The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck.

The Feedback Loop from Hell: 14

 

Or let’s say you have an anger problem. You get pissed off at the stupidest, most inane stuff, and you have no idea why. And the fact that you get pissed off so easily starts to piss you off even more. And then, in your petty rage, you realize that being angry all the time makes you a shallow and mean person, and you hate this; you hate it so much that you get angry at yourself. Now look at you: you’re angry at yourself getting angry about being angry. Fuck you, wall. Here, have a fist.

The Feedback Loop from Hell: 17

 

But now? Now if you feel like shit for even five minutes, you’re bombarded with 350 images of people totally happy and having amazing fucking lives, and it’s impossible to not feel like there’s something wrong with you.

The Feedback Loop from Hell: 25

 

To not give a fuck is to stare down life’s most terrifying and difficult challenges and still take action.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: 33

 

The point isn’t to get away from the shit. The point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: 37

 

Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a fuck about what’s truly fuckworthy. As

Happiness Comes from Solving Problems: 60

 

Highs also generate addiction. The more you rely on them to feel better about your underlying problems, the more you will seek them out. In this sense, almost anything can become addictive, depending on the motivation behind using it. We all have our chosen methods to numb the pain of our problems, and in moderate doses there is nothing wrong with this. But the longer we avoid and the longer we numb, the more painful it will be when we finally do confront our issues.

Emotions Are Overrated: 64

 

“hedonic treadmill”:

Choose Your Struggle: 69

 

You can’t win if you don’t play.

The Tyranny of Exceptionalism: 106

 

sex is the most valuable thing a man can attain, and it’s worth sacrificing anything (including your own dignity) to get it.

Shitty Values: 144

 

  Pleasure. Pleasure is great, but it’s a horrible value to prioritize your life around.

Shitty Values: 144

 

Pleasure is a false god.

Shitty Values: 148

 

Child dying of throat cancer? At least you don’t have to pay for college anymore!

what?

Shitty Values: 150

 

Raising a child makes us happier than beating a video game.

Shitty Values: 151

 

often unpleasant. They also require withstanding problem after problem. Yet they are some of the most meaningful moments and joyous things we’ll ever do. They involve pain, struggle, even anger and despair—yet once they’re accomplished, we look back and get all misty-eyed telling our grandkids about them

make life more meaningful

Shitty Values: 151

 

This is why these values—pleasure, material success, always being right, staying positive—are poor ideals for a person’s life.

CHAPTER 5: You Are Always Choosing: 160

 

Often the only difference between a problem being painful or being powerful is a sense that we chose it, and that we are responsible for it.

The Choice: 166

 

There is a simple realization from which all personal improvement and growth emerges. This is the realization that we, individually, are responsible for everything in our lives, no matter the external circumstances.

The Choice: 168

 

To not give a fuck about anything is still to give a fuck about something.

so the fuck is always there. a good thing.

The Responsibility/Fault Fallacy: 172

 

A lot of people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because they believe that to be responsible for your problems is to also be at fault for your problems.

Genetics and the Hand We’re Dealt: 190

 

The lifestyle of staying up all night staring at a computer screen, winning thousands of dollars one day and then losing most of it the next, wasn’t for me, and it wasn’t exactly the most healthy or emotionally stable means of earning a living.

Victimhood Chic: 196

 

The biggest problem with victimhood chic is that it sucks attention away from actual victims. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. The more people there are who proclaim themselves victims over tiny infractions, the harder it becomes to see who the real victims actually are.

CHAPTER 6: You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I): 208

 

Certainty is the enemy of growth. Nothing is for certain until it has already happened—and

 

The Dangers of Pure Certainty: 223

 

Evil people

The Dangers of Pure Certainty: 223

 

people never believe that they are evil; rather, they believe that everyone else is evil.

The Dangers of Pure Certainty: 226

 

Uncertainty is the root of all progress and all growth. As the old adage goes, the man who believes he knows everything learns nothing.

Manson’s Law of Avoidance: 229

 

This is why people are often so afraid of success—for the exact same reason they’re afraid of failure: it

How to Be a Little Less Certain of Yourself: 240

 

, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it

The Failure/Success Paradox: 251

 

Improvement at anything is based on thousands of tiny failures, and the magnitude of your success is based on how many times you’ve failed at something.

The “Do Something” Principle: 267

 

downloaded some computer games and avoided work like it was the Ebola virus.

The “Do Something” Principle: 267

 

When I was in high school, my math teacher Mr. Packwood used to say, “If you’re stuck on a problem, don’t sit there and think about it; just start working on it. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, the simple act of working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head.”

The “Do Something” Principle: 268

 

Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.

CHAPTER 8: The Importance of Saying No: 278

 

Freedom grants the opportunity for greater meaning, but by itself there is nothing necessarily meaningful about it.

CHAPTER 8: The Importance of Saying No: 284

 

This is why it became the norm in Western cultures to smile and say polite things even when you don’t feel like it, to tell little white lies and agree with someone whom you don’t actually agree with. This is why people learn to pretend to be friends with people they don’t actually like, to buy things they don’t actually want. The economic system promotes such deception.

Boundaries: 299

 

Entitled people who blame others for their own emotions and actions do so because they believe that if they constantly paint themselves as victims, eventually someone will come along and save them, and they will receive the love they’ve always wanted.

Freedom Through Commitment: 315

 

But when you’ve been to twenty countries, the twenty-first adds little. And when you’ve been to fifty, the fifty-first adds even less.
The same goes for material possessions, money, hobbies, jobs, friends, and romantic/sexual partners—all the lame superficial values people choose for themselves. The older you get, the more experienced you get, the less significantly each new experience affects you. The

Freedom Through Commitment: 316

 

. I shut down all my business projects and decided to focus on writing full-time. Since then, my website has become more popular than I’d ever imagined possible

Freedom Through Commitment: 317

 

Commitment gives you freedom because you’re no longer distracted by the unimportant and frivolous.

Something Beyond Our Selves: 330

 

Becker died in 1974. His book The Denial of Death, would win the Pulitzer Prize and become one of the most influential intellectual works of the twentieth century, shaking up the fields of psychology and anthropology, while making profound philosophical claims that are still influential today.