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“When our highest priority is to always make ourselves feel good, or to always make our partner feel good, then nobody ends up feeling good. And our relationship falls apart without our even knowing it.
Without conflict, there can be no trust. Conflict exists to show us who is there for us unconditionally and who is just there for the benefits. No one trusts a yes-man. If Disappointment Panda were here, he’d tell you that the pain in our relationship is necessary to cement our trust in each other and produce greater intimacy.
For a relationship to be healthy, both people must be willing and able to both say no in here no. Without that negation, without that occasional rejection, boundaries break down and one person’s problems and values come to dominate the other’s. Conflict is not only normal, then; it’s Absolutely necessary for the maintenance of a healthy relationship. If two people who are close are not able to hash out their differences openly and vocally, then the relationship is based on manipulation and misrepresentation, and it will slowly become toxic.
Trust is the most important ingredient in any relationship, for the simple reason that without trust, the relationship doesn’t actually mean anything. A person could tell you that she loves you, wants to be with you, I would give up everything for you, but if you don’t trust her, you get no benefit from those statements. You don’t feel loved until you trust that the love being expressed toward you comes without any special conditions or baggage attached to it.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Trust is like a china plate. If you break it once, with some care and attention you can put it back together again. But if you break it again, it splits into even more pieces and it takes far longer to piece together again. If you break it more and more times, eventually it shatters to the point where it’s impossible to restore. There are too many broken pieces, and too much dust.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Without conflict, there can be no trust. Conflict exists to show us who is there for us unconditionally and who is just there for the benefits. (p.183)”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Being wrong opens us up to the possibility of change. Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Pleasure is a false god. Research shows that people who focus their energy on superficial pleasures end up more anxious, more emotionally unstable, and more depressed. Pleasure is the most superficial form of life satisfaction and therefore the easiest to obtain and the easiest to lose. But pleasure, while necessary in life (in certain doses), isn't, by itself, sufficient. Pleasure is not the cause of happiness; rather, it is the effect.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“People who are entitled delude themselves into whatever feeds their sense of superiority. They keep their mental facade standing at all costs, even if it sometimes requires being physically or emotionally abusive to those around them. ...Entitled people, because they are incapable of acknowledging their own problems openly and honestly, are incapable of improving their lives in any lasting or meaningful way. They are left chasing high after high and accumulate greater and greater levels of denial.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Fear and anxiety and sadness are not necessarily always undesirable or unhelpful states of mind; rather, they are often representatives of the necessary pain of psychological growth. And to deny that pain is to deny our own potential. ...If you just chase after highs to cover up the pain, if you continue to indulge in entitlement and delusional positive thinking, if you continue to overindulge in various substances or activities, then you'll never generate the requisite motivation to actually change.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“You are already choosing, in every moment of every day, what to give a fuck about, so change is as simple as choosing to give a fuck about something else,
It really is that simple. It's just not easy.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Honesty is a natural human craving. But part of having honesty in our lives is becoming comfortable with saying and hearing the word "no." In this way, rejection actually makes our relationships better and our emotional lives healthier.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Many people measure their self-worth based on how much money they make... once one is able to provide for basic physical needs (food shelter, and so on), the correlation between happiness and worldly success quickly approaches zero.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Many people measure their self-worth based on how much money they make... once one is able to provide for basic physical needs (food shelter, and so on), the correlation between happiness and worldly success quickly approaches zero. ...The other issue with overvaluing material success is the danger of prioritizing it over other values, such as honesty, nonviolence, and compassion.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“For individuals to feel justified in doing horrible things to other people, they must feel an unwavering certainty in their own righteousness, in their own beliefs and deservedness. ...Evil people never believe that they are evil, rather, they believe that everyone else is evil.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Many people, when they feel some form of pain or anger or sadness, drop everything and attend to numbing out whatever they're feeling. Their goal is to get back to "feeling good" again as quickly as possible, even if that means substances or deluding themselves or returning to their shitty values. Learn to sustain the pain you've chosen. When you choose a new value, you are choosing to introduce a new form of pain into your life. Relish it. Savor it. Welcome it with open arms. Then act despite it.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Fear and anxiety and sadness are not necessarily always undesirable or unhelpful states of mind; rather, they are often representatives of the necessary pain of psychological growth. And to deny that pain is to deny our own potential.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“All day, every day, we are flooded with the truly extraordinary. The best of the best. The worst of the worst. The greatest physical feats. The funniest jokes. The most upsetting news. The scariest threats. Nonstop.
Our lives today are filled with information from the extremes of the bell curve of human experience, because in the media business that's what gets eyeballs, and eyeballs bring dollars. That's the bottom line. Yet the vast majority of life resides in the humdrum middle. The vast majority of life is unextraordinary, indeed quite average.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain. If you're able to not give a fuck about pain, you become unstoppable.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“We are all going to be dead soon. In the short amount of time between here and there, you have a limited amount of fucks to give. Very few, in fact. And if you go around giving a fuck about everything and everyone - well, you're going to get fucked.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Everything comes with an inherent sacrifice - whatever makes us feel good will also inevitably make us feel bad. What we gain is also what we lose. What creates our positive experiences will define our negative experience.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“The acceptance of my own death, this understanding of my own fragility, has made everything easier - untangling my addictions, identifying and confronting my own entitlement, accepting responsibility for my own problems - suffering through my fears and uncertainties, accepting my failures and embracing rejections - it has all been made lighter by the thought of my own death. The more I peek into the darkness, the brighter life gets, the quieter the world becomes and the less unconscious resistance I feel to, well, anything.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“No truly happy person feels the need to stand in front of a mirror and recite that she's happy. She just is.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“The point is this: we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something. And to value something, we must reject what is not that something. To value X, we must reject non-X. That rejection is an inherent and necessary part of maintaining our values, and therefore our identity. We are defined by what we choose to reject. And if we reject nothing (perhaps in fear of being rejected by something ourselves), we essentially have no identity at all. (p.171)”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“If suffering is inevitable, if our problems in life are unavoidable, then the question we should be asking is not “how do I stop suffering?” but “ why am I suffering for what purpose?”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“People with strong boundaries understand that it's unreasonable to expect two people to accommodate each other 100 percent and fulfill every need the other has. People with strong boundaries understand that they may hurt someone's feelings sometimes, but ultimately they can't determine how other people feel. People with strong boundaries understand that a healthy relationship is not about controlling one another's emotions, but rather about each partner supporting the other in their individual growth and in solving their own problems.
It's not about giving a fuck about everything your partner gives a fuck about. It's about giving a fuck about your partner regardless of the fucks he or she gives. That's unconditional love baby.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“If someone is better than you at something, then it's likely because she has failed at it more than you have. If someone is worse than you, it's likely because he hasn't been through all of the painful learning experiences you have.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Improvement at anything is based on a thousand of tiny failures, ...and the magnitude of your success is based on how many times you've failed at something.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“The problem here is that most people who get caught cheating apologize and give the 'It will never happen again' spiel and that's that, as if penises fell into various orifices completely by accident. Many cheatees accept this response at face value, and don't question the values and fucks given by their partner (pun totally intended); they don't ask themselves whether those values and fucks make their partner a good person to stay with. They're so concerned with holding on to their relationship that they fail to recognize that it's become a black hole consuming their self respect.
If people cheat, it's because something other than the relationship is more important to them. It may be power over others. It may be validation through sex. It may be giving in to their own impulses. Whatever it is, it's clear that the cheater's values are not aligned in a way to support a healthy relationship. And if the cheater doesn't admit this or come to terms with it, if he just gives the old 'I don't know what I was thinking; I was stressed out and drunk and she was there' response, then he lacks the serious self-awareness necessary to solve any relationship problems.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“As noted before, we’re unfairly biased toward what we already know, what we believe to be certain. If I believe I’m a nice guy, I will avoid situations that could potentially contradict that belief. If I believe I’m an awesome cook, I’ll seek out opportunities to prove that to myself over and over again. The belief always takes precedence. Until we change how we view ourselves, what we believe we are and are not, we cannot overcome our avoidance and anxiety. We cannot change.
In this way, “knowing yourself” or “finding yourself” can be dangerous. It can cement you into a strict role and saddle you with unnecessary expectations. It can close you off to inner potential and outer opportunities.
I say don’t find yourself. I say never know who you are. Because that’s what keeps you striving and discovering. And it forces you to remain humble in your judgements and accepting of the differences in others.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“We get to control what our problems mean based on how much we choose to think about them, the standard by which we choose to measure them”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Happiness comes from solving problems. [...] Happiness is a constant work-in-progress. The solutions to today's problems will lay the foundation for tomorrow's problems.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Things are ordinary, but maybe they're ordinary for a reason: because they are what actually matters.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“All day, every day, we are flooded with the truly extraordinary. The best of the best. The worst of the worst. The greatest physical feats. The funniest jokes. The most upsetting news. Nonstop. Our lives today are filled with information from the extremes of the bell curve of human experience, because in the media business that's what gets eyeballs, and eyeballs bring dollars. That's the bottom line. Yet the vast majority of life resides in the humdrum middle. The vast majority of life is unextraordinary, indeed quite average. The deluge of exceptional information drives us to feel pretty damn insecure and desperate, because clearly we are somehow not good enough. So more and more we feel the need to compensate through entitlement and addiction.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“The paradox of choice: the more options we're given, the less satisfied we become with whatever we choose, because we're aware of all the other options we're potentially forfeiting. ...Pursuing a breadth of experience denies us the opportunity to experience the rewards of depth of experience. ...commitment, in its own way, offers a wealth of opportunity and experiences that would otherwise never be available to me, no matter where I went or what I did. When you're pursuing a wide breadth of experience, there are diminishing returns to each new adventure.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“پدر و مادر من آدمهای خوبی هستن. برای هیچ کدوم از ماجراهای زندگیم اونها رو مقصر نمی دونم (شاید قبلاً آره، ولی الان دیگه نه). و من خیلی دوست شون دارم. اونها قصه ها و سرگذشت ها و مشکلات خودشون رو داشتن، همون طور که ننه بابای اونها هم داشتن، و برو تا آخر. و البته مثل همه ی پدر و مادرهای دنیا، پدر و مادر من هم، با نیتِ بهترین ها برای بچه هاشون ، بعضی از مشکلاتشون رو به من منتقل کردن، همونطور که احتمالاً من هم به بچه هام منتقل خواهم کرد.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“So what do we do? Well, if you’re like I used to be, you avoid using anything at all. You aim to keep your options open as long as possible. You avoid commitment.
But while investing deeply in one person, one place, one job, one activity might deny us the breadth of experience we’d like, pursuing a breadth of experience denies us the opportunity to experience the rewards of depth of experience. There are some experiences that you can have only when you’ve lived in the same place for five years, when you’ve been with the same person for over a decade, when you’ve been working on the same scale or craft for half your lifetime.
/when you’re pursuing a wide breadth of experience, there are diminishing returns to each new adventure, each new person or thing. When you’ve never left your home country, the first country you visit inspires a massive perspective shift, because you have such a narrow experience space to draw on. But when you’ve been to twenty countries, the twenty-first adds little. And when you’ve been to fifty, the fifty-first adds even less. [the same goes for any other life experience]”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Good values are 1) reality-based, 2) socially constructive, and 3) immediate and controllable. Bad values are 1) superstitious, 2) socially destructive, and 3) not immediate or controllable. Good, healthy values are achieved internally. Something like creativity or humility that can be experienced right now. You simply have to orient your mind in a certain way to experience it. These values are immediate and controllable and engage you with the world as it is rather than how you wish it were. Bad values are generally reliant on external events.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Self-awareness is like an onion. There are multiple layers to it, and the more you peel them back, the more likely you're going to start crying at an inappropriate time.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“If someone is better than you at something, it is likely that they have failed at it more times than you have.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Because when you give too many fucks—when you give a fuck about everyone and everything—you will feel that you’re perpetually entitled to be comfortable and happy at all times, that everything is supposed to be just exactly the fucking way you want it to be. This is a sickness. And it will eat you alive. You will see every adversity as an injustice, every challenge as a failure, every inconvenience as a personal slight, every disagreement as a betrayal.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“At some point, most of us reach a place where we’re afraid to fail, where we instinctively avoid failure and stick only to what is placed in front of us or only what we’re already good at.This confines us and stifles us. We can be truly successful only at something we’re willing to fail at. If we’re unwilling to fail, then we’re unwilling to succeed.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Improvement at anything is based on thousands of tiny failures, and the magnitude of your success is based on how many times you’ve failed at something. If someone is better than you at something, then it’s likely because she has failed at it more than you have. If someone is worse than you, it’s likely because he hasn’t been through all of the painful learning experiences you have.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“You too are going to die, and that's because you too were fortunate enough to have lived. You may not feel this. But go stand on a cliff sometime, and maybe you will.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“People who base their self-worth on being right about everything prevent themselves form learning from their mistakes. They lack the ability to take on new perspectives and empathize with others. They close themselves off to new and important information. It's far more helpful to assume that you're ignorant and don't know a whole lot. This keeps you unattached to superstitious or poorly informed beliefs and promotes a constant state of learning and growth.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a
positive experience.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Because when we give too many fucks, when we choose to give a fuck about everything, then we feel as though we are perpetually entitled to feel comfortable and happy at all times, that’s when life fucks us.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“This, in a nutshell, is what "self-improvement" is really about: prioritizing better values, choosing better things to give a fuck about. Because when you give better fucks, you get better problems. And when you get better problems, you get a better life.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“We don't actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. Some of the best and most gratifying experiences of our lives are also the most distracting and demotivating. Don't trust your conception of positive/negative experiences. All that we know for certain is what hurts us in the moment and what doesn't. And that's not worth much.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Becker later came to the starting realization on his deathbed: that people’s immortality projects were actually the problem, not the solution; that rather than attempting t implement, often through lethal force, their conceptual self across the world, people should question their conceptual self and become more comfortable with the reality of their own death. Becker called this “the bitter antidote”, and struggled with reconciling it himself as he stared down his own demise. While death is bad, it is inevitable. Therefore, we should not avoid this realization , but rather come to terms with it as best we can. Because once we become comfortable with the fact of our own death - the root terror, the underlying anxiety motivating all of life’s frivolous ambitions - we can then choose our values more freely, unrestrained by the illogical quest for immortality, and freed from dangerous dogmatic views.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“They say, "Fuck it," not to everything in life, but rather to everything unimportant in life. They reserve their fucks for what truly matters. Friends. Family. Purpose. Burritos. And an occasional lawsuit or two.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Death scares us. And because it scares us, we avoid thinking about it, talking about it, sometimes even acknowledging it, even when it's happening to someone close to us.
Yet, in a bizarre, backwards way, death is the light by which the shadow of all of life's meaning is measured. Without death, everything would feel inconsequential, all experience arbitrary, all metrics and values suddenly zero.”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“[...] Nas redes sociais, o compartilhamento público de "injustiças" atrai muito mais atenção e simpatia gratuita aqueles que se sentem perpetuamente vitimados.
A "injustiça chique" está na moda em todos os cantos da sociedade hoje em dia, entre ricos e pobres. Na verdade, esta pode ser a primeira vez na história da humanidade em que todos os grupos demográicos se sentem injustamente vitimados ao mesmo tempo. E Todos aproveitam a euforia da indignação moral que vem junto.
Neste momento, qualquer um que se sinta ofendido com qualquer coisa [...] acha que está sofrendo algum tipo de opressão e que, portanto, merece se sentir ultrajado e receber determinada quantidade de atenção.
O atual ambiente da mídia tanto encoraja quanto perpetua essas reações, porque, no final das contas, dá lucro. O escritor e comentarista Ryan Holiday se refere a isso como “pornografia do ultraje”: em vez de reportar histórias e problemas reais, a mídia acha muito mais fácil (e lucrativo) encontrar algo levemente ofensivo, transmitir o caso para uma ampla audiência, criar a sensação de ultraje e depois transmiti-la de um jeito que também cause ultraje a outra parcela da população. Isso desencadeia um eco de asneiras que ricocheteia entre dois lados imaginários e ao mesmo tempo distrai dos verdadeiros problemas e injustiças da sociedade. Não é de se estranhar que estejamos mais politicamente polarizados do que nunca.
O maior problema da injustiça chique é desviar a atenção das vítimas reais. É como uma overdose de alarmismo. Quanto mais gente se autoproclama vítima de pequenas infrações, mais difícil é enxergar quem realmente sofre.
As pessoas se viciam em se sentir constantemente ofendidas porque isso lhes traz euforia: ser hipócrita e moralmente superior provoca bem-estar. Como disse o cartunista político Tim Kreider, em um editorial do The New York Times: "O ultraje é como várias outras coisas agradáveis que com o tempo nos devoram de dentro para fora. E é ainda mais insidioso que a maioria dos vícios, porque sequer o reconhecemos conscientemente como um prazer".”
Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life