Ah humans. We are curious creatures. We put bubbles in our baths. We share things most of our family wouldn’t care to know about on the world-wide web. We put ourselves through sometimes painful procedures to remove hair from our bodies.
We also give too many f*cks.
We care if that bubble bath is well-scented, we want everyone to know how absolutely AMAzing our lives are (even when they suck) and we care about what we look like. Even when we apparently don’t.
That is why Mark Manson wrote his book, The Subtle Art of Not giving a F*ck.
Now, typically I would stay away from self-help books for the simple reason being that I find many of them vastly contradicting even within themselves. Also, I find people read them to just feel better about themselves without actually following any of the advice – skipping through to the bits that validate the opinions and thoughts that they already have.
Mark Manson’s take – however, is different.
It is nearly impossible to twist Manson’s words into your own narrative because they are so unapologetically and bluntly spoken, they may as well be a punch in your face.
“The truth is that there are no such things as a personal problem,” he writes. “If you’ve got a problem, chances are millions of other people have had it in the past, have it now, and are going to have it in the future. Likely people you know too. That doesn’t minimize the problem or mean that it shouldn’t hurt. It doesn’t mean you aren’t legitimately a victim in some circumstances. It just means that you’re not special.”
Good luck justifying that you treat people like crap because of your oh-so-sad past with logic like that.
Of course, some people will still justify themselves, and Manson is excellent at calling them out while also acknowledging that some of what he says he might later discover is complete crap. Manson also points out many of his past, and current short-comings
“Just as Present Mark can look back on Past Mark’s every flaw and mistake, one day Future Mark will look back on Present Mark’s assumptions (including the contents of this book) and notice similar flaws. And that will be a good thing. Because that would mean I have grown.”
It’s not often you find a self-help book that acknowledges that some of its content might not be helpful in the future. It’s even rarer to find an author who admits that they are still on a journey of self-improvement that will hopefully continue for the rest of their lives.
Because, in reality, there is no fix-it button you can press or a list that you can follow to make everything better. You gotta do it yourself. That’s why this book is a must read in my opinion.