consequences of not doing so.
People are not afraid of an argument or getting hurt.
Both people have to be willing and able to say and hear no

Conflict is necessary for the maintenance of a healthy relationship.
If they can't express their differences openly, then the relationship is based on manipulation, and it will become toxic.

Contemplate your own mortality.

If you spend much of your short life avoiding pain and discomfort, you are essentially avoiding being alive.
How will the world be when you're gone? What mark will you have made?
Human civilization is basically a result of immortality projects, where people try to construct a conceptual self that will live forever, hoping to be remembered long after their physical self ceases to exist.
To find comfort with your own death, you need to view yourself as part of something greater and adopt values that extend beyond serving yourself.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, by Mark Manson