The subtle art of not giving a f***

Whoa... Stop judging me for the the title and read a few lines further to understand where this is going. “Who will work under a woman?”, “You will anyway go on maternity break. It is too dangerous to let you lead the project”, “You are too young. You don’t know” – have your heard it too? Ya, me too. Often in the past, these lines were thrown at my face for trying to strategize my position and move up the ladder. I was angry and upset and felt helpless, quite a few times, also wondered if being a woman and wanting to have a career was too much to ask for?? If this was my experience, you would have your own story. It could be anything. Crux is the same. There are constants out there to belittle you. How can we get over this without reacting to it?

That’s what “The subtle art of not giving a f***” taught me. Again, I am not swearing at you. This is a self-help book written by Mark Manson. “The key to a good life is not giving a f*** about more; it’s giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important.”, as the author rightly says in the book.

Not giving a f*** does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different. I started to embrace this thought and have learnt to become comfortable with being different. He further goes on to say “If you find yourself consistently giving too many f***s about trivial s*** that bothers you, chances are you don’t have much going on in your life to give a legitimate f*** about.” Very true. By concentrating on small and finite details, we sometimes end up losing the big picture. The above incident is too trivial and giving it zero importance could create space for something better in my life. There could be picky people, micro-managers, authoritarians and narcisstic people in all walks of your life. By giving a f***, we are making them heroes. Ignoring them makes space in our life for better stuff..

Do you sometimes feel you are upset when you hear someone has not invited you to a party of theirs where all your common friends are going? Do you get upset if your friends post a new reel from a cool place chilling out together? Well, then you are in a spiral. You don’t have anything legitimate to worry about, aka, to give a f*** about, as Manson quotes in his work.

Like the author says, imagine that you only have a few f***s to spend, meaning you can only choose to react 3 out of 10 times, for example. This way, the number of times you need to react becomes finite. Rather than reacting, ponder what makes you feel the way you feel. Try to understand the root cause and then identify what could make you happy. Once you know it, ask yourself if you are willing to put your energy through to see the light of the day. And then focus and channelize your energy only to those finite things you have identified. Knowing that something is limited always makes us use it wisely. Cultivating this habit, as difficult as it sounds, helps to stare at the most difficult situations in life with confidence and an open mindset.

You could see that I am ending earlier than usual... I liked reading the book, but was not engulfed by it, as I was, with a few other ones. That is probably because I am way too used to the stories from the magnum opus called the “Mahabaratha” that has the answer to any situation, business or private, that has answers to any question in life and about life. So I quickly drifted off to the magnum opus as I was reading this one, just like I did it now. See you next time!