JP > Recent Status Updates

Chapter 5: You Are Always Choosing

The Choice
There is a simple realization from which all personal improvement and growth emerges. This is the realization that we, individually, are responsible for everything in our lives no matter the external circumstances.

We don’t always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond.

Defining Good and Bad Values

Good Values:
1. Reality-based
2. Socially constructive
3. Immediate and controllable

Bad Values:
1. Superstitious
2. Socially destructive
3. Not immediate or controllable

Good values engage you with the world as it is rather than how you wish it were.

Shitty Values

Common Values of People That Create Poor Problems:
1. Pleasure. Pleasure is not the cause of happiness; rather, it is the effect.
2. Material Success.
3. Always Being Right.
4. Staying Positive. Constant positivity is a form of avoidance, not a valid solution to life’s problems.

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” — Sigmund Freud

Rock Star Problems

… because we are apes, we instinctually measure ourselves against others and vie for status.

“If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.”

The Self-Awareness Onion

Layers of Self-Awareness:
1. Simple understanding of one’s emotions
2. Ability to ask why we feel certain emotions
3. Personal values: Why do I consider this to be success/failure? How am I choosing to measure myself? By what standard am I judging and everyone around me?

Chapter 4: The Value of Suffering

The Tyranny of Exceptionalism

Things Fall Apart

Often, it’s this realization—that you and your problems are actually not privileged in their severity or pain—that is the first and most important step toward solving them.

You are not special.

Choose your struggle.

“True happiness occurs when you find problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.”

Emotions are Overrated

“hedonic treadmill”: the idea that we’re always working hard to change our life situation, but we actually never feel very different

Chapter 2: Happiness is a Problem

… life itself is a form of suffering.

“… pain and loss are inevitable and we should let go of trying to resist them.”

“The solution to one problem is merely the creation of the next one.”

Subtlety 3: Whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing what to give a fuck about.

Subtlety 2: To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity.

… finding something important and meaningful in your life is perhaps the most productive use of your time and energy. Because if you don’t find that meaningful something, your fucks will be given to meaningless and frivolous causes.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck (Three Subtleties)

1. Subtlety 1: Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.

“The point isn’t to get away from the shit. The point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.”

“The smallest dog barks the loudest.”

“The Backwards Law” by Allan Watts

The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.

He never tried to be anything other than what he was. The genius in Bukowski’s work was not in overcoming unbelievable odds or developing himself into a shining literary light. It was the opposite. It was his simple ability to be completely, unflinchingly honest with himself—especially the worst parts of himself—and to share his failings without hesitation or doubt.

… despite the book sales and the fame, Bukowski was a loser. He knew it. And his success stemmed not from some determination to be a winner, but from the fact that he knew he was a loser, accepted it, and then wrote honestly about it.