Mark Manson - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F__k (2016, HarperOne) - libgen.li

women would think I was a creepy rapist if I so much as said, “Hello.”
The problem was that my emotions defined my reality. Because it felt
like people didn’t want to talk to me, I came to believe that people didn’t
want to talk to me. And thus, my VCR question: “How do you just walk up
and talk to a person?”
Because I failed to separate what I felt from what was, I was incapable
of stepping outside myself and seeing the world for what it was: a simple
place where two people can walk up to each other at any time and speak.
Many people, when they feel some form of pain or anger or sadness, drop
everything and attend to numbing out whatever they’re feeling. Their goal is
to get back to “feeling good” again as quickly as possible, even if that means
substances or deluding themselves or returning to their shitty values.
Learn to sustain the pain you’ve chosen. When you choose a new value,
you are choosing to introduce a new form of pain into your life. Relish it.
Savor it. Welcome it with open arms. Then act despite it.
I won’t lie: this is going to feel impossibly hard at first. But you can start
simple. You’re going to feel as though you don’t know what to do. But we’ve
discussed this: you don’t know anything. Even when you think you do, you
really don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. So really, what is there to
lose?
Life is about not knowing and then doing something anyway. All of life is
like this. It never changes. Even when you’re happy. Even when you’re
farting fairy dust. Even when you win the lottery and buy a small fleet of Jet
Skis, you still won’t know what the hell you’re doing. Don’t ever forget that.
And don’t ever be afraid of that.
The “Do Something” Principle
In 2008, after holding down a day job for all of six weeks, I gave up on the
whole job thing to pursue an online business. At the time, I had absolutely no
clue what I was doing, but I figured if I was going to be broke and miserable,
I might as well be while working on my own terms. And at that time, all I
seemed to really care about was chasing girls. So fuck it, I decided to start a
blog about my crazy dating life.
That first morning that I woke up self-employed, terror quickly consumed
me. I found myself sitting with my laptop and realized, for the first time, that I