A Powerful Counterintuitive Idea For a Peaceful Life From The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***

Wanna read only one motivational book? it should be this

If you have been doodling around social media for the past 30–40 minutes, chances are good that you have already come across an ‘exceptional’ story; a tale of unparalleled achievement.

Was it the rag to riches journey of a small-town boy? The ‘I wade through obstacles’ of an eminent sports icon? A famous quote about how someone fell 100 times before he stood up the 101st time?

Don’t detect a hint of condescension in my voice; I love those stories. We all tune into these uplifting anecdotes all the time. I call them ‘packets of inspiration.’

But let me crunch the reality that you already know. Such outstanding tales of epic achievements come from a micro-minority of this planet, the absolute creamy layer of human society. But what makes the bulk of our community are people like you and me; Individuals who thrive on run-of-the-mill success.

Citizens who aren’t quite the social media story material yet!

When was the last time you came across the tale of a guy who got shifted to a corner office? Or the 50-year-old man who hit 10k subscribers on Youtube? You and me who are still trying to make it big on this platform? As I said, there isn’t enough story in them to be a story on a busy social media.

So we end up consuming voluminous tales of exceptional success, reverse engineering the leader’s actions, emulating our icon’s unique methods while slogging for a piece of grand success.

We purchase oversized motivational books, tune in to podcasts, listen to spiritual gurus.

All of them would tell us that we haven’t yet tapped into our full potential. Perhaps we haven’t. There is always room for improvement.

But hello, give us a break!

Can we have someone tell us that it’s okay to screw things up? Is there something that we are already doing right? We can’t be all wrong, can we?

Enter Mark Manson. Enter The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***. Enter a counterintuitive approach to a good life.

Enter the peace of mind.

Here is what I love about Mr. Manson. He didn’t wander about in the Himalayas to find an epiphanic moment and then returned to share some treasured pieces of unheard advice. It’s better than that! He screwed up his life in a big way and was lucky to have dragged back into sanity.

He will tell you that it’s okay to mess things up, and some of us badly want to hear that. But it’s not about being music to your ears. He will back all his concepts with sound logic, evidence, and anecdotes.

Mr. Manson floats several ideas. Here, I am sharing what I consider as the best among his counterintuitive points from his top seller. He can’t take all the credits for bringing up this particular one since it has existed for a long time. But Mr. Manson makes it more palatable.

Wanting a positive experience is a negative experience.

And accepting negative experience is a positive experience in itself.

Give yourself a moment to let that sink in.

Here is how it works: Think about what people strive for most in life. Happiness? Love? Avoiding failures?

When you set your everyday goal to ‘achieving happiness’ and ‘finding your soul mate,’ the whole effort to tick those boxes would remind you that you are missing them in the first place. That constant reminder is perhaps the most significant negative experience you can accumulate.

Imagine you have a friend who walks with you 24 x 7 and whispers in your ears every fifteen minutes that you haven’t reached a perpetual state of happiness yet? At some point, he would stop being a friend to you. He needs to keep his mouth shut. You don’t want a closed caption of your mood.

By continually pursuing goals like happiness and love, you are letting that friend operate inside your mind. He happily takes your permission and wreaks your peace.

The more you search for perfect love, the more you realize that you haven’t had a date for so long. The more you want to drive a German luxury car, the more you remember that your current car’s engine makes more sound than it’s horn should!

A sense of shame, regret, and disappointment fills our minds that we haven’t achieved our goals. Philosopher Albert Camus floats the same concept as this:

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live life if you are looking for the meaning of life”.

So Should we stop trying?

No, that’s not the point. Accepting your negative experience doesn’t mean you lull yourself into an inactive autopilot mode and let life surmount its challenges one after another. It’s not some long slumber against the problems life throws at you. It’s about being more accommodative in the face of negative experiences. It’s about not treating adversities with despair.

So, Instead of assuming the charade of confidence and being all cool, try telling that girl how you feel about not being in a relationship for a long time. Your honesty and charm might win you a trustworthy partner there. After all, if you faked your aura to impress a girl, you might have to manufacture them for a mighty long time. That’s tedious!

Try accepting the failure you endured in your latest endeavor, and it would seem that the experience was rewarding with the kind of lessons it taught you. The more successful people on this planet are the ones who are likely to have experienced more failures but treated them fairly.

Philosopher Alan Watt has captured this idea as ‘backwards law.’

It’s called backward because it works backward. If you are open to embracing the negative experience, it generates a positive experience. If you engage in hot pursuit of a positive experience, it produces a negative experience.

When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink; but when you try to sink, you float’ and that ‘insecurity is the result of trying to be secure.”

— Alan Watts

The Key takeaway

We all get one shot at our lives, and some of us would take more time than others to figure it out. There can be many trials and errors before we can zero in on the right approach in life. Perhaps we would die not figuring out a good chunk of it.

But when we make a conscious decision to improve ourselves, we invariably fall back to books, gurus, some products, and many more that only you know.

They will tell us to be smarter, sexier, richer, more confident, and what not, bombarding our senses with a deluge of ‘get better tips.’ We take those words. We chant our affirmations. Our goals hang over us on a yellow sticky note. They show us the distance yet to be travelled.

And they also tell us what we don’t have. They remind us of our have-nots. Our deficiencies. Like the treacherous friend, it whispers in our ears, “you don’t have it yet.”

Start accepting your negative experience, and life would go a lot smoother.

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