The
world is constantly telling you that the path to a better life is more, more,
more – buy ore, own more, make more, fuck more, be more. You are constantly
bombarded with messages to give a fuck about everything, all the time. Give a
fuck about a new TV. Give a fuck about having a better vacation than your
coworkers. Give a fuck about buying that new lawn ornament. Give a fuck about
having the right kind of selfie stick.
o
Because
giving a fuck is good for business
o
Giving
too many fucks is bad for your mental health
o
Dedicate
your life to chasing a mirage of happiness and satisfaction
o
The
key to a good life its giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what
is true and immediate and important
-
Feedback
loop from hell
o
Anxious
– now youre anxious about being anxious
o
Anger
– now youre angry at being angry
o
Worried
– now youre worried about being worried
o
Thoughts
about thoughts
o
On
facebook everybody is having a fucking grand old time
-
This
is why not giving a fuck is key
o
Accepting
the world is totally fucked and that’s all right, because its been that way and
always will be
o
Start
to say to yourself: “I feel like shit, but who gives a fuck.” You stop hating
yourself for feeling so bad
o
Stress-related
health issues, anxiety disorder, and cases of depression have skyrocketed.
o
We
have so much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know
what to give a fuck about anymore.
o
Because
there is infinite amount of things we can now see or know
-
Camus:
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists
of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
-
The
pain you PURSUE in the gym results in better all-around health, the failures in
business are what lead to a better understanding of that is necessary to be
successful. …
-
Everything
worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative
experience
o
Sport
– training. Study hard for job. Fight through hard times in job. Continue
learning on job,…
o
Any
attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only
backfire. To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain
-
Most
of us struggle throughout our lives by giving too many fucks in situations
where fucks do not deserve to be given. (when a show gets cancelled, if someone
is unfriendly, someone misbehaving in traffic)
-
You
are going to die one day – you have a limited amount of fucks to give. Learning
how to focus and prioritize your thoughts effectively.
-
You
will be confined to your own petty, skill-sized hell, burning with entitlement
and bluster, running circles around your very own personal Feedback Loop from
Hell, in constant motion yet arriving nowhere.
-
You
must give a fuck about something
o
The
question then is, WHAT do we give a fuck about? What are we choosing to give a
fuck about? And how can we not give a fuck about what ultimately does not
matter
o
Admirable
§ Being comfortable by being
different!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
§ The people who don’t give a fuck
about adversity or failure or embarrassing themselves. The people who just
laugh and then do what they believe in anyway. Because they know its right.
§ More important than their own
feelings and their own pride and their own ego. They say “Fuck it”. They
reserve fucks for what truly matters.
-
The
old saying goes that no matter where you go, there you are.
o
No
matter where you go, therea a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you.
And that’s perfectly fine. The point isn’t to get away from the shit. The point
is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.
-
When
a person has no problems, the mind automatically finds a way to invent some
o
Finding
something important and meaningful in your life is perhaps the most productive
use of your time and energy.
-
When
we mater:
o
We
become more selective about the fucks were willing to give
o
Only
give a fuck about what truly fuck-worthy
o
Whats
what you get for giving a fuck when it wasn’t your turn to give a fuck
o
We
know who we are and we accept ourselves. This is liberating. Life is just what
it is.
-
People
no longer realize its okay for things to suck sometimes.
-
No
mater what you do, life is comprised of failures, loss, regrets, and even death
o
Once
you become comfortable with all the shit that life throws at you, you become
invincible
-
One
realization was that 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.
o
Warren
buffest got money problems, the Hobo at 7/11 has money problems. Buffet just
got better money problems. All of life is like this.
-
Happiness
is not a solvable equation
-
Life
is essentially an endless series of problems
-
The
solution to one problem is merely the creation of the next one
-
Don’t
hope for al ife without problems. Hope for a life full of good problems
-
When
you solve your health problem by buying a gym membership, you create new
problems, like having to get up early to get to the gym on time
-
Happiness
comes from solving problems
-
If
youre avoiding your problems youre going to make yourself miserable
-
To
be happy we need something to solve. Happiness is therefore a form of action;
its an activity, not something that is passilvely bestowed upon you, not
something that you magically discover
-
Happiness
is a constant work-in-progress
-
Highs
are shallow and unproductive ways to go about ones life
o
Highs
also generate addictions
o
Almost
anything can become addictive
o
Numb
the pain of our problems
-
If
you feel crappy its because your brain is telling you that theres a problem that’s
unaddressed or unresolved
o
Negative
emotions are calls to action. When you feel them, its because youre supposed to
do something
-
Whatever
makes us happy today will no longer make us happy tomorrow
o
Because
our biology always needs something more.
o
We
end up feeling eerily similar to how we started: inadequate
o
The
“hedonic treadmill”, we’re always working, hard to change our life situation,
but we actually never feel very different
-
What
pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?
o
The
solution lies in the acceptance and active engagement of that negative experience
o
Amazing
physique – unless you legitimately appreciate the pain and physical stress that
come with living inside a gym
-
You
have to choose something. You cant have a pain-free life. It cant all be roses
and unicorns all the time.
o
I
wanted the reward and not the struggle. I wanted the result and not the
process. I was in love with not the fight but only the victory. And life doesn’t
work that way.
o
Who
you are is defines by what you’re willing to struggle for. People who enjoy the
struggles of a gym are the ones who run triathlons
o
People
who enjoy long workweeks and the politics of the corporate ladder are the ones
who fly to the top of it.
o
See:
It’s a never-ending upward spiral
-
A
person who actually has a high self-worth is able to look at the negative parts
of his character frankly – Yes, sometimes I’m irresponsible with money, Yes,
sometimes I exaggerate my own success,,, and then acts to improve upon them
-
It
just means that you’re nothing special.
o
Most
of us are pretty average at most things we do.
o
That’s
just the nature of life. To become truly great at something, you have to
dedicate shit-tons of time and energy to it.
o
We’re
all, for the most part, pretty average people.
§ Inherently contradictory – after all,
if everyone were extraordinary, then by definition no one would be
extraordinary
§ They become amazing because they’re
obsessed with improvement.
·
Stems
from an uneering belief that they are, in fact, not great at all.
·
People
who become great at something become great because they understand that they’re
not already great – they are average – and that they could be so much better
§ Accepting the bland and mundane truths
of life: The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that’s
okay.
§ Your body will wake up feeling more
potent and more alive. After all, that constant pressure to be something
amazing, to be the next big thing, will be lifted off your back.
§ The knowledge and acceptance of your
own mundane existence will actually free you to accomplish what you truly wish
to accomplish, without judgement or lofty expectations.
§ Growing appreciation for lifes basic
experiences: the pleasures of simple friendship, creating something, helping a
person in need, reading a good book, laughing with someone you care about.
-
Humans
often choose to dedicate large portions of their lives to seemingly useless or destructive
causes
o
The
question we should be asking is not “how do I stop suffering?”, but “Why am I
suffering – for what purpose?”
-
First
layer of self-awareness is simple understanding of one’s emotions
o
Second
layer why we feel certain emotions
§ Why do you feel angry?
o
Third
level is our personal values
§ Values underlie everything we are
and do
§ Why do they feel such a need to be
rich in the first place? How are they choosing to measure success/failure for
themselves?
§ The question is not whether we
evaluate ourselves against others; rather, the question is by what standard do
we measure ourselves
§ Honesty is a good value, popularity
is a bad value. Out of your control
·
Good,
healthy values: Honesty, innovation, vulnerability, standing up for oneself,
standing up for others, self-respect, curiosity, charity, humility, creativity
·
Some
bad, unhealthy values: Feeling good all the time, not being alone, being liked by
everybody, being rich for the sake of being rich
§ Good values are achieved internally.
Bad values are generally reliant on external events and lie outside of your
control.
§ Values are about prioritizations,
influence your decision-making more than anything else
-
Pleasure
o
Pleasure
is a false god
o
Pleasure
is what’s marketed to us, 24/7. Its what we fixate on.
o
Pleasure
is not the cause of happiness, rather it is the effect
-
Material
success
o
The
correlation between happiness and wordly success quickly approaches zero
o
Meaning
that you’re killing yourself working overtime and weekends for basically
nothing.
-
In
the long run, completing a marathon makes us happier than eating a chocolate
cake. Raising a child makes us happier than beating a video game. These activities
are stressful, arduous, and often unpleasant. They also require withstanding
problem after problem. Yet they are some of the most meaningful moments and
joyous things we’ll ever do. They involve pain, struggle, even anger and
despair – yet once they’re accomplished, we look back and get all misty-eyed
telling our grandkids about them.
o
One
day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful
-
When
we feel that we’re choosing our problems, we feel empowered. When we feek that
our problems are being forced upon us against our will, we feel victimized and
miserable.
-
There
is a simple realization from which all personal improvements and growth
emerges. This is the realization that we, individually, are responsible for
everything in our lives, no matter the external circumstances
o
Whether
we like it or not, we are ALWAYS taking an active role in whats occurring to
and within us. We are always interpreting the meaning of every moments and
every occurrence.
o
The
more we choose to accept responsibility in our lives, the more power we will
exercise over our lives. Accepting responsibility for our problems is thus the
first step to solving them.
o
A
lot of people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because they
believe that to be responsible for your problems is to also be fault for your
problems
o
Many
people may be to blame for your unhappiness, but nobody is ever responsible for
your unhappiness but you.
§ You always get to choose how you see
things, how you react to things, how you value things.
§ I began to understand that although
she had done something horrible to me and she could be blamed for that, it was
now my own responsibility to make myself happy again. She was never going to
pop up and fix things for me. I had to fix them for myself.
§ We all get dealt cards. Some of us
get better cards than others. And while it’s easy to get hung up on our cards, and
feel we got screwed over, the real game lies in the choices we make with those
cards, the risks we decide to take, and the consequences we choose to live
with.
-
But
how do I change?
o
Do,
or do not, there is no how
o
You
are already choosing, in every moment of every day, what to give a fuck about,
so change is as simple as choosing to give a fuck about something else.
o
It
really is that simple. Its just not easy.
o
Its
not easy because youre going to feel like a loser, a fraud, a dumbass at first
o
These
are all side effect of changing your values, of changing the fucks youre
giving. But they are inevitable.
o
The
moment you change those values (studying is more important than partying),…
§ Choosing to place your fucks
elsewhere, in a place far more important and worthy of your energies – you will
be met with internal and external resistance along the way. You will feel uncertain.
But this is a good thing.
-
I
tought being “cool” had to be practiced and learned from others, rather than
invented for oneself.
o
Every
step of the way I was wrong. About everything. Throughout my life, I’ve been
flat-out wrong about myself, others, society, culture, the world, the universe –
everything. And I hope that will continue to be the case for the rest of my
life.
§ Growth is an endlessly iterative
process.
-
That
man doesn’t ask for the promotion because he would have to confront his beliefs
about what his skills are actually worth. It’s easier to sit in a painful
certainty, that nobody appreciates your talents, than to actually test those
beliefs and find out for sure.
o
Certainty
is the enemy of growth
o
We
should be in constant search of doubt. Doubt about our own beliefs, doubt about
our own feelings, doubt about what the future may hold for us unless we get out
there and create it for ourselves. Instead of looking to be right all the time,
we should be looking for how we’re wrong all the time. Because we are. Being
wrong opens us up to the possibility of change. Being wrong brings the
opportunity for growth.
o
We
don’t actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most
difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most
formative and motivating. Don’t trust your conception of positive / negative
experiences. (“Who knows if its good or bad”)
-
How
quickly the human mind is capable of coming up with and believing in a bunch of
bullshit that isn’t real.
o
They
all (students in experiment) believe that they discovered the perfect sequence
of button that earned them their points (but it was random)
o
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.
o
Our
minds are constantly whirring, generating more and more associations.
o
The
brain is imperfect. We mistake things we see and hear.
§ Brains are designed to hold on to
that meaning.
§ Biased
§ We don’t want to let go of it.
§ Even if we see evidence, we often
ignore it and keep on believing anyway
-
“I
used to think the human brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized
who was telling me this.”
-
All
beliefs are wrong – some are just less wrong than others
-
Uncertainty
also relieves us of our judgement of ourselves: We don’t know if were 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.
o
The
man who believes he knows everything, learns nothing.
o
The
more we admit we do not know, the more opportunities we gain to learn
-
Parkinsons
law: “Work expands so as to fill up the time available for its completion”
-
I
say “DON’T” find yourself. I say NEVER know who you are. Because that what
keeps you striving and discovering.
-
Buddhism:
You should let go of the idea that YOU exist at all. It actually traps you. It
encourages you to not give a fuck.
o
When
we let go of the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves, we free
ourselves up to actually act (and fail) and grow.
o
Choose
to measure yourself not as a rising star or an undiscovered genius. Instead,
measure yourself by more mundane identities: a student, a partner, a friend, a
creator
o
Define
yourself in the simplest and most ordinary ways possible
o
Giving
up your sense of entitlement and your belief that youre somehow owed something
by this world
o
We’re
all the world’s worst observers of ourselves
-
Making
money, by itself, was a lousy metric for myself. You could make plenty of money
and be miserable, just as you could be broke and be pretty happy. Therefore, why
use money as a means to measure my self-worth?
o
Would
I rather make decent money and work a job I hated, or play at Internet entrepreneur
and be broke for a while.
o
If
I try this thing and fail in a few years and have to go get a job anyway, will
I have really lost anything?
-
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.
o
A
young child trying to learn to walk… at no point does that child ever stop and
think: “Oh, I guess walking just isn’t for me. I’m no good at it.”
-
Goals
o
Are
limited in the amount of happiness they can product in our lives.
-
Just
shut up and do it
o
Life
is about not knowing and then doing something anyway. ALL of life is like this.
It never changes. Even when you’re happy.
o
If
you’re stuck on a problem, don’t sit there and think about it; just start
working on it. Even if you don’t know what youre doing, the simple act of
working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head.
o
Don’t
just sit there. DO something. The answers will follow.
o
Action
isn’t just the effect of motivation. It’s also the cause of it
o
From
“Inspiration -> Motivation -> Action” to “Action -> Inspiration ->
Motivation”
o
DO
SOMETHING – anything, really – and then harness the reaction to that action as
a way to begin motivating yourself.
o
I
call this the “do something” principle
o
Forcing
myself to do SOMETHING, even the most menial of tasks, quickly made the larger
tasks seem much easier.
o
The
novelist: “Two hundred crappy words per day, that’s it” – 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.
o
When
the standard of success becomes merely acting – when ANY result is regarded as progress
and important, when inspiration is seen as a reward rather than a prerequisite –
we propel ourselves ahead. We feel free to fail, and that failure moves us
forward.
-
People
cant solve your problems for you. And they shouldn’t try, because that wont
make them happy. You can’t solve other people’s problems for them either, because
that likewise won’t make them happy.
-
Consumer
culture is very good at making us want more, more, more
o
Implication
that more is always better
o
But
more is not always better, In fact, the opposite is true. We are actually often
happier with less.
o
Paradox
of choice.
o
There
is freedom and liberation in commitment. I have found increased opportunity and
upside in rejecting alternatives and distractions in favor of what I’ve chosen
to let truly matter to me.
§ It hones your attention and focus
§ Making you healthy and happy
§ Makes decision making easier
§ Removes and fear of missing out
§ Knowing that what you already have
is good enough
§ Why would you ever stress about
chasing more, more, more
§ Focus intently on a few highly
important goals
§ Achieve a greater degree of success
§ The rejection of alternatives
liberates us
