This happened, I read another book, another story that I got inspired and want to share it with you. Mark Manson is the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck; may I say a phenomenal book. When I read the title at first it reminded me of another book that I read in December by Sarah Knight The Life-Changing Magic Of Not Giving A F*ck. I don’t know if book titles with the word F*uck inspires me to read them or maybe I just care too much about a lot of things and want to care less. I was a bit hesitant to read Mark’s book because I thought it would be similar with Sarah’s book. The reason why I read it (listened to it on iBooks) is because a friend of mine told me that I must read it. So I did and I don’t regret that I did. I’m listening to certain chapters again just to make sure I implement certain things.

I loved Mark’s book because the guy doesn’t tell us why we shouldn’t care about things in life he explains why it’s important to care about things in our life but about the important things. He digs a little deeper on why we should explore our values and beliefs.

We all experience feelings; sad, happy, angry, hungry and loved. We live in a my life is better than yours generation. If we look at our Instagram feed we will see that everybody is having a fucking amazing time, if we look at our Facebook feed we will see that another 8 friends got engaged and we are still single and it makes us feel that we have such a ‘bad’ life. When we have our bad days and go for a drive we are bombarded with 100 images of people having an amazing life, all the advertising is based on feeling good and makes us feel that we deserve better if we buy their products. This makes us feel even more shit and think that everybody is having such an amazing life and we don’t. Which is not true, we all know that deep down, but yet we are sold on this concept because of the media, social media and of course advertising.

Not giving a f*ck does not mean being in-different, it just means being comfortable with being different and accepting our life”

It’s much more than a book or something to inspire us, it’s a practical guidebook. It’s about choosing what’s important in our lives and what’s unimportant, it’s a brutally honest and much needed reality check about our personal problems, fears and expectations. It’s a bold confrontation of self, our painful truths, faults and uncertainties, without all the positive airy fairy fluff we’ve been spoon-fed to believe by self-help gurus.

Think positive?

“Fuck positivity,” Manson says. “Let’s be honest; sometimes things are fucked up and we have to live with it.”

Seek happiness?

“The path to happiness is a path full of shit heaps and shame,” he remarks.

While listening to Mark’s book, I laughed when I was driving and running on the treadmill and I can say I nearly cried from the brutal reality. He’s as painfully honest as he is outrageously funny. I found his honesty to be refreshing and fulfilling. When other self-help books inject us with cheap, feel-good highs that last as long as our nose remains buried in the book and serves no practical purpose out in the mud and grime of our daily life, Mark’s book yanks you out of delusion and denial, points at the pit you’re stuck in and forces you to not only look at the filth and dirt covering you but also to accept it.

Writing this article I asked myself what is the biggest lesson I learned from this book and I struggle to write because there are so many things that I learned and I’m in the process of implementing. Okay, this is the biggest lesson I learned; challenge myself to reconsider some values that I have, ask myself if my values are right, see what I can do to live a more passionate life. I learned that it’s okay not to be perfect, it’s okay not to have everything figured out and to seek more depth in everything that I do, avoid at all costs the surface.

I highly recommend you read this book and I would love to hear your thoughts after reading it on the comments below.

You can find The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life on the following websites

Amazon or Audible.