The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
It’s time we introduce you all to a book that we recently read that is thought-provoking, blunt, and powerful. It is not a trading book, rather it is more of a life view book. And, for those of you who do not prefer to hear the F word, this might not be the episode for you. Most of our videos/blogs have very rare cursing, but this one will be an exception in order to accurately convey his words and our interpretations and lessons from them. Becky and Kendra both really found such value in this book, so we want to give you a glimpse into its gems so you can consider it for yourself. The book is titled The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, by author Mark Manson. Hang with us here, because the overarching messages in this book are really good! Let us show you what we mean!
The author Mark Manson has grown into a #1 NY Times bestselling author for this book and his other book, Everything is Fucked: A Book About Hope, of which we totally intend to consume as well. This book that we are discussing today is really so good at challenging one’s perspectives about how real happiness is actually achieved and how problems are never truly eliminated. Manson encourages readers to not always strive for positive thinking, that trying to always be positive is not the gold standard. He points out in different ways and with different stories that human beings are flawed and sugar coating that doesn’t do anyone any favors. Framing human life instead in a way that if we can embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties, and stop running and avoiding, then we can start confronting painful truths and begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and forgiveness we seek. Another main point being that we only have so many fucks to give in a given day. So we have to be selective with that allocation in order to not burn out and become miserable. If we can dial in our priorities enough so that we are only entertaining the issues that really are in alignment with our values and desired life experiences and goals, then we can better reach clarity on how we should be measuring our own happiness. It is just so good! We’re going to discuss some specific points and advice found in this book that we can apply to our lives. As with every book we’ve featured as a Market-Mamas must-read, we certainly found great correlations to our trading business too, as you will see.
“Taking responsibility for our problems is far more important because that’s where the real learning comes from. That’s where the real life improvement comes from. To simply blame others is only to hurt yourself.”
This spoke to us regarding literally every aspect of our lives. From our personal relationships, to our physical bodies and health, and most definitely to our trading journeys. Honestly admitting that it is our choices each day that create our lives, that is empowering!!! This concept in the book stuck with us since the moment we listened to it because if you really think about it, we ARE the creators of our lives and our destinies. Every time we choose to love our people the very best way we know how, we are strengthening that connection and bond. Every time we choose an apple over a dish of ice cream, we are voting for a strong and well-fueled body. Every time we actively engage in quality family time instead of scrolling through social media, we are creating a happier and tighter family and providing our children with beautiful memories. Every time we honor our trade plan, stop loss, and take profit during our trading sessions, we are respecting our time and effort as developing traders and earning the title we are working towards as a Consistently Profitable Traders. Our choices create our outcomes. This blunt ownership of our lives is a force. Blaming others, the market, whatever stressors are happening around us - sure blaming might provide a temporarily acceptable excuse. But truthfully, that will only prevent bigger goals from ever becoming the reality. Owning and improving our daily choices despite whatever pressures is where the true growth comes from. Powerful point!
Check out our full discussion in the podcast below, including more of our favorite quotes and how we’ve adapted the advice into our own trading journeys and lives.
This next concept from the book really resonated with us. Mark refers to it as “The feedback loop from hell.” He explains how modern society and especially social media has conditioned us that it’s not ok to have negative feelings and experiences. Things like anxiety, fear, or guilt are not ok, and this has resulted in people being overly stressed, overly neurotic, and overly self-loathing. He adds “it’s impossible to feel like shit for 5 minutes without feeling like something is wrong with you, we feel bad about feeling bad, guilty about feeling guilty, angry about getting angry, anxious about feeling anxious.” We can totally relate. The author Mark makes a great point stating that: “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.” Put another way, basically whatever feeling you are chasing or trying to achieve more of, inevitably leads to the opposite result. So, pursuing happiness makes you unhappy and pursuing pain results in less pain. Goodness, we feel this in our souls when it comes to trading! Always pushing to remain positive no matter the outcome in a day doesn’t actually serve or help us learn from our results in a constructive way. If there’s a storm, there’s a storm and that’s nature. All we can do is let it pass. When we have a frustrating day on the charts, it’s 100% ok to feel shitty and disappointed about that outcome. Accepting that negative experience really has helped us not let it grow into something that feels too big.
Ok, this next quote is super blunt and we love it so much. It reads: “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.” Ok, so he is not wrong. Blunt 100%. It is powerful to be purposeful with where we allow our energy to be spent. We just can’t give a fuck about every little thing or we will exhaust ourselves and on the areas that truly matter to our lives and our goals may be half-assed when we give away so much energy to BS each day.
For example, every once in a while, and thankfully way less as she is maturing, Becky has gotten into a heated argument on a social media platform over a topic she does care about and has strong feelings regarding. But, to what end? It is ultimately a completely useless donation of energy, emotion, time, and mental capacity. Those types of battles suck you dry and then how was the rest of your day? Probably not great because that irritated energy carries over and productive work projects are forgotten. It is waste upon waste by giving a fuck in that direction. There are so many examples of ways to waste our time and energy - you all know what we mean! This will be a little different for each of us with what could potentially steal us away from our bigger aims, but we know it when it happens or at least in hindsight later that night when we recognize how we wasted time. It’s a gross feeling honestly. So we just love his point so frankly written that if we simply only give a fuck about what serves our biggest priorities and not that little shit, then what we feed will grow! It is not easy to always be consistent with this, but shifting our ways of life to be more in sync with this idea will yield more productive work and strengthen the relationships we pour into with time.
This next concept in Mark’s book is really valid too. He drives home the point about how “problems never stop, they merely get exchanged or upgraded.” So true! Problems are never fully eliminated or taken off the table. That public figure we look up to has mega problems, even that cute lil baby that is completely loved and taken care of has little baby problems. Problems are what makes the world go round and what gives life deeper meaning, in our opinion. Mark added: “True happiness only occurs when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving, and that is a constant work in progress.” We love being problem solvers. It’s a challenge, and without problems, life would be boring. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons we fell in love with trading. Leaning into problems instead of running away from them builds courage and confidence.
Here comes a powerful idea right here for all of us! “It’s worth remembering that for any change to happen in your life you must be wrong about something. If you’re sitting there miserable day after day, then that means you’re already wrong about something major in your life. And until you’re able to question yourself to find it, nothing will change.” It’s good right?!?! We have to relate this to our trading for sure!! Early in a trading journey, many people, ourselves included, may experience a boom and bust cycle. A period of consistent wins and then a blow up period where you give away all your progress and money by failing to respect your system, risk management, your personal conditions, whatever it might be that derails the trader. That can result in a miserable feeling of disappointment and frustration. But in his quote, he is clear that identifying that something is wrong in your life that is causing you misery means you require a change to that situation. You are wrong in however you are managing the thing that is making you so unhappy and resulting in failed attempts. A way out of that, per this book, is to question why and then target fixing it with eyes wide open. Take responsibility for what you are doing wrong, make a plan to fix it and then fucking do it. If you are allowing tilt to wreck your progress as a trader, then create a plan to manage it and respect yourself and your goals enough to follow it. He’s right when he says nothing will change if you don’t face what is wrong. And we love that pure fact that we are the owners of our actions. That can feel stressful OR empowering, depending on how you can look at it. If you want something different, you have to do something different.
Alright, here’s an analogy for us now from this book. It is: “Just as one must suffer physical pain to build stronger bone and muscle, one must suffer emotional pain to develop greater emotional resilience.” If this isn’t just pure fact, we don’t know what is. If you exercise, you get it with the physical pain when growing stronger - some workouts are super hard! When you are deep in a set of heavy squats and want to stop before the last set is over, pushing through that pain causes a bigger improvement in your body over time. That is a tangible example of the physical resilience side of this. Cultivating emotional resilience is not as objective and clear cut. But we took from what he wrote that if we can sit through something that feels really hard but that we understand to be the correct way to do something, then every time we endure the pressure of that situation, each subsequent time might be slightly easier on us. Thereby strengthening us in those situations over time.
Ok, this next quote from Manson spoke directly to the trader in us. It reads: “You don’t know anything. Even when you do, you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. But really, what is there to lose? Life is about not knowing and then doing something anyway.” This is soooo trading! Even when you study for years and learn from strong mentors, Miss Market is in charge and always will be. As traders, we can have an edge, learn and utilize helpful tools and techniques, and develop a trader's intuition - those are all important to success in trading. But, ultimately, we know nothing! We could be totally fucking wrong and the market does something totally different and humbles us again. But, fuck it! Trying despite that fact is what life is about, for us at least! So we might fail. So our trade plan might be proved wrong and our accounts will take a small hit for a day. If you never try because there is no certainty, then you lose by default. So fucking go for it anyways! I just love that sentence: Life is about not knowing and then doing something anyway. Taking chances to see what is possible. What you can do if you really try. What opportunities we can discover by saying fuck it to the statistics that say we are more likely to fail in day trading. And pushing towards our success anyways. Because people do become significantly successful as profitable day traders. It has been proven possible. No, we don’t get to KNOW if that will be us. But it sure as fuck wont if we quit.
This book ends with a discussion about the inevitability of death. And his realizations on this topic really tied it all together so well. In that last chapter, Manson said: “People high on a sense of false superiority fall into inaction and lethargy for fear of trying something worthwhile and failing at it. The pampering of the modern mind has resulted in a population that feels deserving of something without earning that something. The population that feels they have a right to something without sacrificing for it.” It’s a big, kind of aggressive quote. But he goes on to explain that people can feel such an urgency to claim something great to feel extraordinary to know that their individual period of life on Earth has created something to live on after death. But that we often confuse great attention with great success - like what you have done in your life is worth less if you don’t achieve a public title or something, get your name on a building or create an endowment somewhere. But I love how he puts it that you are great already, no matter who recognizes it. Titles don’t make us great, what we choose to give our fucks about each day is what really matters. Your life, no matter what you achieve, is a gift to your circle.
Manson encourages readers to let go of our egos and take pleasure in the day to day, and to pursue our dreams with less shame and inhibition. That there is nothing to be afraid of. Instead of seeking titles and specific dollar amounts, what if we sought to live by example a life of pouring all our energy into meaningful and loving pursuits? In this way, we would seek to do the right things for who and what is the most worth our fucks, our effort. It makes so much sense for both a happier life, but also a productive life in our own arenas. With trading and podcasting, Kendra and I are far from leading the pack yet in those arenas. But our work is beautiful, and we exude maximum energy to goals that will truly give back to our lives and those around us. And we are still quite a ways from the metrics within our goals in both of these journeys, but we can purposefully direct our efforts at our dreams and be happy in their pursuit - that that is a healthy, whole life. And we just love that this book used so many blunt and harsh anecdotes to make such a truly beautiful and influential point.
There is so much more in the full text that we know you all would really laugh with, nod your head to and enjoy like we did! In the notes on this page, we have links to this book, either in paper copy or through Audible, so you can get it for yourselves. We are so grateful to be Amazon and Audible Associates.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck has a 4.5 star rating on Audible with over 170,000 ratings!
To listen to this book for yourself through our favorite resource for audiobooks & podcasts, go to: www.audibletrial.com/marketmamas
#AudibleSponsored
Intrigued?
We get it!
Order your copy today:
To join us in our Audible obsession, sign up!!! http://www.amazon.com/audibleplus
Their titles are seriously the most comprehensive and Audible is sooo easy to use! We listen literally every day to something or another that adds such value to our journeys.
#AmazonSponsored