Relationships with books are kind of like relationships with people. Part of the relationship is you. Part of the relationship is outside of you (the other person / book). And part of the relationship is timing - the context of the moment in time that you're reading it. What's going on. What baggage you're carrying. What new perspectives you've just gained. What validation you’re yearning for. What problems you're trying to solve.
Reading is an active endeavour. You don't sit back on the couch, tune out and waste away two hours like Netflix or the endless scroll of social media. You use your brain to process the words, your memory to contextualize it within your past experiences and your imagination to see it applied to future you.
Just like relationships with people, timing is everything. You can come across the best book in the world, but if you're not equipped to read it ... it falls flat. Or you could stumble on diamond in the rough with a book that your intellectual set has overlooked and have it rock your world.
One of my top five most influential books over the past decade has been "The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck" by Mark Manson. His writing feels like you're getting advice over a couple of drinks at a pub instead of reading a best-seller. And his content - his lessons - hit me right at the time that I needed to hear it.
I had just become a new dad. I was navigating and growing through a political organization that mismatched its words and its actions. I was working to balance my life as a dad, a husband, a boss, a colleague, an athlete and a teammate.
And reading this book left me a profoundly simple filter for how to live my life - be deliberate about choosing the important things to care about. Don’t give a fuck about the rest.
1/ WE’RE NOT ENTITLED TO HAPPINESS
You feel that you’re perpetually entitled to be comfortable and happy at all times, that everything is supposed to just exactly the fucking way you want it to be. This is a sickness.
We are not entitled to happiness. The world isn’t going to give it to you for free. You have to find it. Create it. Be present. Make choices. Own your shit.
Happiness comes from overcoming problems. Believing in yourself. Investing into great relationships by doing the hard work of being vulnerably yourself. The presupposition that we deserve a happy life without doing the work is adolescent. Literally. Children are entitled to happy life. And even then, not every hour of every single day.
Entitlement is the enemy.
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.
2/ PAIN = GOOD. AVOIDING PAIN = BAD.
The pain of honest confrontation is what generates the greatest trust and respect in your relationships. Suffering through fears and anxieties is what allows you to build courage and perseverance. Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience.
Accept and lean into the suck in order to grow as a person. Pain is a signal that there is an opportunity for growth. Something to learn. A way to get better. Accept the negative experience, don’t avoid it. Remember the pain of the loss and let if fuel you to figure out what went wrong and how to build yourself to mazimize a positive outcome the next go around.
Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is not only impossible, but destructive: attempting to tear it out unraveled everything else with it.
Pain is part of life. Trying to avoid it is what multiplies that pain. Be kind to yourself and deal with the pain when it is at 1x instead of avoiding it such that it compounds to be 10x as damaging.
3/ SUFFERING CREATES CHANGE
We suffer for the simple reason that suffering is biologically useful. It’s nature’s preferred agent for inspiring change.
Shame. Pain. Guilt. They all suck to feel. But the reason that they hurt is to encourage ourselves to change. To take a different route. To muster up the strength. To build resilience. To confront and solve the problem. The only reason you stoop down to take a pebble out of your shoe is when it’s annoying the shit out of you. If it didn’t cause some minute form of suffering, you wouldn’t waste the effort.
4/ THE POWER IS IN TAKING RESPONSIBILITY
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. Nobody else is ever responsible for your situation but you. Many people may be to blame for your unhappiness, but nobody is every responsible for your unhappiness but you. This is because you always get to choose how you see things, how you reaction to things, how you value things. You always get to choose the metric by which to measure your experiences.
Taking responsibility is freeing. It wrestles the reigns of power from uncertainty and puts you in the driver’s seat. Is it your fault that it’s raining today? Nope. But you still get to make the choice of what to do about it. If you’re going to go for that run or not. If you’re just going to enjoy the day chilled out with a blanket and a book. Or if you’re going to take your kids out to splash in muddy puddles.
You don’t control the weather. But you do control your response.
5/ PICK YOUR PROBLEMS
“Don’t hope for a life without problems,” the panda said. “There’s no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problems.” To be happy we need something to solve. Happiness is therefore a form of action; it’s an activity, not something that is passively bestowed upon you.
Happiness is action and making choices. It’s not something that smacks you in the fucking head as you’re toddling down the path of life. That’s a drunk seagull.
So actively choose your problems. Choose the shit that you’re willing to suffer for. Back in the day, I wanted to be someone who could play the guitar. So, I bought one. What I didn’t do is dedicate myself to learning how to player the guitar. I strummed around and then got bored with it.
I thought I wanted something, but I really didn’t. I didn’t want to suffer for it. I didn’t want to put in the work. I just wanted to be a suave guy at parties that could bust out a couple of songs on the guitar. I wanted the win, but didn’t want to sweat during the game.
Pick your problems. Pick what you’re willing to suffer for. Pick what you’re willing to work for. Because if you don’t pick your problems, new problems will just find you.
6/ STRONG BOUNDARIES ARE BASED ON NOT CARING ABOUT NEGATIVE OUTCOMES
I first experienced a first flavor of freedom: the ability to say whatever I thought or felt, without fear of repercussion. It was a strange form of liberation through accepting rejection.
True freedom is not giving a fuck what people think of you. Being secure enough in yourself to be wrong, make mistakes and have minimal core repercussions. Having built a safety net of friends, agility, confidence, and “fuck you” money that you don’t need to suffer anyone’s shit. That you can draw strong boundaries and stick to them. Why? Because there’s minimal consequences if you do, and a pain in the ass if you don’t.
People with strong boundaries are not afraid of a temper tantrum, an argument, or getting hurt. People with weak boundaries are terrified of those things and will constantly mold their own behavior to fit the highs and lows of their relational emotional roller coaster.
People with strong boundaries understand that they may hurt someone’s feelings sometimes, but ultimately they can’t determine how other people feel. People with strong boundaries understand that a healthy relationships is not about controlling one another’s emotions, but rather about each partner supporting the other in their individual growth and in solving their own problems.
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And that’s that. What appeared to be a silly airport book with “fuck” in the title written by a blogger that I like ended up shifting my perspective on how to approach life. It may have been the ideas, it may have been the way that they were expressed, it may have been the timing. All I know is that it made a difference.
- Christian