Mark Manson - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

C harles Bukowski was an alcoholic, a womanizer, a chronic gambler, a lout, a cheapskate, a deadbeat, and on his worst days, a poet. Hes probably the last person on earth you would ever look to for life advice or expect to see in any sort of self-help book.

Which is why hes the perfect place to start.

Bukowski wanted to be a writer. But for decades his work was rejected by almost every magazine, newspaper, journal, agent, and publisher he submitted to. His work was horrible, they said. Crude. Disgusting. Depraved. And as the stacks of rejection slips piled up, the weight of his failures pushed him deep into an alcohol-fueled depression that would follow him for most of his life.

Bukowski had a day job as a letter-filer at a post office. He got paid shit money and spent most of it on booze. He gambled away the rest at the racetrack. At night, he would drink alone and sometimes hammer out poetry on his beat-up old typewriter. Often, hed wake up on the floor, having passed out the night before.

Thirty years went by like this, most of it a meaningless blur of alcohol, drugs, gambling, and prostitutes. Then, when Bukowski was fifty, after a lifetime of failure and self-loathing, an editor at a small independent publishing house took a strange interest in him. The editor couldnt offer Bukowski much money or much promise of sales. But he had a weird affection for the drunk loser, so he decided to take a chance on him. It was the first real shot Bukowski had ever gotten, and, he realized, probably the only one he would ever get. Bukowski wrote back to the editor: I have one of two choicesstay in the post office and go crazy... or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve.

Upon signing the contract, Bukowski wrote his first novel in three weeks. It was called simply Post Office. In the dedication, he wrote, Dedicated to nobody.

Bukowski would make it as a novelist and poet. He would go on and publish six novels and hundreds of poems, selling over two million copies of his books. His popularity defied everyones expectations, particularly his own.

Stories like Bukowskis are the bread and butter of our cultural narrative. Bukowskis life embodies the American Dream: a man fights for what he wants, never gives up, and eventually achieves his wildest dreams. Its practically a movie waiting to happen. We all look at stories like Bukowskis and say, See? He never gave up. He never stopped trying. He always believed in himself. He persisted against all the odds and made something of himself!

It is then strange that on Bukowskis tombstone, the epitaph reads: Dont try.

See, despite the book sales and the fame, Bukowski was a loser. He knew it. And his success stemmed not from some determination to be a winner, but from the fact that he knew he was a loser, accepted it, and then wrote honestly about it. He never tried to be anything other than what he was. The genius in Bukowskis work was not in overcoming unbelievable odds or developing himself into a shining literary light. It was the opposite. It was his simple ability to be completely, unflinchingly honest with himselfespecially the worst parts of himselfand to share his failings without hesitation or doubt.

This is the real story of Bukowskis success: his comfort with himself as a failure. Bukowski didnt give a fuck about success. Even after his fame, he still showed up to poetry readings hammered and verbally abused people in his audience. He still exposed himself in public and tried to sleep with every woman he could find. Fame and success didnt make him a better person. Nor was it by becoming a better person that he became famous and successful.

Self-improvement and success often occur together. But that doesnt necessarily mean theyre the same thing.

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. Be perfect and amazing and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets before breakfast each morning while kissing your selfie-ready spouse and two and a half kids goodbye. Then fly your helicopter to your wonderfully fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing incredibly meaningful work thats likely to save the planet one day.

But when you stop and really think about it, conventional life adviceall the positive and happy self-help stuff we hear all the timeis actually fixating on what you lack. It lasers in on what you perceive your personal shortcomings and failures to already be, and then emphasizes them for you. You learn about the best ways to make money because you feel you dont have enough money already. You stand in front of the mirror and repeat affirmations saying that youre beautiful because you feel as though youre not beautiful already. You follow dating and relationship advice because you feel that youre unlovable already. You try goofy visualization exercises about being more successful because you feel as though you arent successful enough already.

Ironically, this fixation on the positiveon whats better, whats superioronly 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 shes happy. She just is.

Theres a saying in Texas: The smallest dog barks the loudest. A confident man doesnt feel a need to prove that hes confident. A rich woman doesnt feel a need to convince anybody that shes rich. Either you are or you are not. And if youre dreaming of something all the time, then youre reinforcing the same unconscious reality over and over: that you are not that.

Everyone and their TV commercial wants you to believe that the key to a good life is a nicer job, or a more rugged car, or a prettier girlfriend, or a hot tub with an inflatable pool for the kids. The world is constantly telling you that the path to a better life is more, more, morebuy more, 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.

Why? My guess: because giving a fuck about more stuff is good for business.

And while theres 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. The key to a good life is not giving a fuck about more; its giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important.

Theres an insidious quirk to your brain that, if you let it, can drive you absolutely batty. Tell me if this sounds familiar to you:

You get anxious about confronting somebody in your life. That anxiety cripples you and you start wondering why youre so anxious. Now youre becoming anxious about being anxious. Oh no! Doubly anxious! Now youre anxious about your anxiety, which is causing more anxiety. Quick, wheres the whiskey?

Or lets say you have an anger problem. You get pissed off at the stupidest, most inane stuff, and you have no idea why. And the fact that you get pissed off so easily starts to piss you off even more. And then, in your petty rage, you realize that being angry all the time makes you a shallow and mean person, and you hate this; you hate it so much that you get angry at yourself. Now look at you: youre angry at yourself getting angry about being angry. Fuck you, wall. Here, have a fist.