In his wildly popular Internet blog, Mason doesn’t sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is - a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k" is his antidote to the coddling, let’s-all-feel-good mindset that has infected American society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up.
Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade but on learning to stomach lemons better. Human beings are flawed and limited - "not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault." Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and forgiveness we seek.
There are only so many things we can give a f**k about so we need to figure out which ones really matter, Manson makes clear. While money is nice, caring about what you do with your life is better because true wealth is about experience.
It seems like everyone is reading this book so I wanted to see what all the fuss is about. And who doesn't want to learn how to live a good life?
The author states in the beginning that he's going to help us get focused and learn to prioritize our thoughts effectively ... how to pick and choose what does and doesn't matter to us based on finely homed personal values. He states this book will help us think a little bit more clearly about what we're choosing to find important and unimportant in life. He discussed facing and accepting failure head on and learning lessons from our pain, for example. While valuable lessons, to me he didn't hit the target which was the subtle art of not giving a f*ck.
This book isn't that long (just over 200 pages) but it seemed to take forever to finish. I don't know if it was the way the author covered (or didn't cover) this topic or his writing style but I found it boring. Plus I didn't find him overly likable. As a head's up, not surprising that there is a lot of swearing.
Maybe I would have enjoyed it more had I not read The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: How to Stop Spending Time You Don't Have with People You Don't Like Doing Things You Don't Want to Do by Sarah Knight, which is a much superior book to read on this subject.
I found the first part much better than the second.
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