Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2 Book Series))

The Feeling Brain is always driving. Second, fighting with the Feeling Brain about feeling bad will only cause the Feeling Brain to feel even worse. So, why would you do that? You were supposed to be the smart one, Thinking Brain.

Sadly, the realization that this boy is not shit is too painful for girl’s Feeling Brain to handle, so she convinces herself that he is, indeed, shit. She nitpicks his tiniest flaws. She notices every errant word, every misplaced gesture, every awkward touch. She zeroes in on his most insignificant mistakes until they stand bright in her mind like

“I think your mind is so open your brain fell out!”

What if you didn’t have to prove anything to the people in your life for them to like you?

Thus, began the stupid dick-measuring contest also known as human history.

by experiencing our hopes, we lose them. We see that our beautiful visions for a perfect future are not so perfect, that our dreams and aspirations are themselves riddled with unexpected flaws and unforeseen sacrifices.

being heroic is the ability to conjure hope where there is none.

This surrender to and acceptance of ourselves as inherently inferior is often referred to as shame or low self-worth. Call it what you want, the result is the same: Life kicks you around a little bit, and you feel powerless to stop it. Therefore, your Feeling Brain concludes that you must deserve it.

This is what’s referred to in psychology as “emotional regulation,” and it’s basically learning how to put a bunch of fucking guardrails and One Way signs along your road of life to keep your Feeling Brain from careening off a cliff.31 It’s hard

In the end, adolescent values are self-defeating. You can’t live your entire life this way, otherwise you’re never actually living your own life. You’re merely living out an aggregation of the desires of the people around you.