Confront painful truth, to find courage, honesty, and responsibility
Positive thinking is the key to a happy rich life. Super blogger Mark Manson says “ Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it”, in his internet blog without sugar-coating or equivocating a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. He subscribes his antidote to the coddling, let’s all feel-good mindset that has infected modern society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up.
Manson’s argument backed 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.”
According to Manson, to get to know our limitations and accept them, and 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.
While money is nice, caring about what you do with your life is better because true wealth is about the experience.
After several years of feeling life, empty Manson started getting introspective about what he had been choosing to care about and what it was really getting him. Ultimately, that led to an understanding of the difference between emotional highs and true happiness. “ Most people chase highs and that makes you feel good. They sound fun. They impress people, Happiness is harder. Happiness requires struggle and boredom and sacrifice. Real happiness comes from discovering a sense of importance in one’s actions and in one’s life according to Manson.
The most common things people care about too much include impressing other people, Bring right all the time, being successful, being pleasant and polite, being happy, feeling good all the time, being perfect, and feeling secure and certain.
Manson’s way of figuring out what you honestly care about: actions never lie, your kids mean everything in the world to you and even want to be true. But if you are neglecting to pick them up from school because there is a sale going on at the mall, that’s an indication your values may lie elsewhere.
“Be brutally honest about your own behaviour to yourself. What is the choice you are making? How are you spending your time? What are you neglecting that you shouldn’t? Initially, your tendency will be to try to pin these decisions on other people or circumstances. But ultimately the choice is always yours. You are always choosing what to value more, moment by moment and how change happens, slowly, moment by moment with every choice you make” Manson explains.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F”ck by Mark Manson, Harper One, £13.51, 224 pages,