The book itself was summary by the author on his youtube channel, all I every did was to chop down what he said.
Why did he wrote the book ?
First of all, contrary to most of people’s perceptions, the book is not about “not carring anything”. In facts, it’s the opposite of that. It’s essentially, makes an argument that you’ve to give a fuck about something. Therefore, the most important question is, what are you giving a fuck about and why ?
I very intentionally want to be contrarian to self-helf industry. Most self-helf take granted for what you value at, take for granted what your definition of success is. Most self-helf just assume that we all want the samething. While the book, it’s point out that a lot of these cultural definitions of success, a lot of the cultural value may not be right fit for us. And so the real question is not necessary how to accomplish every single goal we have, it’s more asking what’s sort of goals should we have in the first place ? What’s sort of things should we give a fuck about?”
CHAPTER 1: DON’T TRY
The book start with Charles Bukowski –The failure example instead of Elon Musk or Steve Job. In order to undermine reader. Because it shows that you can actually become conventionally successful in life despite yourself (a loser). You can become successful while seemingly doings all of the wrong things and committing all of the biggest errors. So at the begin of the first page. I’m starting to undermine the reader’s assumed of definition of what success is or what is a good life or desirable life for themselves. The key in the chaper one is the Backward Law.
“The pursuit of positive experience is itself a negative experience. The acceptance of the negative experience is itself a positive experience.”
The idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfying you become; as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack in the first place.
The more you desperately want to be rich, the more poor and unworthy you feel, regradless of how much money you actually make. The more you desperately want to be sexy and desired, the uglier you come to see yourself regradless of your actual physicial appearance. The more you desperately want to be happy and love, the lonelier and more afraid you become, regrardless of those who surround you. The more you want spiritually enlightended, the more self-centered and shallow you become in trying to get there.
The backward law is the central theme: NEGATIVITY IS THE PATH TO POSITIVITY. Most people’s assumption is, they just want the positive experiences from life, but it’s actually the tolerance and acceptance of the negative experience that lead to the positive experience.
Three Subtleties Of Not Giving A Fuck:
#1. Not giving a fuck doesn’t mean being indifferent, it means being comfortable with being different.
It’s impossible to give a fuck about nothing. Therefore, the question is, what do you give a fuck about ? So conclusion is, if you give a fuck about very few important things, then the small things will stop bother you so much.
#2. To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity.
So if you’re always worrying about what people think about you, the problem is not what people think about you, the problem is you don’t have anything better to worry about. If you’re always worried about how much money you have, the problem is not how much money you have, the problem is you don’t have anything better to worry about.
#3 Whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing what to give a fuck about
Talk later in chapter 5
CHAPTER 2: HAPPINESS IS THE PROBLEM
Dukkha – Life is suffering.
No matter what you do, or where you go, who you hang out with, what you pursue, there is some aspects of suffering associated with it. Simply because our mind becomes attached to thing and attechment leads to suffering.
It’s not like we’re doom to suffer, it’s said suffering has a certain evolution or usefullness to it. Like if you think about evolution over the course of hunderds or thousands of years. A creatures that is happy all the time, that creature is not gonna survive. It’s actually the creature is a little bit dissatisfied all the time, a little bit anxious all the time, a little paranoid, a little bit pissed off the people around them. That creature gonna do the most work to actually survive and replicate.
Negative emotions have an inherent purpose. They help us.
A lot of anxiety that we wish to escape from or the anger we wish to overcome. These emotions are actually signals within our body to do somethings. They are important signal if you ignore them or train ourself to ignore them, then we are actually limiting ourself in a lot of ways.
Negative emotions have a lot of utility, they have a lot of purpose, they help us, they grant us meaning in a lot of situations and they signal us that we have challenges or problems that must be overcomes.
Happiness is great, we all want to be happy but it’s not the only thing in life, there are bad forms of happiness. Doing cocaine all day, that’ll make you happy for a while, doesn’t mean you should go do it. The emotions themselves are not necessarily good or bad. It’s the context around them, it’s the meaning around them and so, I ended up kind of creating this framework when I say that, happiness comes from solving the problems. If you:
- Pretent you have no problems in your life then you won’t be happy
- If you also have problem in your life that you feel can’t solve, then won’t be happy.
Secret is: Finding the problems that you kinda want to have, or kinda enjoy having.
Stop asking “What do you want in your life?” because answer always the same and no one capable of achieving its. A more interesting question that most people never consider is “What pain do you want in your life ? What are you feeling to struggle for ?” because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our life turn out.
CHAPTER 3: YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL
ENTITLEMENT: Feeling as though you deserve to be happy without sacrifing for it.
It’s basically that idea of believing you deserve to have positive experiences without traversing the negative experiences to get there. And that belief cause us to adopt many destructive and selffish behaviors.
TWO FORMS OF ENTITLEMENT
1. I’m awesome and the rest of you suck, so I deserve special treatment
2. I’m suck and the rest of you are all awesome, so I deserve special treatment
Both have delusional beliefs about their place in the status of hierachy. They end up being completely self-absorbed, they think everything in the world should be altered and catered to them. So they just become unbearable to be around.
The growing culture of exceptionalism, particularly with social media, consumer culture, things like that they’re always pushing us individually. Everythings is designed to make you feel like you are most fucking special person on the planet. And that is mentally and socially unheathy. It creates delusional beliefs that you’re somehow the exception, that the world owes you something, that everything should be re-arranged to cater your desires and your happiness, that you should be able to have positvie experiences without accepting the negative.
The ticket to emotional heath, like that to physical heath, comes from eating your veggies – That is, accepting the blank and mundane truths of life: “Truth such as, your actions actually don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things and vast majority of life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that’s okay”
This vegetable course will taste bad at first. Very bad. But once ingested, your body will wake up feeling more potent and more alive.
CHAPTER 4: THE VALUE OF SUFFERING
We should sacrifice and struggle for something. That’s what actually makes life more meaningful and generates a more consistent sense of happiness, the next question is.
What worth to struggling for ? What is worth valuing ? What is worth sacrificing for ?
If you have a wrong goal, you’re fucked. If you have wrong value, then all of that other stuff, it’s just gonna hurt you and I used Onada as an example of that. He spent 27 years fighting the war that no longer exist.
GOOD VALUE: Reality – based, Socially Contrustive, Immediate and Controlable
BAD VALUE: Superstitious, Socially Destructive, Not Immediate or Controlable
Honesty is a good value, because it’s something you have complete control over, it reflects reality, and it benefits other (even if it’s sometimes unpleasant).
CHAPTER 5: YOU’RE ALWAYS CHOOSING
The actual pain of running the marathon isn’t any different. They only things that different is the Context. Whatever reason, when we feel as though we are choosing the struggles or problems we have in life, they would seems much more acceptable and easier for us to deal with. When we feel as though problems and our struggles are thrust upon us without our control, that’s when we suffer and feel completely powerless.
You are always choosing the struggle and problem whether you admit to yourself or not.
People don’t like to hear that point, every problem in their life, they choose it.
In each experience in life, there is component of choice embedded in its and we tent not be aware of that choice but as soon as we become aware of it, two things happen:
1. We become way more comfortable with pain
2. We actually get off our ass and fucking do something.
Because now, we don’t care whose fault it is anymore, we don’t care if it’s boring or tidius or unfair. You fucking do something, you realize in every moment, you have a choice, to do something or not do something, to blame somebody else or take responsibility for yourself and once you develop that habit or the value of constant responsibility, everythings fucking changes.
CHAPTER 6: YOU’RE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING
Everythings I used to care about, it doesn’t matter anymore. Back to the time, I matter so many things, It was the Whole World to me. But now, I don’t think it matter anymore. Turn out, I was wrong about everything. And that used to make me feel uncertainty.
Benefit of uncertainty:
- Open up space to learn and improve
- Guards against Extremist Ideology (tư tưởng cực đoan, bảo thủ)
- Open up rooms for dialogue with people, to learn from other peple, to make other feels more heard which is improve relationships.
Becoming less uncertainty of yourself:
- What if I’m wrong ?
- What would it mean if I’m wrong ?
- Would being wrong create a better or worse problem than my current problem, for both myself and others ?
CHAPTER 7: FAILURE IS THE WAY FORWARD
The Do something Principle: You always thought that you need motivation to action, but it’s the other way around: Action leads to motivation
CHAPTER 8: THE IMPORTANT OF SAYING “NO”
If you’re willing to tranverse the negative to get to the positive. If you’re willing to take responsibility for your struggles. If you’re willing to accept failure on the way of success, then be able to say no to people, be able to manage conflict, that’s probably a good things to have for your relationships “A heathy relationship is two people who are comfortable to saying and hearing “No” from each other”.
Rejection makes your life better. If you think about choosing what you value, you have to reject the other things. You know, if I want to value my career over all else, I need to be able to sacrificed other things. That means I need to reject my dream of becoming screenwriter or reject that idea I’m going run a business, or reject the idea I’m going to live in Đà Lạt. If I’m not willing to reject those things, then I’m not be able to actually prioritize what’s important in my life. And so, this is why people who struggle to say no, they offens feel very lost and they don’t know what they want from themselves.
Commitment: There’s a hidden freedom of commitment, committing full-hearted to the things that you value. On the surfaces, it’s sound limting, and a lot of people avoid those sorts of commitment. They made constant effort to keep options open. But as soons as you limit yourself to few things in your life that you truly care about, there’s a new form of freedom that happens on very subtle level, which is I don’t have to give a fuck about this stuff.
These are the things that I care about, these are the way that I’m gonna measure my life, that what I’m gonna pursue, and there’s just this abundance of inner mental freedom to pursue it.
CHAPTER 9: …THEN YOU DIE
The chapter is about how death is actually the things that most crystallize what matter in life. It’s only when you confront death or come close to death that it’s most clear to you what you should be giving a fuck about.
And therefore, it makes sense and kinda goes back to the Stoics, that we should regularly question about our own morality, we should regularly think about our own death and this is just something I usually done. I’ve wondered, If I die a year from now, what would I do with my last year ? Would I have any regrets ? Would I feel like I wasted time ? If so, what would the time I wasted ?
When he comes to the cliff, it’s force him to think about his life in a way that feels very profounds to him and how death elucidates everything that is meaningfull in life, that why death is so terrifying.
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