F*ck It: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

I’m a person who gives wayyy too many f*cks. I gaslighted myself for years believing that caring about what other people thought made me more empathetic, or equipped to take criticism, but instead, I was simply turning myself into a self-questioning and constantly criticizing person who was afraid of hearing what other people thought. I faced tons of self doubt, only to realize that what I believed was the ‘right’ self-criticism was actually made up. So, I turned to perhaps one of the best writers of wake up calls and truth-you-need-to-hear-ASAP writers, Mark Manson for a slap to the face.

Manson describes the philosophy of giving a f*ck. He says that we’ve gotten trapped in this modern culture via many avenues–social media is an anxiety, fear and guilt factory that pollutes more than cars–and yet we’re still sitting here looking for things to make ourselves feel better about ourselves after we’re the ones comparing ourselves because it's too hard to stop. That hardship of stopping making ourselves feel hurt by everything that we’ve caused is exactly what we need to do. Mark Manson says we need to stop walking around our own feelings that social media has told us we need to protect. We need to wake up and actually feel something, which… I hate to say it… is pain, because “To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain… If you’re able to not give a fuck about pain, you become unstoppable” (Manson, 12).

Now, when I started talking about this book to my mother, she said “whoah, whoah, whoah, you can’t just go around not caring about anything.” I had to take a step back and say “hey, mommas. That’s not what Mark is saying, and me neither.” The question of stopping caring is never beneficial, and Mark agrees: you have to care about something. Not giving a f*ck is not the same thing as indifference. It simply means that you care about things that are greater than adversity and are willing to overcome the small differences that hold others back from trying (Manson, 15). And yep, as a twenty-one-and-too-young-to-be-overthinker, I’m here to say F it.

Manson says that finding our own happiness comes with a process. Happiness as itself can be waking up in the morning with a sunny outlook on life, but it can also be having a warning system that questions the days when the gray clouds roll in. Like many other novels in the genre, Manson pushes acceptance of one’s reality, and a rejection of the denial and victim mentalities that make you feel like everything is against you. Stop doing that and simply do something, anything, to make that feeling stop. If you feel bad about something, take action to fix it by questioning why it’s making you feel bad and what you can do about it.

At the end of the day, those people that you look up to most were once right where you are. Looking at the videos that they make or the stories they write, you certainly don’t think that your idols are stupid for starting a business. You might not even think they care about your opinion. But what if you were standing in the shoes of your idol? Would you have cared about what people thought of you in the beginning? No. If you were the person you idolized, you would have already gone out and done something to support your idea or spark that creativity somewhere. The only thing that is stopping you is the belief (which has been taught to you by our oppressive culture of neigh-sayers) that you can’t do it. As Manson keenly says, “you don’t end up a successful entrepreneur unless you find a way to appreciate the risk, the uncertainty, the repeated failures, the insane hours devoted to something that may earn absolutely nothing,” (Manson, 28). So here I am, testing the level of pain that I can sustain. What if you hate this blog, or hate me? I still already wrote it and probably won’t find out unless you write a scathing comment which I can read, then choose to delete or not. That’s not my problem, because I still wrote one more blog about something, and perhaps learned from it, and maybe, deep down you did too.

But if you’re not a blogger about books or anything, that’s absolutely fine. That is actually great because you do what you want and I’m happy that you’ve decided for yourself. However, by writing this blog, I’m not calling myself a blogger. I’m saying that I’m a person who enjoys writing and hopes that one day, with enough practice, audience building, crazy ideas, understanding from people who are smarter than me, and perhaps getting struck by the lighting that is luck, perhaps I’ll be average enough to succeed.

Manson says that the only way to break free of the fear that you won’t make it is by realizing “the knowledge and acceptance of your mundane existence will actually free you to accomplish what you truly wish to accomplish, without judgment or lofty expectation,” (Manson, 45). When I read this, my first thought was GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY. Any overthinking that I know you do, or a belief that you’re not good enough is only society’s way of beating you down because they got into your head and took your power away from you.

Our generation has been taught, somehow, to be scared of absolutely everything. And I think that’s a bunch of bull. Everyone wants us to be overachievers, from our parents to our professors to our political leaders. Life to them is about making money, succeeding, and being better than anyone else (Thanks a lot Capitalism). But it’s not our fault that we’re feeling helpless, because it looks like everyone else is better than us. Our own doubt has this way of constantly integrating itself into every one of our actions to the point where life and trying are just debilitating, because we view failure as a stain. We view our lack of successes as something that will drag our entire family down.

And thus, we’ve been trained like good little obedient and subservient puppies to doubt ourselves so hard that we don’t just sit down and write for fear that something that’s unwritten could be judged by someone. We come away from our blank pages sweating anxiety sweats and thinking we’re not good enough. F that. Manson describes tons of lofty and much differently (better?) written explanations of why that is, which I encourage you to read, but let’s keep pushing.

Manson says that there is a value shift that comes with so-called self-improvement, that taking on better values and giving better f*cks about things that matter is all that actually matters. Better problems = better life (Manson, 63). Which is all just to say that your fears are 100% in your head. Nobody sees them and nobody feels them except for you. I’m not saying that feeling scared, ashamed, anxious or questioning yourself is a choice, but letting it control you? That’s on you.

When learning the subtle art of not giving a f*ck, you first must unlearn what you’ve been taught by a society that just intends to keep you constrained: Stop caring about things you don’t care about. Manson says that the most important element of growth is certainty. When we aren’t doubting the lies that our brains tell us, we live by them.

Let’s run with this train of thought for a minute. I desperately want to become a writer. I want to tell stories that I dream up in my head and be published (and yeah, ideally I’d love to make a million dollars doing it and live in the Knives Out mansion with a coffee cup that says “My House, My Rules, My Coffee”, but that’s not going to come to me unless…). To do this, I need to stop avoiding what threatens my identity as a “non-writer”. Manson describes his “Law of Avoidance” which states that “the more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it” (93-4). And yep, want to guess how many times I started and restarted this blog because I didn’t want to mess it up? Answer? At least five.

But placing yourself in a box of [I am X, so I can’t be Y] limits you from ever becoming [XY]. Manson says that we’ve got to be less certain of ourselves. What if I’m wrong about people hating me if they disagree with my work? What if people actually like my work and I really could make it? But also something that I’ve begun to learn… What if just one person reads it and likes it? Would that make all the difference? And our hearts are in the right place, yes. Having one person read it and like it is all that matters. Be it your grandma who knows you’re good at anything, your younger sister or your professor, they matter to you, so their opinion should be the only one that matters.

I’ve been talking (complaining) a TON about my situation. I just graduated from college and have NO idea what I’m doing. To me, the situation feels impossibly complex and everything–I mean everything from relaxing to going back to my hometown–stresses me out. My problem isn’t that that weird guy from highschool dm’d me asking to meet up, or the fact that I’ve got no clue what to do with my life, but rather is that doing nothing about my situation will keep me stagnant. Manson says that “action isn’t just the effect of motion; it’s also the cause of it,” (Manson, 109). That’s half the reason I’m reading so many ‘self-help books’. Maybe one day the act of improving myself will actually improve me, and perhaps even the fact that I sound like a self-help book right now means that I’m getting one step closer to actually helping myself. Same goes for you… something about this post intrigued you, and if you’ve made it this far, (thanks so much for reading this, it means the most) but maybe you wanted a spark notes version of improving yourself too.

So, I will leave you with this. Manson, in addition to being a brilliant writer and the mentor we didn’t know we needed says that death should be the only thing that matters, not in a depressing-I’m-gonna-die-everything-I-love-dies way, but in a question of what you will accomplish with the time that you have on Earth. How hard will you work towards something that you wanted to be? Manson says that you’re doing great, sweetie. He says that surviving in the face of impending doom, you’re going to class and obeying traffic laws just fine. But he also says that “there is nothing to be afraid of ever… The more I peer into the darkness, the brighter life gets, the quieter the world becomes, and the less unconscious resistance I feel to, well, anything,” (Manson, 141). So, what Manson is saying, and I’m attempting to echo is that you seriously need to start saying F*ck This and F*ck That more often.

You need to believe that the dream that you have is your dream for a reason… Maybe it might just work out. However, to achieve it, you should definitely, absolutely and entirely get those pretty feet out of your own way and just do it. So please, thank me in your acceptance speech for relaying the wisdom of the man, the myth, the Legend, Mark Manson to you in two thousand words or less. Now F it and go do what you were dreaming about achieving.