The subtle art ....

Summary and Analysis of

The subtle art of not giving a ****   by Mark Manson

A Counter intuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

Although the title of the book is li’l embarrassing, the content, the experiences and the observations of Mark Manson are supreme. This book is really helpful in distinguishing a little bit more clearly between important and unimportant things.

Let me start with a philosophical debate of two different lifestyles.

I have two disjoint sets of friends. Although both believe in the popular punch line "Jindagi na milegi Dobara", there is a debatable difference in the way of living.

The first set of friends say, “We don’t know about next life, so Eat, Drink and keep having blasts.” The other set of friends say, “We don’t know about next life, so live the gifted life wisely. Don’t axe your feet. ”

This book attempts to define or redefine the happiness and also provides an increasingly different way of living life.

The content of the book is interesting because the spot light is distinctly on the Negativity. Mark in his colloquial language has made the counter intuitive feelings Rockstars of his book and convincingly so.

Mark has given enough insights to convert your pain into tool and problems into slightly better problems. The seemingly negative words like 'Pain' and 'Suffering' are accentuated. This book will not teach me how to gain or achieve, but how to lose and let go.

Point # 1: Don't try.

           

When we try a lot to achieve something but eventually fail to achieve, what do we do?

We try to change our methods or at times the Goal itself. Mark disagrees to this.

Even in the downfall, one must stick to natural strengths. Self-improvement and success often occur together. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the same thing. There is nothing wrong in changing by overcoming the drawbacks. The problem is in not analyzing the reason for the change.

We tend to change our self in situations where we are looked upon as losers. Mark Manson feels one must not try to be anything other than oneself.

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, more

productive, more envied, and more admired.

You stand in front of the mirror and repeat affirmations saying that you’re beautiful because you feel

as though you’re not beautiful already. You follow dating and relationship advice because you feel

that you’re unlovable already. You try goofy visualization exercises about being more successful

because you feel as though you aren’t successful enough already.

Ironically, this fixation on the positive—on what’s better, what’s superior—only serves to remind

us over and over again of what we are not, of what we lack, of what we should have been but failed

to be. After all, no truly happy person feels the need to stand in front of a mirror and recite that she’s

happy. She just is.

There’s a saying in Texas: “The smallest dog barks the loudest.” A confident man doesn’t feel a

need to prove that he’s confident. A good looking woman doesn’t feel a need to convince anybody that she. Either you are or you are not. And if you’re dreaming of something all the time, then you’re

reinforcing the same unconscious reality over and over: that you are not that.

Mark feels that the crave for ‘More’ is good in certain cases; like business and while there’s nothing wrong with good business, the problem is that this desire for more 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.

The key to a good life is not in the desire for more; it’s  about less, only what is true and immediate and important.

Point # 2: Feedback Loop from the Hell.

The belief that it’s not okay to be inadequate sometimes is the source of the growing Feedback

Loop from Hell that is coming to dominate our culture. There’s an insidious quirk to your brain that, if you let it, can drive you absolutely batty. It happens with everyone....

You get anxious about confronting somebody in your life. That anxiety cripples you and you start

wondering why you’re so anxious. Now you’re becoming anxious about being anxious. Oh no!

Doubly anxious! Now you’re anxious about your anxiety, which is causing more anxiety. Quick,

where’s the whiskey? It’s this last part that gets us into trouble. We feel bad about feeling bad. We feel guilty for feeling guilty. We get angry about getting angry. We get anxious about feeling anxious. What is wrong with me?

The Feedback Loop from Hell has become a borderline epidemic, making many of us overly

stressed, overly neurotic, and overly self-loathing.

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.

There is a subtle art to not worrying. And though the concept may sound ridiculous, it actually works. It is essentially learning how to focus and prioritize your thoughts effectively—how to pick and choose what matters to you and what does not matter to you based on finely honed personal values. This is incredibly difficult. It takes a lifetime of practice and discipline to achieve. And you will regularly fail. But it is perhaps the most worthy struggle one can undertake in one’s life. It is perhaps the only struggle in one’s life.

Subtlety #1: Not worrying does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.

Indifferent people, like me are afraid of the world and the repercussions of their own choices. That’s why they don’t always make meaningful choices. They hide in a gray, emotionless pit of their own making, self-absorbed and self-pitying, perpetually distracting themselves from this unfortunate thing

demanding their time and energy called life.

Because here’s a sneaky truth about life. We can’t stop worrying. We must worry about something. It’s part of our biology to worry about something.

The question, then, is, What do we worry about? What are we choosing to worry about?

And how can we not worry about what ultimately does not matter?

Subtlety #2: To not worry about adversity, you must first worry  about something more important than adversity.

Imagine you’re at a grocery store, and you watch an elderly lady scream at the cashier, berating

him for not accepting her coupon. Why does this lady behave this way? It’s just a small value coupon.

There is a reason to it: That lady probably doesn’t have anything better to do with her days than to sit at home cutting out coupons. She’s old and lonely. Her kids never visit her. She can’t fart without extreme lower-back pain. Her pension is on its last legs, and she’s probably going to die in a diaper thinking she’s in Candy Land. So she snips coupons. That’s all she’s got.

If you find yourself consistently worrying about trivial things that bothers you—your ex -

new Facebook picture, The number of followers on Instagram, The whatsapp dp, the pimples on your face, the hair loss that is becoming increasingly conspicuous—chances are you don’t have much going on in your life to give a legitimate worry. And that’s your real problem. Neither the WhtsApp  dp nor the Hair loss.

It then follows that finding something important and meaningful in our life is perhaps the most

productive use of your time and energy. Because if you don’t find that meaningful something, your

worries will be given to meaningless and frivolous causes.

Subtlety #3: Whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing what to worry about.

Ever saw a kid cry his eyes out because his hat is the wrong shade of blue? Exactly! A child does not bother about what others think about him. As the child grows up, the comparison starts worrying him.

When we’re young, everything is new and exciting, and everything seems to matter so much. We worry about every small thing that is connected.

As we grow older the worrisome thoughts reduce and are really different but they are there for sure. The lesser they are the better it is.

Point # 3: Happiness is in finding solutions to problems.

The greatness of the great Gautam Budha can be gauged from the fact that the basic truth of human life he understood in the 5th century gets validated even in the 21^st century lifestyle in which the price of the car you own and the frequency of European tours you make, matters.

One of the realizations of Budha was that the 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 that all suffering is equal. Some suffering is certainly more painful than other suffering. But we all must suffer nonetheless.

There is a premise that underlies a lot of our assumptions and beliefs. The premise is that

happiness is algorithmic, that it can be worked for and earned and achieved. If I achieve X, then I can be happy. If I look like Y, then I can be happy. If I can be with a person like Z, then I can be happy.

This premise, though, is the problem. Happiness is not a solvable equation. Dissatisfaction and

unease are inherent parts of human nature and, as we’ll see, necessary components to creating

consistent happiness. The Buddha argued this from a theological and philosophical perspective. Pain and loss are inevitable and we should let go of trying to resist them.

As the legend goes, the confused prince sat under that tree for forty-nine days and then

came to a number of profound realizations. One of them is “Life itself is a form of sufferings”

I simply liked the point of Mark Manson, ”One gets happiness after solving problems.”

According to the Harvard psychologist Mathew Killingsworth ; to be happy, enjoying the present is important. Mind wandering is inversely proportional to Happiness.

Mark Manson has a realized yet another source of Happiness and that is in solving problems.

Problems never stop; they merely get exchanged and/or upgraded. Happiness comes from solving problems. The keyword here is “solving.” If I am avoiding my problems or feel like I don’t have any problems, then I am going to make myself miserable. If I feel like I have problems that I can’t solve, I will likewise make myself miserable. The secret sauce is in the solving of the problems, not in not having problems in the first place.

Whatever my problems are, the concept is the same: solve problems; be happy. Unfortunately,

for many people, life doesn’t feel that simple. That’s because they worry in at least one of two

ways:

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.

Highs come in many forms. Whether it’s a substance like alcohol, the moral righteousness that

comes from blaming others, or the thrill of some new risky adventure, highs are shallow and

unproductive ways to go about one’s life.

It’s not that Highs are bad, it’s just that highs are not final solutions. They are like breaks using emotions as indications

Point # 4: Disappointment Panda

A hypothetical superhero called “Disappointment Panda” is used by Mark to reveal a common behavioral fact that we hide things not just from the society but also from the self. Some questions will really disappoint us. Imagine Disappointment Panda with his superpower would tell people harsh truths about themselves that they needed to hear but didn’t want to accept.

He would go door-to-door like a Bible salesman and ring doorbells and say things like, “Sure,

making a lot of money makes you feel good, but it won’t make your kids love you,” or “If you have to

ask yourself if you trust your wife, then you probably don’t,” or “What you consider ‘friendship’ is

really just your constant attempts to impress people.”  There are many questions that will leave all of us red faced if the answers are true to those questions. After all, the greatest truths in life are usually the most unpleasant to hear. Disappointment Panda would be the hero that none of us would want but all of us would need.

Point # 5: Emotions are overrated

Negative emotions are a reminder, for the actions not taken to solve the problem, whereas the positive emotions are the certificates of the problems solved.

An obsession and overinvestment in emotion fails us for the simple reason that emotions never

last. Whatever makes us happy today will no longer make us happy tomorrow, because our biology

always needs something more. A fixation on happiness inevitably amounts to a never-ending pursuit

of “something else”—a better mobile, a bigger car, better health,a new relationship, another child, another pay raise. And despite all of our sweat 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’re

always working hard to change our life situation, but we actually never feel very different.

Because happiness requires struggle. It grows from problems. Happiness without struggle is short-lived. It just a high, not real happiness. The solution lies in the acceptance and active engagement of that negative experience—not the avoidance of it, not the salvation from it.

While working out in the Gym I’ve seen my face in the mirror while lifting the heavy weights, to pump the biceps. How and why do I take so much of pain, when it is optional? It is because the pain is pleasure and it is pleasure because I can foresee the result of that pain. In my childhood I have spent good number of hours studying my favorite subjects. The reason I was ready to take the pain, even when my Mom had given the permission to sleep, was the visualization of good marks.

So I can actually get happiness while I am going through a struggle, if I have a foresight of some happiness after the result.

I have not achieved all my dreams. Fanaticizing, me getting a desired result was a routine occurrence. With a mountain of certain dream and a mile-high climb to the top needs efforts.. And what it took me a long time to discover is that I didn’t like to climb much. I just liked to imagine the summit. I had thousands of excuses, but the truth was far less interesting than any of those excuses. The truth was, I thought I wanted something, but it turned out I didn’t. End of the story!

My experience is that the choice, intensity and consistency of my struggle will decide the happiness through the process and obviously after the desired result.

The happiness while struggling is as good as the happiness after achieving the desired result.

Entitlement of being Special

The deeper the pain, the more helpless we feel against our problems, and the more entitlement we

adopt to compensate for those problems. This entitlement plays out in one of two ways:

1. I’m awesome and the rest of you all suck, so I deserve special treatment.

2. I suck and the rest of you are all awesome, so I deserve special treatment.

Opposite mindset on the outside, but the same selfish creamy core in the middle. In fact, you will

often see entitled people flip back and forth between the two. Either they’re on top of the world or the

world is on top of them, depending on the day of the week, or how well they’re doing with their

particular addiction at that moment.

Point # 6:The Self-Awareness Onion

Self-awareness is like an onion. There are multiple layers to it, and the more you peel them back, the

more likely you’re going to start crying at inappropriate times.

The first layer of the self-awareness onion is a simple understanding of one’s emotions.

“This is when I feel happy.” “This makes me feel sad.” “This gives me hope.”

Unfortunately, there are many people who suck at even this most basic level of self-awareness. I

know because I’m one of them. My wife and I sometimes have a fun back-and-forth that goes

something like this:

HER. What’s wrong?

ME. Nothing’s wrong. Nothing at all.

HER. No, something’s wrong. Tell me.

ME. I’m fine. Really.

HER. Are you sure? You look upset.

ME, with nervous laughter. Really? No, I’m okay, seriously.

[Thirty minutes later . . . ]

ME. . . . And that’s why I’m so pissed off! …..

That’s emotional blind spot. We all have emotional blind spots.

The second layer of the self-awareness onion is an ability to ask why we feel certain emotions.

These why questions are difficult and often take months or even years to answer consistently and

accurately. Such questions are important because they illuminate what we consider success or failure.

The 3^rd layer of questioning helps us understand the root cause of the emotions that overwhelm us.

Once we understand that root cause, we can ideally do something to change it.

The third level is our personal values: Why do I consider this to be success/failure? How am I

choosing to measure myself? By what standard am I judging myself and everyone around me?

This level, which takes constant questioning and effort, is incredibly difficult to reach. But it’s the

most important, because our values determine the nature of our problems, and the nature of our

problems determines the quality of our lives.

Shitty Values:

There are a handful of common values that create really poor problems.—problems that

can hardly be solved. So let’s go over some of them quickly:

1. Pleasure. Pleasure is great, but it’s a horrible value to prioritize your life around. Ask any drug

addict how his pursuit of pleasure turned out. 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. And yet, pleasure is what’s marketed to us, twenty-four/seven. It’s what we fixate on. It’s what we use to numb and distract ourselves. But pleasure, while necessary in life (in

certain doses), isn’t, by itself, sufficient. 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 a by-product.

2. Material Success. Many people measure their self-worth based on how much money they make or

what kind of car they drive.

In city like Nasik, the per month income of 25k is good, 50k is very good and 1 lk is superb. More than that cannot make you happier. I will be killing myself working overtime and weekends for basically nothing.

The other issue with overvaluing material success is the danger of prioritizing it over other values, such as honesty, nonviolence, and compassion. When people measure themselves not by their behavior, but by the status symbols they’re able to collect, then not only are they shallow, but they’re probably idiots as well.

3. Always Being Right Our brains are inefficient machines. We consistently make poor assumptions,

misjudge probabilities, misremember facts, give in to cognitive biases, and make decisions based

on our emotional whims. As humans, we’re wrong pretty much constantly, so if my metric for

life success is to be right—well, I am going to have a difficult time rationalizing all of the

bullshit to myself.

The fact is, people who base their self-worth on being right about everything prevent themselves from learning from their mistakes. They lack the ability to take on new perspectives and empathize with others. They close themselves off to new and important information. It’s far more helpful to assume that you’re ignorant and don’t know a whole lot. This keeps you unattached to superstitious or poorly informed beliefs and promotes a constant state of learning and growth.

4. Staying Positive. Then there are those who measure their lives by the ability to be positive about,

well, pretty much everything. Lost your job? Great! That’s an opportunity to explore your

passions. While there is something to be said for “staying on the sunny side of life,” the truth is,

sometimes life sucks, and the healthiest thing you can do is admit it. Denying negative emotions leads to experiencing deeper and more prolonged negative emotions and to emotional dysfunction. Constant positivity is a form of avoidance, not a valid solution to life’s problems—problems which, by the way, if you’re choosing the right values and metrics, should be invigorating you and motivating you.

Good and Bad values:

Good values are 1) reality-based, 2) socially constructive, and 3) immediate and controllable.

Bad values are 1) superstitious, 2) socially destructive, and 3) not immediate or controllable.

Honesty is a good value because it’s something you have complete control over, it reflects reality,

and it benefits others (even if it’s sometimes unpleasant). Popularity, on the other hand, is a bad value.

If that’s your value, and if your metric is being the most popular guy/girl at the dance party, much of

what happens will be out of your control: you don’t know who else will be at the event, and you

probably won’t know who half those people are. Second, the value/metric isn’t based on reality: you

may feel popular or unpopular, when in fact you have no fucking clue what anybody else really thinks

about you. (Side Note: As a rule, people who are terrified of what others think about them are

actually terrified of all the shitty things they think about themselves being reflected back at them.)

Some examples of good, healthy values: honesty, innovation, vulnerability, standing up for

oneself, standing up for others, self-respect, curiosity, charity, humility, creativity.

Some examples of bad, unhealthy values: dominance through manipulation or violence,

indiscriminate fucking, feeling good all the time, always being the center of attention, not being alone,

being liked by everybody, being rich for the sake of being rich, sacrificing small animals to the pagan

gods.

Point # 7:We Are Always Choosing

There is a vast difference when you are running helter skelter to avoid a street dog chasing you and when you are running a sprint to increase your stamina.

When we feel that we’re choosing our problems, we feel empowered. When we feel that our

problems are being forced upon us against our will, we feel victimized and miserable.

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.

Whether we consciously recognize it or not, we are always responsible for our experiences. It’s

impossible not to be. Choosing to not consciously interpret events in our lives is still an

interpretation of the events of our lives. Choosing to not respond to the events in our lives is still a

response to the events in our lives. Even if you get run over by a clown car and pissed on by a

busload of schoolchildren, it’s still your responsibility to interpret the meaning of the event and

choose a response.

Point # 8: I am wrong most of the times:

When I remember my days 10-12 years back, I find lot of mistakes in my beliefs and practices. In those days when I remembered the days 10-12 years back of those, I found those practices and beliefs funny. That goes to say, that 10-12 years from now most of my current practices and values will be funny.

Growth is an endlessly iterative process. When I learn something new, I don’t go from

“wrong” to “right.” Rather, I go from wrong to slightly less wrong. And when I learn something

additional, I go from slightly less wrong to slightly less wrong than that, and then to even less

wrong than that, and so on. I am always in the process of approaching truth and perfection without

actually ever reaching truth or perfection.

When viewed from this perspective, personal growth can actually be quite scientific. Our values

are our hypotheses: this behavior is good and important; that other behavior is not. Our actions are the

experiments; the resulting emotions and thought patterns are our data.

Just as we look back in horror at the lives of people five hundred years ago, I imagine people five

hundred years from now will laugh at us and our certainties today. They will laugh at how we let our

money and our jobs define our lives. They will laugh at how we were afraid to show appreciation for

those who matter to us most, yet heaped praise on public figures who didn’t deserve anything. They

will laugh at our rituals and superstitions, our worries and our wars; they will gawk at our cruelty.

They will study our art and argue over our history. They will understand truths about us of which none of us are yet aware.

And they, too, will be wrong. Just less wrong than we are now.

Point # 9:Architects of our own beliefs

Try this. Take a some people randomly and put them in a room with some buttons to push. Then tell them that if they do something specific—some undefined something that they have to figure out—a light will flash on indicating that they’ve won a point. Then tell them to see how many points they can earn within a thirty-minute period.

When psychologists have done this, what happens is what you might expect. People sit down and

start mashing buttons at random until eventually the light comes on to tell them they got a point.

Logically, they then try repeating whatever they were doing to get more points. Except now the light’s

not coming on. So they start experimenting with more complicated sequences—press this button three

times, then this button once, then wait five seconds, and—ding! Another point. But eventually that

stops working. Perhaps it doesn’t have to do with buttons at all, they think. Perhaps it has to do with

how I’m sitting. Or what I’m touching. Maybe it has to do with my feet. Ding! Another point. Yeah,

maybe it’s my feet and then I press another button. Ding!

Generally, within ten to fifteen minutes each person has figured out the specific sequence of

behaviors required to net more points. It’s usually something weird like standing on one foot or

memorizing a long sequence of buttons pressed in a specific amount of time while facing a certain

direction.

Every person leaves that room convinced that he or she nailed the experiment and won the game. They all believe that they discovered the “perfect” sequence of buttons that earned them their points. But the methods they come up with are as unique as the individuals themselves.

Our brains are meaning machines. What we understand as “meaning” is generated by the

associations our brain makes between two or more experiences. We press a button, then we see a

light go on; we assume the button caused the light to go on. This, at its core, is the basis of meaning.

Button, light; light, button. We see a chair. We note that it’s gray. Our brain then draws the association between the color (gray) and the object (chair) and forms meaning: “The chair is gray.”

But here’s the funny part: the points really are random. There’s no sequence; there’s no pattern.

Just a light that keeps coming on with a ding, and people doing cartwheels thinking that what they’re

doing is giving them points.

Sadism aside, the point of the experiment is to show how quickly the human mind is capable of

coming up with and believing in a bunch of bullshit that isn’t real. And it turns out, we’re all really good at it.

Point # 10: The dangers of pure certainty

And it’s in these moments of insecurity, of deep despair, that we become susceptible to an

insidious entitlement: believing that we deserve to cheat a little to get our way, that other people

deserve to be punished, that we deserve to take what we want, and sometimes violently.

It’s the backwards law again: the more you try to be certain about something, the more uncertain

and insecure you will feel.

But the converse is true as well: the more you embrace being uncertain and not knowing, the more

comfortable you will feel in knowing what you don’t know.

Uncertainty removes our judgments of others; it preempts the unnecessary stereotyping and biases

that we otherwise feel when we see somebody on TV, in the office, or on the street. Uncertainty also

relieves us of our judgment of ourselves. We don’t know if we’re lovable or not; we don’t know how

attractive we are; we don’t know how successful we could potentially become. The only way to

achieve these things is to remain uncertain of them and be open to finding them out through

experience.

Uncertainty is the root of all progress and all growth. As the old adage goes, the man who

believes he knows everything learns nothing. We cannot learn anything without first not knowing

something. The more we admit we do not know, the more opportunities we gain to learn.

Our values are imperfect and incomplete, and to assume that they are perfect and complete is to

put us in a dangerously dogmatic mindset that breeds entitlement and avoids responsibility. The only

way to solve our problems is to first admit that our actions and beliefs up to this point have been

wrong and are not working.

This openness to being wrong must exist for any real change or growth to take place.

Before we can look at our values and prioritization and change them into better, healthier ones,

we must first become uncertain of our current values. We must intellectually strip them away, see

their faults and biases, see how they don’t fit in with much of the rest of the world, to stare our own

ignorance in the face and concede, because our own ignorance is greater than us all.

Point # 11: Manson’s Law of Avoidance

Parkinson’s law says “Work expands so as to fill up the time available for its completion.”. Equally interesting is Manson’s law of avoidance that states, “The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it.”

There’s a certain comfort that comes with knowing how you fit in the world. Anything that shakes

up that comfort—even if it could potentially make your life better—is inherently scary.

People are often so afraid of success—for the exact same reason they’re afraid of failure: it threatens who they believe themselves to be.

Mark says, “Don’t find yourself. Never know who you are.” Because that’s what keeps you striving

and discovering. And it forces you to remain humble in your judgments and accepting of the

differences in others.

The failure / Success Paradox:

A lady once asked Picaso the price of the painting that he made in 2 minutes. The retort was $20k. Why is it so high? especially when it took mere 2 mins to make. The reaction of Picaso was, “ It hasn’t taken 2 mins, It has taken 60 years.”

Improvement at anything is based on thousands of tiny 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 you, it’s

likely because he hasn’t been through all of the painful learning experiences you have.

At some point, most of us reach a place where we’re afraid to fail, where we instinctively avoid

failure and stick only to what is placed in front of us or only what we’re already good at.

This confines us and stifles us. 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. A lot of this fear of failure comes from having chosen shitty values.

Point # 12: The new Gadget Question

Whenever a new electronic device came to my house, I would press every button, plug

and unplug every cord and cable, just to see what everything did. With time, I learned how the whole

system worked. And because I knew how it all worked, I was often the only person in the house who

used the stuff.. My parents looked on me as if I were some sort of prodigy. To them, the fact that I could program the gadgets without looking at the instruction manual made me the future Engineer. Incidentally I became an Engineer. My Parents sat and stared at what I did and the asked, how? The answer was simple, by simply doing it.

Now when I am a grown up with couple of Kids, the same story happens again. I ask my son, How do you do that? The Gadget questions are there in many aspects of life, where we underestimate our self.

The problem here is pain. We shy away from the required pain to do it.

Point # 13 : The “Do something Principle”

When I started my business Bulls Eye, I finished my working capital in the first 6 months of initiation. The business was bleeding. Most part of my daily work was useless. I was scared most of the times and the thoughts of quitting the Business started consuming me. Fortunately I didn’t.

Well, now I can connect the Principle of Mark Mason, Doing something is important. He says, “Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow. That “something” can be the smallest viable action toward something else.

The author Tim Ferriss relates a story he once heard about a novelist who had written over

seventy novels. Someone asked the novelist how he was able to write so consistently and remain

inspired and motivated. He replied, “Two hundred crappy words per day, that’s it.” The idea was that

if he forced himself to write two hundred crappy words, more often than not the act of writing would

inspire him; and before he knew it, he’d have thousands of words down on the page.

Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it.

Most of us commit to action only if we feel a certain level of motivation. And we feel motivation

only when we feel enough emotional inspiration. We assume that these steps occur in a sort of chain

reaction, like this:

Emotional inspiration → Motivation → Desirable action

If you want to accomplish something but don’t feel motivated or inspired, then you assume you’re

just screwed. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s not until a major emotional life event occurs

that you can generate enough motivation to actually get off the couch and do something.

The thing about motivation is that it’s not only a three-part chain, but an endless loop:

Inspiration → Motivation → Action → Inspiration → Motivation → Action → Etc.

Your actions create further emotional reactions and inspirations and move on to motivate your

future actions. Taking advantage of this knowledge, we can actually reorient our mindset in the

following way:

Action → Inspiration → Motivation

Point # 14: Rejection Makes Your Life Better

In order to value ‘x’ reject ‘non-x’.

The desire to avoid rejection at all costs, to avoid confrontation and conflict, the desire to attempt

to accept everything equally and to make everything cohere and harmonize, is a deep and subtle form

of entitlement. Entitled people, because they feel as though they deserve to feel great all the time,

avoid rejecting anything because doing so might make them or someone else feel bad. And because

they refuse to reject anything, they live a valueless, pleasure-driven, and self-absorbed life. All they

worry about is sustaining the high a little bit longer, to avoid the inevitable failures of their life,

to pretend the suffering away.

Honesty is a natural human craving. But part of having honesty in our lives is becoming comfortable with saying and hearing the word “no.” In this way, rejection actually makes our relationships better and our emotional lives healthier.

Point # 15:Boundaries are Good.

By “boundaries”  Mark means the delineation between two people’s responsibilities for their own

problems. People in a healthy relationship with strong boundaries will take responsibility for their

own values and problems and not take responsibility for their partner’s values and problems. People

in a toxic relationship with poor or no boundaries will regularly avoid responsibility for their own

problems and/or take responsibility for their partner’s problems.

What do poor boundaries look like? Here are some examples:

“You can’t go out with your friends without me. You know how jealous I get. You have to stay

home with me.”

“My coworkers are idiots; they always make me late to meetings because I have to tell them

how to do their jobs.”

“I can’t believe you made me feel so stupid in front of my own sister. Never disagree with me in

front of her again!”

“I’d love to take that job in Milwaukee, but my mother would never forgive me for moving so

far away.”

“I can date you, but can you not tell my friend Cindy? She gets really insecure when I have a

boyfriend and she doesn’t.”

Entitled people who blame others for their own emotions and actions do so because they believe

that if they constantly paint themselves as victims, eventually someone will come along and save

them, and they will receive the love they’ve always wanted.

Entitled people who take the blame for other people’s emotions and actions do so because they

believe that if they “fix” their partner and save him or her, they will receive the love and appreciation

they’ve always wanted.

These are the yin and yang of any toxic relationship: the victim and the saver, the person who

Starts fires because it makes her feel important and the person who puts out fires because it makes him feel important.

For victims, the hardest thing to do in the world is to hold themselves accountable for their

problems. They’ve spent their whole life believing that others are responsible for their fate. That first

step of taking responsibility for themselves is often terrifying.

For savers, the hardest thing to do in the world is to stop taking responsibility for other people’s

problems. They’ve spent their whole life feeling valued and loved only when they’re saving

somebody else—so letting go of this need is terrifying to them as well.

If you make a sacrifice for someone you care about, it needs to be because you want to, not

because you feel obligated or because you fear the consequences of not doing so. If your partner is

going to make a sacrifice for you, it needs to because he or she genuinely wants to, not because

you’ve manipulated the sacrifice through anger or guilt. Acts of love are valid only if they’re

performed without conditions or expectations.

Point # 16: The sunny side of Death:

Mark Manson, came across a phase where his friend had an untimely death. This incident left Mark with a shock. Mark noticed a change in his lifestyle after that.

We will be remembered and revered and idolized long after our physical self ceases to exist. Becker called such efforts our “immortality projects,” projects that allow our conceptual self

to live on way past the point of our physical death. All of human civilization, he says, is basically

a result of immortality projects: the cities and governments and structures and authorities in place

today were all immortality projects of men and women who came before us. They are the

remnants of conceptual selves that ceased to die. Names like Jesus, Muhammad, Napoleon, and

Shakespeare are just as powerful today as when those men lived, if not more so. And that’s the

whole point. Whether it be through mastering an art form, conquering a new land, gaining great

riches, or simply having a large and loving family that will live on for generations, all the

meaning in our life is shaped by this innate desire to never truly die.

Mark Twain,said, “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

While death is bad, it is inevitable. Therefore, we should not avoid this realization, but rather come to terms with it as best we can. Because 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 says, there is nothing to be afraid of. Ever. And reminding myself of my own death repeatedly over the years—whether it be through meditation, through reading philosophy, or through doing crazy acts like standing on a cliff —is the only thing that has helped me hold this realization front and center in my mind. This acceptance of my death, this understanding of my own fragility, has made everything easier—untangling my addictions, identifying and confronting my own entitlement,

accepting responsibility for my own problems—suffering through my fears and uncertainties,

accepting my failures and embracing rejections—it has all been made lighter by the thought of my

own death. The more I peer into the darkness, the brighter life gets, the quieter the world becomes,

and the less unconscious resistance I feel to, well, anything.

Disclaimer:

This book is too good to read just once. The summary written by me is just an attempt to preserve the good points stated by Mark Manson. In this article I have mixed my experiences, observations, foresight and my perceptions.

Vinay Wagh

Bulls Eye, Nasik