Julia's notes on The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck

P.3 Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive expectations: Be happier. Be healthier. Be the best, better than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier,more popular…Then you fly your helicopter to your wonderful fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing incredible meaningful work that’s likely to save the planet one day. But when you stop and really think about it, conventional life advice… it is actually fixating on what you lack…You learn about the best ways to make money because you feel you don’t have enough money already.

P.5 The world is constantly telling you that the path to a better life is more,more, more-buy more, own more, make more…You are constantly bombarded with messages to give a fuck about everything, all the time… Why? My guess: because giving a fuck about more stuff is good for business. And while there is nothing wrong with good business, the problem is that giving too many fucks is bad for your mental health. It causes you to become overly attached to the superficial and fake, to dedicate your life to chasing a mirage of happiness and satisfaction.

P.7 …we humans have the luxury of being able to have thoughts about our thoughts... Now here's the problem: Our society today, through the wonders of consumer culture and hey-look-my-life-is-cooler-than-yours social media, has bred a whole generation of people who believe that having these negative experiences anxiety, fear, guilt, etc.- is totally not ok…Now if you feel like shit for even five minutes, you are bombarded with 350 images of people totally happy and having amazing fucking lives…

P.8 …we really have become victims of our own success. Stress-related health issues, anxiety disorders, and cases of depression have skyrocketed over the past thirty years, despite the fact that everyone has a flat-screen TV and can have their groceries delivered. Our crisis is no longer material; it's existential, it's spiritual. We have so much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore.

P.9 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. …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 actually make.

P.13 Because when you give too many fucks -when you give a fuck about everyone and everything you will feel that you’re perpetually entitled to be comfortable and happy at all the times, that everything is supposed to be just exactly the fucking way you want it to be. This is sickness. And it will eat you alive.

P. 14 Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different. Say “Fuck it” not to everything in life, but rather to everything unimportant in your life. Reserve fucks for what truly matters. Friends. Family. Purpose.

P. 15 It’s part of our biology to always care about something… P.19 When we’re young, everything is new and exciting, ands everything seems to matter so much. As we get older, with the benefit of experience we begin to notice that most of these sorts of things have little lasting impact on our lives…Rejections that were painful in the moment have actually worked out for the best. Essentially, we become more selective about the fucks we’re willing to give.

P.28 Pain, in all of its forms, is our body’s most effective means of spurring action. …it helps us understand and adhere to our own limitations. It teaches us to not fuck around near hot stoves or stick metal objects into electrical sockets. Therefore, it's not always beneficial to avoid pain and seek pleasure, since pain can, at times, be life-or-death important to our well-being.

P.29 But pain is not merely physical…In fact, the research has found that our brains don’t register much difference between physical and psychological pain. Just like stubbing our toe teaches us to walk into fewer tables, the emotional pain of rejection or failure teaches us how to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

P.31 To be happy we need something to solve. Happiness therefore a form of action; it's an activity, not something that is passively bestowed upon you, not something that yo magically discover in a top-ten article on the Huffingto Post or from any specific guru or teacher… Happiness is a constant work-in-progress, because solving problems is a constant work-in-progress…Sometimes those problems are simple: eating good food, travelling…Other times those problems are abstract and complicated: fixing your relationship…

P.32 1. Denial. Some people deny that their problems exist in the first place. And because they deny reality, they must constantly delude or distract themselves from reality. This may make them feel good in the short term, but it leads to a life of insecurity, neuroticism, and emotional repression. 2. Victim Mentality. Some choose to believe that there is nothing they can do to solve their problems, even when they in fact could. Victims seek to blame others for their problems or blame outside circumstances. This may make them feel better in the short term, but it leads to a life of anger, helplessness, and despair.

P.34 Emotions are simply biological signals designed to nudge you in the direction of beneficial change. …negative emotions are a call to action. Positive emotions, on the other hand, are rewards for taking the proper action. When you feel them, life seems simple and there is nothing else to do but enjoy it.

P.35 A fixation on happiness inevitably amounts to a never-ending pursuit of something else - a new house, a new relationship…And despite all of our swear and strain, we end up feeling eerily similar to how we started: inadequate. Psychologists sometimes refer to this concept as the hedonic treadmill: the idea that we are always working hard to change our life situation, but we actually never feel very different.

P.60 It has become an accepted part of our culture today to believe that we are destined to do something truly extraordinary…Being “average” has become the new standard of failure. This sort of thinking is dangerous. Once you accept the premise that a life is worthwhile only if it is truly notable and great, then you basically accept the fact that most of the human population sucks…

P.71 Why do I consider this to be success/failure? How am I choosing to measure myself… and everyone around me?…our values determine the nature of our problems and the nature of our problems determines the quality of our lives. Values underlie everything we are and do. P.79 Our values determine the metrics by which we measure ourselves and everyone else. Story about the Megadeath guitarist, who got kicked out of Metallica.

P73. Most self-help gurus ignore this deeper level of self-awareness…they take people who are miserable because they want to be rich, and they give them all sorts of advice on how to make money…while ignoring important value-based questions: Why do they feel such a need to be rich in first place?

P.81 There are handful of common values that create really poor problems for people. Pleasure is great, but it’s horrible value to prioritise your life around. Pleasure is a false good. Research shows that people who focus their energy on superficial pleasure end up more anxious, more emotionally unstable, and more depressed. Pleasure is not the cause of happiness;rather, it is the effect. If you get the other stuff right (the other values and metrics), then pleasure will naturally occur as by product.

P.82 Material success. Many people measure their self-worth based on how much money they make or what kind of car they drive… Research shows that once one is able to provide for basic physical needs (food, shelter, and so on) l, the correlation between happiness and worldly success quickly approaches zero.