The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck

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accepting and affirmative as possible. This is a cornerstone of many of theso-called positive thinking books: open yourself up to opportunities, beaccepting, say yes to everything and everyone, and so on.But we need to reject something. Otherwise, we stand for nothing. Ifnothing is better or more desirable than anything else, then we are empty andour life is meaningless. We are without values and therefore live our lifewithout any purpose.The avoidance of rejection (both giving and receiving it) is often sold tous as a way to make ourselves feel better. But avoiding rejection gives usshort-term pleasure by making us rudderless and directionless in the longterm.To truly appreciate something, you must confine yourself to it. There’s acertain level of joy and meaning that you reach in life only when you’vespent decades investing in a single relationship, a single craft, a single career.And you cannot achieve those decades of investment without rejecting thealternatives.The act of choosing a value for yourself requires rejecting alternativevalues. If I choose to make my marriage the most important part of my life,that means I’m (probably) choosing not to make cocaine-fueled hooker orgiesan important part of my life. If I’m choosing to judge myself based on myability to have open and accepting friendships, that means I’m rejectingtrashing my friends behind their backs. These are all healthy decisions, yetthey require rejection at every turn.The point is this: we all must give a fuck about something, in order tovalue something. And to value something, we must reject what is not thatsomething. To value X, we must reject non-X.That rejection is an inherent and necessary part of maintaining our values,and therefore our identity. We are defined by what we choose to reject. Andif we reject nothing (perhaps in fear of being rejected by somethingourselves), we essentially have no identity at all.The desire to avoid rejection at all costs, to avoid confrontation andconflict, the desire to attempt to accept everything equally and to makeeverything cohere and harmonize, is a deep and subtle form of entitlement.Entitled people, because they feel as though they deserve to feel great all thetime, avoid rejecting anything because doing so might make them orsomeone else feel bad. And because they refuse to reject anything, they live a
valueless, pleasure-driven, and self-absorbed life. All they give a fuck aboutis sustaining the high a little bit longer, to avoid the inevitable failures of theirlife, to pretend the suffering away.Rejection is an important and crucial life skill. Nobody wants to be stuckin a relationship that isn’t making them happy. Nobody wants to be stuck in abusiness doing work they hate and don’t believe in. Nobody wants to feel thatthey can’t say what they really mean.Yet people choose these things. All the time.Honesty is a natural human craving. But part of having honesty in ourlives is becoming comfortable with saying and hearing the word “no.” In thisway, rejection actually makes our relationships better and our emotional liveshealthier.BoundariesOnce upon a time, there were two youngsters, a boy and a girl. Their familieshated each other. But the boy snuck into a party hosted by the girl’s familybecause he was kind of a dick. The girl sees the boy, and angels sing sosweetly to her lady-parts that she instantly falls in love with him. Just likethat. And so he sneaks into her garden and they decide to get married the nextfreaking day, because, you know, that’s totally practical, especially whenyour parents want to murder each other. Jump ahead a few days. Theirfamilies find out about the marriage and throw a shit-fit. Mercutio dies. Thegirl is so upset that she drinks a potion that will put her to sleep for two days.But, unfortunately, the young couple hasn’t learned the ins and outs of goodmarital communication yet, and the young girl totally forgets to mentionsomething about it to her new husband. The young man therefore mistakeshis new wife’s self-induced coma for suicide. He then totally loses hismarbles and he commits suicide, thinking he’s going to be with her in theafterlife or some shit. But then she wakes up from her two-day coma, only tolearn that her new husband has committed suicide, so she has the exact sameidea and kills herself too. The end.Romeo and Juliet is synonymous with “romance” in our culture today. Itis seen as the love story in English-speaking culture, an emotional ideal tolive up to. Yet when you really get down to what happens in the story, thesekids are absolutely out of their fucking minds. And they just killed
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CONTENTSCHAPTER 1: Don’t TryThe F
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CHAPTER 1Don’t TryCharles Bukowsk
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nuggets before breakfast each morni
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to begin with, but we humans have t
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It’s like this one time I tripped
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and Everybody Loves Raymond.Look, t
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noble. We mean that Mark Manson is
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As we get older, with the benefit o
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CHAPTER 2Happiness Is a ProblemAbou
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Years later, the prince would build
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don’t register much difference be
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1. Denial. Some people deny that th
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An obsession and overinvestment in
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happiness is a path full of shithea
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CHAPTER 3You Are Not SpecialI once
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people to believe they’re excepti
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improving their lives in any lastin
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floor, I want to cry.Mr. Price scan
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hearing, “Nobody cheated on anybo
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But for some reason, it appears tha
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the tendency toward entitlement is
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actually free you to accomplish wha
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thousands of leaflets throughout th
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became sorta-kinda friends.Suzuki a
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HER. What’s wrong?ME. Nothing’s
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ask yourself why it bugs you. Chanc
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TV, hearing him on the radio, seein
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thought he should be the face of th
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thousand dollars a year would affec
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moments of one’s life are not ple
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happiness, pleasure, and success as
Page 65 and 66: suffered life-threatening health is
Page 67 and 68: We don’t always control what happ
Page 69 and 70: superficial and vain and will never
Page 71 and 72: chapters.)Then, about a year later,
Page 73 and 74: and the man shot her in the head in
Page 75 and 76: infecting him.The goal is to get th
Page 77 and 78: Sure, some people get saddled with
Page 79 and 80: no ‘how.’ ”You are already ch
Page 81 and 82: life, I’ve been flat-out wrong ab
Page 83 and 84: what a positive or negative experie
Page 85 and 86: Second, once we create meaning for
Page 87 and 88: what we feel to be true in that mom
Page 89 and 90: courtrooms operate. Thousands of th
Page 91 and 92: respectfully or replied angrily, no
Page 93 and 94: don’t know.Uncertainty removes ou
Page 95 and 96: being An Artist Nobody’s Heard Of
Page 97 and 98: emotional highs that you’ve been
Page 99 and 100: Question #3: Would being wrong crea
Page 101 and 102: CHAPTER 7Failure Is the Way Forward
Page 103 and 104: “Sure,” Picasso replied. “Twe
Page 105 and 106: Pain Is Part of the ProcessIn the 1
Page 107 and 108: out more than anything. Yet she fee
Page 109 and 110: I was entirely responsible for all
Page 111 and 112: “Two hundred crappy words per day
Page 113 and 114: Armed with this grandiose sense of
Page 115: what seems obvious in your own life
Page 119 and 120: Unhealthy love is based on two peop
Page 121 and 122: your partner or be helped and suppo
Page 123 and 124: of their relational emotional rolle
Page 125 and 126: response at face value, and don’t
Page 127 and 128: craft for half your lifetime. Now t
Page 129 and 130: CHAPTER 9. . . And Then You DieSeek
Page 131 and 132: that’s when it all came out: the
Page 133 and 134: Because it wasn’t just his anti-e
Page 135 and 136: But, when our immortality projects
Page 137 and 138: At three feet, your body goes into
Page 139 and 140: whittle their days chasing another
Page 141 and 142: and flattened by life’s trivialit
Page 143 and 144: ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThis book began as a
Page 145: ABOUT THE AUTHORMARK MANSON is a st
Page 148 and 149: COPYRIGHTTHE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVI
Page 150: www.harpercollins.com
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