‘Happiness is all about solving your problems.’
Mark Manson has challenged the highly advertised belief that happiness is just a feeling and one should abstain from negative emotions to stay happy, in his bestseller ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck’.
The author suggests that every time we are choosing something over the other available choice. For example, a student is choosing to read over sleeping to gain knowledge. It is, those choices that decide our success, the way, we define it.
The beauty of this book is to let the reader think objectively & to take negative experiences as a necessity to recalibrate the values, s/he is living his/her life for.
There is this story of ‘Hiroo Onoda’ in the book, the last Japanese World War soldier who kept on fighting a non-existing war for almost 30 years until 1971, which makes the reader question her/him self if it is really worth, s/he is struggling for.
The book reconstructs the definition of negative emotions and establishes that negative emotions are not bad and actually lead us to the path of success.
In fact, we can only experience the positive by traversing the negative. But, entitlement is a roadblock here, which is to try to get the positive experiences without traversing through negative experiences.
I really loved the suggestion, ‘Do something & get motivated’. It simply implies that your mere action will motivate you further to do more. There is no need of external stimulus to keep you motivated, just ‘do something’.
There is an entire chapter on handling relationships which is very practical and noteworthy. The most important point is to know that if your relationship accepts your ‘no’ equally, it is healthy.
Death is inevitable. So, the author suggests that the constant reminding of death, makes us see clearly what matters most to us.
The author doesn’t mollycoddle with the reader and say the things as they are, similar to our friends. That way, the title does justify the theme of the book.
Thanks Mark Manson for this thought provoking book.
Categories: Business/ StartUp, Moral Boosting, Non Fiction
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