I’m sharing my favourite lessons from this impactful book to give you an idea of what to anticipate.
Lesson 1: Not giving a fuck is not about being indifferent. It just means you’re comfortable with being different. Don’t say fuck it to everything in life, just to the unimportant things. We don’t always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond.
People who are terrified of what others think about them are actually terrified of all the negative things they think about themselves being reflected back at them.
If you are able to not give a fuck about the pain your goals require, then you become unstoppable. The moments when we don’t give a fuck and take action are often the moments that most define the course of our lives.
“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
-Sigmund Freud
Lesson 2:
Our crisis is no longer material, its existential, its spiritual. We have so much stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t know what to give a fuck about anymore.
Whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing what to give a fuck about. The key is to gradually prune the things you care about, so that you only give a fuck on the most important of occasions.
When a person has no problems, the mind automatically finds a way to invent some. We really have become victims of our own success.
Lesson 3:
Practical enlightenment is the act of becoming comfortable with the idea that some suffering is always inevitable. Don’t hope for a life without problems. Hope for a life with good problems. Problems never stop. They merely get exchanged or upgraded. Happiness is found in solving problems, not avoiding them. Problems are inevitable, but what they mean is flexible. We get to control what our problems mean to us based on how we choose to think about them and how we choose to measure them. The way we measure success influences how we view the problems we face. Accepting responsibility for our problems is the first step to solving them.
Lesson 4:
Pleasure is a false god. Research shows that people who focus their energy on superficial pleasures end up more anxious, more emotionally unstable, and more depressed. Pleasure is the most superficial form of life satisfaction and therefore the easiest to obtain and the easiest to lose. The desire for a more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.
Lesson 5:
If there is no reason to do anything, if life is pointless, then there is also no reason to not do anything. What do you have to lose? You’re going to die anyway, so your fears and embarrassments, and failures don’t mean anything. You might as well try.
All of the meaning in our life is shaped by our innate desire to never truly die. Our physical bodies will die, but we cling to the idea that we can live on through religion, politics, sports, art, and technological innovation.
The only way to be comfortable with death is to understand and see yourself as something bigger than yourself, to contribute to some much larger entity.
Check out this book here.