The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck

ourselves, we free ourselves up to actually act (and fail) and grow.
When someone admits to herself, “You know, maybe I’m not good at
relationships,” then she is suddenly free to act and end her bad marriage. She
has no identity to protect by staying in a miserable, crappy marriage just to
prove something to herself.
When the student admits to himself, “You know, maybe I’m not a rebel;
maybe I’m just scared,” then he’s free to be ambitious again. He has no
reason to feel threatened by pursuing his academic dreams and maybe failing.
When the insurance adjuster admits to himself, “You know, maybe
there’s nothing unique or special about my dreams or my job,” then he’s free
to give that screenplay an honest go and see what happens.
I have both some good news and some bad news for you: there is little
that is unique or special about your problems. That’s why letting go is so
liberating.
There’s a kind of self-absorption that comes with fear based on an
irrational certainty. When you assume that your plane is the one that’s going
to crash, or that your project idea is the stupid one everyone is going to laugh
at, or that you’re the one everyone is going to choose to mock or ignore,
you’re implicitly telling yourself, “I’m the exception; I’m unlike everybody
else; I’m different and special.”
This is narcissism, pure and simple. You feel as though your problems
deserve to be treated differently, that your problems have some unique math
to them that doesn’t obey the laws of the physical universe.
My recommendation: don’t be special; don’t be unique. Redefine your
metrics in mundane and broad ways. Choose to measure yourself not as a
rising star or an undiscovered genius. Choose to measure yourself not as
some horrible victim or dismal failure. Instead, measure yourself by more
mundane identities: a student, a partner, a friend, a creator.
The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more
everything will seem to threaten you. For that reason, define yourself in the
simplest and most ordinary ways possible.
This often means giving up some grandiose ideas about yourself: that
you’re uniquely intelligent, or spectacularly talented, or intimidatingly
attractive, or especially victimized in ways other people could never imagine.
This means giving up your sense of entitlement and your belief that you’re
somehow owed something by this world. This means giving up the supply of