5 Lessons from The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: The Secret Formula to Success

Recently I finished reading “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” by Mark Manson. It is a life changing book that will teach you how to view life through a different lens. This blog discusses a number of the lessons I personally took from the book, but I would strongly recommend that you read it for yourself and draw your own conclusions. After all, this is only my opinion and if recent events have taught us anything, it’s that we all have different opinions.

Before I dive in, I am going to take this opportunity to discuss a prominent topic that is relevant to what you’re about to read. The book and subsequently this blog will talk about taking responsibility for your own problems, how victim mentality is dangerous and how we have far more control of our lives than we think. That being said, it is vitally important that I stress this next point.

I fundamentally believe that we all get dealt a different hand in life. Some of us get a far better hand than others. As Mark says in the book, in a game of poker, we all get a different hand and sometimes, that hand is really shit. However, it is equally important to recognize that however shit our hand is, we all have the opportunity to play the game of life. Sure, we could give up and fold, but we never know what card is going to be turned over next. It is the choices that we make in life that determine whether we come out on top or not and sometimes, on occasion, the shitty hand wins. Remember, just because someone starts with a good hand, doesn’t mean they will make the right choices to win the game.

Lesson #1: Suffering is Inevitable

I did warn you, didn’t I? This isn’t going to be an easy read. It isn’t easy because deep down, you know it’s true and you struggle to accept it.

One of my favourite passages from the book is: “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 all suffering is equal. Some suffering is certainly more painful than other suffering. But we must all suffer none the less.”

The problem is our relationship with suffering. We are conditioned to think suffering is bad. As Mark teaches us, suffering is simple biology. It is nature’s way of saying “wait a minute, something isn’t quite right here”.

As such, this lesson is quite simply non-negotiable. I used to go through life attempting to avoid suffering at all costs, whether it was suffering caused by someone else, such as an ex-girlfriend breaking up with me, or self-inflicted suffering such as forcing myself to give up takeaways because I wanted to be skinnier. Regardless of the level of suffering, we will all experience it throughout our lives, so attempting to avoid it is to deny reality.

So, what’s the takeaway? That we should let people starve because suffering is good for them? Of course it fucking isn’t. The takeaway is that solving one form of suffering will inevitably lead to another. It doesn’t matter what you do, there will be points in your life when you experience a form of suffering, regardless of how much or little you have. So, accept it and acknowledge it. Put your focus on solving the problem that is causing the suffering, rather than denying its existence.

Lesson #2: Even If It’s Not Your Fault, It’s Your Responsibility

I can already picture the tweets from people who have read the sub-heading of this lesson. Surprise! If it gets you angry, that’s your problem and it’s your responsibility to deal with it.

This lesson from Mark is pretty simple. You face problems every single day. Some of them will be your fault, some of them will be the fault of others. Irrespective of the root cause of the problem, only you are responsible for how you react to it, how you respond to it and how you deal with it.

Frankly, this is an incredibly difficult lesson to learn and one that I am still struggling with. If you are anything like me, you read this and thought of a time where someone did something shitty and you blame them entirely for it. Look, you’re not wrong — it probably was their fault. But once they’ve caused the problem, they’ve put all the responsibility on you to solve it because whether you like it or not, no-one can control your emotions for you.

Mark uses an incredibly powerful example to illustrate this in the book — “If you get robbed, it isn’t your fault that the robbery happened, but it is your responsibility to sort out the legal and emotional fallout.”

Ultimately it all comes down to perspective. We can sit around and blame others for everything shit that happens to us, or we can acknowledge that we are responsible for solving our own problems and do something about it. Oh, and by the way, solving problems feeling fucking amazing, so keep that in mind too.

Lesson #3: Being Wrong is Better Than Being Right

We all know someone who thinks they are right all the time. It’s bloody annoying isn’t it? Unfortunately for them, thinking you are right all the time is a hindrance.

Look at it this way. If you think you’re right all the time, why would you ever be motivated to learn something new? Why would you ever pick up a book or read a blog if you already think you know the answer. How boring is that?

In reality, we’re frequently wrong. Furthermore, an awful lot of things in life are open to interpretation, so it’s almost impossible to be right. As such, all we can do is be open to being educated and admit to ourselves and others that we are wrong far more times than we are right. As Mark says “Growth is an endlessly iterative process. When we learn something, we don’t go from wrong to right. We go from wrong to a little less wrong than before.”

I like to look at it this way. Being wrong is awesome. Being wrong means I get to watch an interesting video or read an eye opening book. Ironically, unless I was open to being wrong, I wouldn’t have read this book and I wouldn’t be writing this blog. Being open to being wrong is a gateway to a world of opportunity.

Lesson #4: Failure = Growth

Very few people love the idea of failure. Frankly, it terrifies me. But, much like being wrong, failing is also inevitable. You have probably noticed a running theme with all of these lessons — it comes down to perspective.

If I fail, I could sit around and feel sorry for myself. I could blame outside factors for causing my failure, in some cases I might be right. Alternatively, I can view failure as an opportunity to learn and grow.

The best example I can give you is a child learning to ride a bike. I’m sure we all remember the bumps, scrapes and scars from falling off, but now you’re an adult, you can probably ride a bike with relative ease. The reality is, if we hadn’t been open to falling off and failing, we would never have learned how to ride a bike and we’d spend the rest of our lives wondering what that experience feels like. To deny failure is to deny growth and ultimately the experiences at the end of the journey.

To quote Mark, “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.”

Lesson #5: Accepting Mortality is a Superpower

This last lesson may be the hardest one of all. Some of you may choose to ignore this entirely, but I encourage you to be open minded. Death is the only thing in life that we can be truly certain of and we must accept that it’s inevitable.

In the words of the famous philosopher Confucius, “Everyone has two lives. The second begins only when we accept we have only one.”, or, in modern terms, “YOLO”.

At some point, we’ve all thought about death. It’s fucking scary. As such, we often choose to ignore it and naively pretend that it isn’t going to happen to us. Though let me ask you this, if death didn’t exist, what would be the point in living? If we didn’t have a limited time on Earth, then nothing would be special. All of our experiences, the relationships we form and the choices we make would be meaningless. Accepting the inevitability of death brings a sense of freedom like no other.

“Once we become comfortable with the fact of our own death — the root terror, the underlying anxiety motivating all of life’s frivolous ambitions — we can then choose our values more freely, unrestrained by the illogical quest for immortality, and freed from dangerous dogmatic views.” — Mark Manson.