Synopsis – A philosophy book about how to live a better live through choosing what to give and what not to give a f*ck about.
Key Takeaways
Chapter 1 – Don’t Try
Ironically, this fixation on the positive—on what’s better, what’s superior—only serves to remind us over and over again of what we are not, of what we lack, of what we should have been but failed to
be. After all, no truly happy person feels the need to stand in front of a mirror and recite that she’s happy.
The key to a good life is not giving a fuck about more; it’s giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important.
The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience. This is a total mind-fuck. So I’ll give you a minute to unpretzel your brain and maybe read that again: Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience. It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law”—the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. The more you desperately want to be rich, the more poor and unworthy you feel, regardless of how much money you make. The more you desperately want to be sexy and desired, the uglier you come to see yourself, regardless of your actual physical appearance. The more you desperately want to be happy and loved, the lonelier and more afraid you become, regardless of those who surround you. The more you want to be spiritually enlightened, the more self-centred and shallower you become in trying to get there.
What’s interesting about the backwards law is that it’s called “backwards” for a reason: not giving a fuck works in reverse. If pursuing the positive is a negative, then pursuing the negative generates the positive. The pain you pursue in the gym results in better all-around health and energy. The failures in business are what lead to a better understanding of what’s necessary to be successful. Being open with your insecurities paradoxically makes you more confident and charismatic around others. The pain of honest confrontation is what generates the greatest trust and respect in your relationships. Suffering through your fears and anxieties is what allows you to build courage and perseverance. Seriously, I could keep going, but you get the point. Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience
To not give a fuck is to stare down life’s most terrifying and difficult challenges and still take action.
Subtlety #1: Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.
Subtlety #2: To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity.
Subtlety #3: Whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing what to give a fuck about.
The idea of not giving a fuck is a simple way of reorienting our expectations for life and choosing what is important and what is not. Developing this ability leads to something I like to think of as a kind of “practical enlightenment.” No, not that airy-fairy, eternal bliss, end-of-all-suffering, bullshitty kind of enlightenment. On the contrary, I see practical enlightenment as becoming comfortable with the idea that some suffering is always inevitable—that no matter what you do, life is comprised of failures, loss, regrets, and even death. Because once you become comfortable with all the shit that life throws at you (and it will throw a lot of shit, trust me), you become invincible in a sort of low-level spiritual way. After all, the only way to overcome pain is to first learn how to bear it.
Chapter 2 – Happiness Is A Problem
One of those realizations was this: that life itself is a form of suffering. The rich suffer because of their riches. The poor suffer because of their poverty. People without a family suffer because they have no family. People with a family suffer because of their family. People who pursue worldly pleasures suffer because of their worldly pleasures. People who abstain from worldly pleasures suffer because of their abstention.
This isn’t to say that all suffering is equal. Some suffering is certainly more painful than other suffering. But we all must suffer nonetheless.
What you consider ‘friendship’ is really just your constant attempts to impress people
Happiness comes from solving problems. The keyword here is ‘solving’. If you’re avoiding your problems or feel like you don’t have any problems, then you are going to make yourself miserable. If you feel like you have problems that you can’t solve, you will likewise make yourself miserable. The secret sauce is in the solving of the problems, not in not having problems in the first place.
Emotions evolved for one specific purpose; to help us live and reproduce a little bit better. That’s it. They’re feedback mechanisms telling us that something is either likely right or likely wrong for us – nothing more, nothing less.
If they can’t solve problems, then they can’t be happy. Remember, pain serves a purpose.
A more interesting question, a question that most people never consider, is, “what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out
What pain do you want to sustain? The path to happiness is a path full of shit heaps and shame
Chapter 3 – Your Are Not Special
A person who actually has a high self-worth is able to look at the negative parts of his character frankly—“Yes, sometimes I’m irresponsible with money,” “Yes, sometimes I exaggerate my own successes,” “Yes, I rely too much on others to support me and should be more self-reliant”—and then acts to improve upon them. But entitled people, because they are incapable of acknowledging their own problems openly and honestly, are incapable of improving their lives in any lasting or meaningful way. They are left chasing high after high and accumulate greater and greater levels of denial
It’s an accepted part of our culture today to believe that we are all destined to do something truly extraordinary. Celebrities say it. Business tycoons say it. Politicians say it. Even Oprah says it. Each and every one of us can be extraordinary. We all deserve greatness. The fact that this statement is inherently contradictory — after all, if everyone was extraordinary, then by definition, no one would be extraordinary — is missed by most people, and instead we eat the message up and ask for more.
The ticket to emotional health, like that to physical health, comes from eating your veggies – that is accepting the bland and mundane truths of life: truths such as “your actions actually don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things” and “the vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that’s okay”
Chapter 4 – The Value of Suffering
If suffering is inevitable, if our problems in life are unavoidable, then the question we should be asking is not “How do I stop suffering?” but “Why am I suffering – for what purpose?”
Why do they feel such a need to be rich in the first place? How are they choosing to measure success/failure for themselves? Is it not perhaps some particular value that that’s the root cause of their unhappiness, and not the fact that they don’t drive a Bentley yet?
Chapter 5 – You Are Always Choosing
We all get dealt cards. Some of us get better cards than others. And while it’s easy to get hung up on our cards, and feel we got screwed over, the real game lies in the choices we make with those cards, the risks we decide to take, and the consequences we choose to live with. People who consistently make the best choices in the situations they’re given are the ones who eventually come out ahead in poker, just as in life. And it’s not necessarily the people with the best cards.
You are already choosing, in every moment of every day, what to give a fuck about, so change is as simple as choosing to give a fuck about something else
Chapter 6 – You Are Wrong About Everything (But So Am I)
Every step of the way I was wrong. About everything. Throughout my life, I’ve been flat-out wrong about myself, others, society, culture, I’ve been flat-out wrong about myself, other, society. Culture, the world, the universe – everything. And I hope that will continue to be the case for the rest of my life.
Growth is an endlessly iterative process. When we learn something new, we don’t go from “wrong” to “right.” Rather, we go from wrong to slightly less wrong. And when we learn something additional, we go from slightly less wrong to slightly less wrong than that, and then to even less wrong than that, and so on. We are always in the process of approaching truth and perfection without ever reaching truth or perfection.
That man doesn’t ask for the promotion because he would have to confront his beliefs about what his skills are actually worth
I use to think the human brain was the most wonderful organ in my body, then I realized who was telling me this.
It’s the backwards law again: the more you try to be certain about something, the more uncertain and insecure you will feel
The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it
Question #1: Is it possible that I’m wrong? – Its worth remembering that for any change to happen in your life, you must be wrong about something. If you’re sitting there, miserable day after day, then that means you’re already wrong about something major in your life, an until you’re able to question yourself to find it, nothing will change.
Question #2 If I am wrong, what would it mean?
Question #3: Which causes a bigger problem, being right or being wrong?
Chapter 7 – Failure Is The Way Forward
We can be truly successful only at something we’re willing to fail at. If we’re unwilling to fail, then we’re unwilling to succeed
A fear of failure can come from choosing shitty values, like “be likeable”. I will be anxious because failure is 100 percent defined by the actions of others
A better value is “honest expression”
The problem in the below is pain;
- How do I drop out of med school
- How do I ask her out?
- How do I ask them to move out
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. Savour it. Welcome it with open arms. Then act despite it.
I won’t lie; this is going to feel impossibly hard at first
Life is about not knowing and then doing something anyway. All of life is like this. It never changes. Even when your happy. Don’t ever forget that. And don’t ever be afraid of that
If you’re stuck on a problem, don’t sit there and think about it; just start working on it. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, the simple act of working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head.
If you lack the motivation to make an important change in your life, do something – anything, really – and then harness the reaction to that action to begin motivating yourself
Chapter 8 – The Importance of Saying No
The mark of an unhealthy relationship is two people who try to solve each other’s problems in order to feel good about themselves. Rather, a healthy relationship is when two people solve their own problems in order to feel good about each other
The victim, if he really loved the saver, would say, “look, this is my problem; you don’t have to fix it for me. Just support me while I fix it myself” That would actually be a demonstration of love; taking responsibility for your own problems and not holding your partner responsible for them
If the saver really wanted to save the victim, the saver would say, “look, you’re blaming other for your own problems, deal with this yourself.” And in a sick way, that would be a demonstration of love; helping someone solve their own problems
Chapter 9 – And Then You Die
Death is the only thing we can know with any certainty. And as such, it must be the compass by which we orient all our values and decisions. It is the correct answer to all the questions we ask but never do. The only way to be comfortable with death is to understand and see yourself as something bigger than yourself; to choose values that stretch beyond serving yourself; to choose values that stretch beyond serving yourself; that are simple and immediate and controllable and tolerant of the chaotic world around you
Final Thoughts – This book has allot of value, I especially like the concept of the backwards law and choosing of what we suffer for, like building a business or a career, what do you want to suffer for? I need to embrace the pain more, especially in regards to getting rejected and failing and also choosing the pain. 8/10
Stranger in Sydney 