The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

In the long run, completing a marathon makes us hap- er than eating a chocolate cake. Raising a child makes us happier than beating a video game. Starting a small Lonciness with friends while struggling to make ends meet makes us happier than buying a new computer. These activities are stressful, arduous, and often unpleasant. They also require with standing problem after problem. Yet they are somne of the most meaningful moments and joyous things we'll ever do. They involve pain, struggle, even anger and despair--yet once they're accomplished, we look back and get all misty-eyed telling our grandkids about them. As Freud once said, "One day, in retrospect, the years of truggle will strike you as the most beautiful."

As Freud once said, "One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful"

Who you are is defined by what you're willing to strug- gle for. People who enjoy the struggles of a gym are the ones who run triathlons and have chiseled abs and can bench- press a small house. People who enjoy long workweeks and the politics of the corporate ladder are the ones who fly to the top of it. People who enjoy the stresses and uncertainties of the starving artist lifestyle are ultimately the ones who live it and make it.ols S This is not about willpower or grit. This is not another admonishment of "no pain, no gain." This is the most sim- ple and basic component of life: our struggles determine our successes. Our problems birth our happiness, along with slightly better slightly uDgraded problems

Confronting the reality of our Own mortality is important because it obliterates all the crappy, fragile, superficial val- ues in life. While most people whittle their days chasing another buck, or a little bit more fame and attention, or a little bit more assurance that they're right or loved, death confronts all of us witha far more painful and important question: What is your legacy? How will the world be different and better when you're gone? What mark will you have made? What influence will you have caused? They say that a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa can cause a hurricane in Florida; well, what hurri- canes will you leave in your wake? As Becker pointed out, this is arguably the only truly im- portant question in our lite. Yet we avoid thinking about it. One because it's hard. Two, because itť's scary. Three, be- iesic And when we avoid this question, we let trivial and hate- 6ul values hijack our brains and take control of our desires cause we have no fucking clue what We are doinf

And when we avoid this question we let trivial and hateful values hijack our brains and take control of our values and ambitions, the superficial will apper important

we're doing,

highly important goals and achieve a greater degree of suc- cess than you otherwise would.

In this way, the rejection of alternatives liberates us- rejection of what does not align with our most important values, with our chosen metrics, rejection of the constant pursuit of breadth without depth. Yes, breadth of experience is likely necessary and desir- able when you're young-after all, you have to go out there and discover what seems worth investing yourself in. But depth is where the gold is buried.

And you have to stay com- mitted to something and go deep to dig it up. That's true in relationships, in a career, in building a great lifestyle-in everything.

Commitment gives you freedom because you're no longer distracted by the unimportant and frivolous. Commitment gives you freedom because it hones your at- tention and focus, directing them toward what is most eff- cient at making you healthy and happy.

Commitment makes decision-making easier and removes any fear of missing out; knowing that what you already have is good enough, why would you ever stress about chasing more, more, more again? Commitment allows you to focus intently on a few

The big story for me personally over the past few yeare has been my ability to open myself up to commitment, P've chosen to reject all but the very best people and experiences and values in my life.

I shut down all my business projects and decided to focus on writing full-time. Since then, my website has become more popular than I'd ever imagined possible

I've committed to one woman for the long haul and, to my surprise, have found this more rewarding than any of the flings, trysts, and one-night stands I had in the past. I've committed to a single geographic location and doubled down on the handful of my significant, genuine, healthy friendships.

And what I've discovered is something entirely coun- terintuitive: that there is a freedom and liberation in com- mitment. I've found increased opportunity and upside in rejecting alternatives and distractions in favor of what I've chosen to let truly matter to me. Commitment gives you freedom because youre no longer distracted by the unimportant and frivolous. Commitment gives you freedom because it hones your at-

But more is not always better. ln tact, the opposite i true. We are actually often happier with less. When we re overloaded with opportunities and options, we suffer from what psychologists refer to as the paradox of choice Basically, the more options we're given, the less satisied we become with whatever we choose, because we're aware of all the other options we're potentially forfeiting. So if you have a choice between two places to live and pick one, you'll likely feel confident and comfortable that you made the right choice. You'll be satisfied with your decision. But if you have a choice among twenty-eight places to live and pick one, the paradox of choice says that you'll likely spend years agonizing, doubting, and second-guessing yourself, wondering if you really made the "right" choice, and if youre truly maximizing your own happiness. And this anxiety, this desire for certainty and perfection and suc- cess, will make you unhappy.

There's a certain level of joy and meaning that you reach in life only when you've spent decades investing in a single relationship, a single craft, a single career. And you cannot achieve those decades of investment without reject- ing the alternatives. The act of choosing a value for yourself requires reject-

Learn to sustain the pain you ve Chosen. wheh 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. Wn nen 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?

In return. Because here's another sneaky little truth about life. You can't be an important and life-changing presence for some people without also being a joke and an embarrassment to others. You just can't. Because there's no such thing as a lack of adversity. It doesn't exist. The old saying goes that no matter where you go, there you are. Well, the same is true for adversity and failure. No matter where you go, there's a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that's perfectly fine. The point isn't to get away from the shit. The Point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with enjoying dealing with.

If we follow the "do something" principle, failure feels unimportant. When the standard of success becomes merely acting-when any result is regarded as progress and important, when inspiration is seen as a reward rather than a prerequisite-we propel ourselves ahead. We feel free to fail, and that failure moves us forward. ns The "do something" principle not only helps us over- come procrastination, but it's also the process by which we adopt new values. If you're in the midst of an existen- tial shitstorm and everything feels meaningless just do something,

Action > Inspiration → Motivation

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 as a way to begin motivating yourself.

I call this the do something" principle. After using it myself to build my business,

I quickley learned though that forcing myself to do something, even the most menial task, quicklry made the larger task easier

WhenI was in high school, my math teacher Mr. Packwood used to say, "If you're stuck on a problem, dont 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."

Life is about not knowing and then doing something anyway

. All of life is like this. It never changes. Even when vou're happy. Even when youre 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. sa

You are mortal in everything you fear
and immortal in everything you desire

failures, and the magnitude of your success is based on how many times you've failed at something. If someone is better than you at something, then it's likely because she has failed at it more than you have. If someone is worse than yoy it’s likely cuz he hasn’t been through all of the painful learning experiences you have, than you,

I asked myself a simple question: "Would I rather make decent money and work a job I hated, or play at Internet entrepreneur and be broke for a while?" The answer was immediate and clear for me: the latter. I then asked myselt, "IfI try this thing and fail in a few years and have to go get a job anyway, will I have really lost anything?" The answer was no. Instead of a broke and unemployed twenty-two- year-old with no experience, I'd be a broke and unemployed twenty-five-year-old with no experience. Who cares?

With this value, to not pursue my own projects became the failure , not a lack of money, not sleeping on friends' and family's couches (which I continued to do for most of the next two years), and not an empty résumé. ol

So yeah, lucky. When you're sleeping on a smelly futon and have to count coins to figure out whether you can af- ford McDonald's this week and you've sent out twenty ré- sumés without hearing a single word back, then starting a blog and a stupid Internet business doesn't sound like such a scary idea. If every project I started failed, if every post I Wrote went unread, I'd only be back exactly where I started. So why not try?

Failure itself is a relative concept. If my metric had been to become an anarcho-communist revolutionary, then my complete failure to make any money between 2007 and 2008 would have been a raving success. But if, like most people, my metric had been to simply find a first serious job that could pay some bills right out of school, I was a dismal failure

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 youre the one everyone is going to choose to mock or ignore, you're implicitly telling yourself, "Tm 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.

When we let go of the stories we tell about ourselves, to 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 some- thing to herself. Oiteabi9

We all have values for ourselves. We protect these values. We try to live up to them and we justify them and maintain them, Even if we don't mean to, that's how our brain is wired.

As noted before, we're unfairly biased toward what we already know, what we believe to be certain. If I believe I'm a nice guy, I'l avoid situations that could potentially contradict that belief. If I believe I'm an awesome cook, I'll seek out opportunities to prove that to myself over and over again. The belief always takes precedence.

Until we change how we view ourselves, what we believe we are and are not, we cannot overcome our avoidance and anxiety. We cannot thin change.

I'm In this way, "knowing yourself or finding yourself" be can be dangerous. It can cement you into a strict role and saddle you with unnecessary expectations, it can close you off to inner potential and outer opportunities

Nothing is perfect, its. False premise

Most of our beliefs are wrong, infact all of them are wrong, some are just less wrong than others