The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life (Mark Manson Collection Book 1)

Subtlety #1: Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.

“The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that’s okay.”

Our lives today are filled with information from the extremes of the bell curve of human experience,

Subtlety #3: Whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing what to give a fuck about.

Look, this is how it works. You’re going to die one day. I know that’s kind of obvious, but I just wanted to remind you in case you’d forgotten. You and everyone you know are going to be dead soon. And in the short amount of time between here and there, you have a limited amount of fucks to give.

We can then say that it’s a statistical improbability that any single person will be an extraordinary performer in all areas of life, or even in many areas of their life.

“Outrage is like a lot of other things that feel good but over time devour us from the inside out. And it’s even more insidious than most vices because we don’t even consciously acknowledge that it’s a pleasure.”

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

Even if you get run over by a clown car and pissed on by a busload of schoolchildren, it’s still your responsibility to interpret the meaning of the event and choose a response.

Constant positivity is a form of avoidance, not a valid solution to life’s problems—problems which, by the way, if you’re choosing the right values and metrics, should be invigorating you and motivating you.