By: Mark Manson

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Self-help books and conventional life advice tells us to focus on being happy. But this suggests that you aren’t already happy and that you need to change in order to live the life you want.

Ironically, the desire for more positive experiences makes us more unhappy. And the acceptance of one’s negative experiences makes us happier.   This is why Mark Manson suggests that the secret to life is simple – don’t try.  

If you care less about something, you’ll do better at it. Accept your insecurities and flaws and you will build courage and perseverance. To try and avoid suffering is a form of suffering in itself.  

The secret is to learn how to pick and choose what matters to you and then ignore the rest.  

This doesn’t mean being indifferent; it means being willing to overcome adversity for the sake of one’s own values. To have the strength to push through adversity, you must first care about something more important than adversity.

Whether you realise it or not, you always have a choice about what to care about. So find something meaningful, otherwise, you’ll only care about frivolous things instead.  

The Problem With Happiness

Happiness is not a solvable equation. Dissatisfaction and unease are necessary parts of life. Suffering is inevitable. It sucks, but it’s also useful. It teaches us what is good for us versus what is bad for us. It teaches us how to avoid making the same mistake in the future. It nudges us in the right direction for beneficial change. 

To chase a problem-free life means we lose the benefits of experiencing healthy doses of pain, and thus, improvement. Problems never stop; they merely change.

Don’t hope for a life without problems, hope for a life full of good problems.  

Everything requires sacrifice – the things that make us feel good will also inevitably make us feel bad. What we gain is also what we lose.  

Happiness requires struggle, but we get to choose the struggles that will bring us the greatest joy.

If you want a good body, you must choose to struggle through hours at the gym. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you must struggle through risk, uncertainty, and dedication to a business that may not work out.  

You can’t have a life without pain, so instead, ask yourself – what is the pain that you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?  

Self-Esteem

In the 1970s, developing high self-esteem became popular in the world of psychology. But teaching children that they are special only creates entitled adults. And entitlement is not happiness. Entitled people can’t take responsibility for their problems, so instead, they ignore them.

Whereas a person with actual high self-worth can look at negative characteristics, acknowledge them, and act to improve them.  

Realising that you – and your problems – are not special is the first and most important step toward solving them. We are all pretty average at most things that we do. The media shows us the extraordinary – the best of the best and the worst of the worst. Yet the vast majority of life is un-extraordinary. It’s just average.  

Because we only see the extremes, we believe that everyone and everything must be exceptional. And because we’re all quite average most of the time, we feel insecure and inadequate because we think that we aren’t living up to the unrealistic bar that we set for our lives.  

Instead of questioning what we actually deserve or don’t deserve, we feel like we are entitled to an extraordinary life (even though if everybody had an extraordinary life, then, by definition, no one would have an extraordinary life).  

Once you realise that it’s okay to be average, the pressure will go away. The stress and anxiety of always feeling inadequate and constantly needing to prove yourself will dissipate. You will learn to appreciate the “average” things in life – simple friendship, creating art, reading a good book. Things that actually bring you pleasure and happiness.  

Suffering

If suffering is inevitable, then we should ask ourselves about the purpose of our suffering. To do this, we must be self-aware.

Self-awareness begins with a simple understanding of one’s emotions. Then, one must ask why we feel certain emotions. And, finally, one must ask why do I consider this to be success/failure? How am I choosing to measure myself?  

The last level of values is the most important to understand. A lot of advice focuses on making people feel good in the short term while ignoring the deeper root of the problem. If you understand your core values, you can use them to reframe any situation. We get to control what our problems mean based on how we choose to think about them and how we choose to measure them.  

We instinctually measure ourselves against others, but we should ask ourselves by what standard do we measure ourselves. Our values determine the metrics by which we measure ourselves and everyone else. If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure and success.  

Some values create problems that cannot be solved, and these values should be avoided: pleasure, material success, always being right, and always staying positive (when we force ourselves to stay positive all the time, we deny the existence of the problem, which doesn’t give us a chance to solve it). Some good values are honesty, innovation, standing up for oneself, self-respect, and curiosity. 

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.  

Choosing

The only difference between a problem being painful or powerful is a sense that we chose it willingly. If you’re unhappy in your current situation, it’s likely because you feel like some part of it is outside your control.  

We can’t always control what happens to us, but we can always control how we interpret what happens to us as well as how we respond. The more we choose to accept responsibility in our lives, the more power we will exercise over our lives.  

There’s a difference between fault and responsibility. Fault results from choices that have already been made. Responsibility results from the choices you make every day. Some people are dealt better cards in life, but the real game depends on what we choose to do with those cards. People who make the best choices are eventually the ones that come out ahead and it’s not necessarily the people with the best cards.  

Choosing the right values will be difficult and you will likely feel uncertain and uncomfortable. But it’s worth it.  

Being Wrong

When we learn something new, we don’t go from being “wrong” to “right.” We go from wrong to slightly less wrong. There is never any “right” answer but we can try to get as close as we can. Being wrong opens up possibilities for change and growth.  

The human brain is imperfect. Most of what we “know” is convoluted by the inaccuracies and biases in our brains. Therefore, whether you believe it or not, most of our beliefs are wrong.  

The more you embrace being uncertain and not knowing, the more comfortable you will feel in knowing what you don’t know. Uncertainty is the root of all progress and growth. The more we admit we don’t know, the more we can learn.  

It is difficult to question and doubt our thoughts and beliefs. These questions can help: 

1. What if I’m wrong? 
2. What would it mean if I were wrong? 
3. Would being wrong create a better or a worse problem than my current problem, for both myself and others?  

Failing

Without failure, we cannot grow. When a child learns to walk, they will fall down hundreds of times, but they never give up or think, “oh, I’ll never be able to walk.” 

We learn to avoid failure at a later point in life. But if we’re unwilling to fail, then we’re unwilling to succeed.  Pain is part of the process. Often, our pain makes us stronger, more resilient and more grounded.  

Most people attempt to numb whatever pain they feel. However, it is much better to embrace the pain and act despite it. Action isn’t only the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it. Get started and do something, anything. If your goal is to simply do something, then any result is success and failure feels unimportant.  

Saying No

Many of us believe that we must be as accepting as possible. However, if we don’t reject anything, then we stand for nothing. There’s a level of joy and meaning that you find only when you’ve invested in a single thing, and in order to do that, you must reject the alternatives.  

To choose one value means you must reject the other values. Therefore, rejection is a necessary part of maintaining values and therefore our identity. Rejection is crucial to life.  

Boundaries are an important aspect of any relationship. People with healthy boundaries take responsibility for their own values and problems and do not take responsibility for other people’s values and problems.  

For a relationship to be healthy, both people must be willing and able to hear no and say no.  

More is not better. Often, we are happier with less. If we are given many options, we are less satisfied with whatever we choose because we are aware of the other options we are forfeiting. There is freedom and liberation in commitment. Saying no to things hones your attention and focus on the things that matter. It helps you know that what you already have is good enough.  

Saying no is liberating. We must say no to things that don’t align with our values and our chosen metrics so we can say yes to the things that actually matter.  

In the end, we all die. In this way, nothing really actually matters. Which means we have no reason to waste our time caring about things that don’t make us happy.   If there really is no reason to do anything, then there is also no reason to not do anything. To spend your life avoiding what is painful and uncomfortable means to avoid being alive at all.  

Confronting our own mortality is important because it obliterates any fragile, superficial values in life.  

Our culture tells us that we need to accomplish something great in order to b e great. But the reality is that you already are great. Whether you realise it or not. Whether anybody else realises it or not. You are great because you get to choose what to care about and what not to.