CHAPTER 1 
 
Don’t Try 
 
Charles Bukowski was an alcoholic, a womanizer, a chronic gam- 
bler, a lout, a cheapskate, a deadbeat, and on his worst days, a 
poet. He’s probably the last person on earth you would ever look 
to for life advice or expect to see in any sort of self-help book. 
Which is why he’s the perfect place to start. 
Bukowski wanted to be a writer. But for decades his work was 
rejected by almost every magazine, newspaper, journal, agent, 
and publisher he submitted to. His work was horrible, they said. 
Crude. Disgusting. Depraved. And as the stacks of rejection slips 
piled up, the weight of his failures pushed him deep into an alco- 
hol-fu-eled depression that would follow him for most of his life. 
Bukowski had a day job as a letter-filer at a post office. He got 
paid shit money and spent most of it on booze. He gambled 
away the rest at the racetrack. At night, he would drink alone and 
sometimes hammer out poetry on his beat-up old typewriter. 

Often, he’d wake up on the floor, having passed out the night be- 
fore. 
Thirty years went by like this, most of it a meaningless blur of 
alcohol, drugs, gambling, and prostitutes. Then, when Bukowski 
was fifty, after a lifetime of failure and self-loathing, an editor at a 
small independent publishing house took a strange interest in 
him. The editor couldn’t offer Bukowski much money or much 
promise of sales. But he had a weird affection for the drunk 
loser, so he decided to take a chance on him. It was the first real 
shot Bukowski had ever gotten, and, he realized, probably the 
only one he would ever get. Bukowski wrote back to the editor: “I 
have one of two choices—stay in the post office and go crazy . . . 
or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to 
starve.” 
Upon signing the contract, Bukowski wrote his first novel in 
three weeks. It was called simply Post Office. In the dedication, he 
wrote, “Dedicated to nobody.” 
Bukowski would make it as a novelist and poet. He would go 
on and publish six novels and hundreds of poems, selling over 

two million copies of his books. His popularity defied everyone’s 
expectations, particularly his own. 
Stories like Bukowski’s are the bread and butter of our cul- 
tural narrative. Bukowski’s life embodies the American Dream: a 
man fights for what he wants, never gives up, and eventually 
achieves his wildest dreams. It’s practically a movie waiting to 
happen. We all look at stories like Bukowski’s and say, “See? He 
never gave up. He never stopped trying. He always believed in 
himself. He persisted against all the odds and made something 
of himself!” 
It is then strange that on Bukowski’s tombstone, the epitaph 
reads: “Don’t try.” 
See, despite the book sales and the fame, Bukowski was a 
loser. He knew it. And his success stemmed not from some de- 
termination to be a winner, but from the fact that he knew he was 
a loser, accepted it, and then wrote honestly about it. 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 oppo- 
site. It was his simple ability to be completely, unflinchingly hon- 
est with himself—especially the worst parts of himself—and to 
share his failings without hesitation or doubt. 
This is the real story of Bukowski’s success: his comfort with 
himself as a failure. Bukowski didn’t give a fuck about success. 
Even after his fame, he still showed up to poetry readings ham- 
mered and verbally abused people in his audience. He still ex- 
posed himself in public and tried to sleep with every woman he 
could find. Fame and success didn’t make him a better person. 
Nor was it by becoming a better person that he became famous 
and successful. 
Self-improvement and success often occur together. But that 
doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the same thing. 
Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically 
positive expectations: Be happier. Be healthier. Be the best, better 
than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier, more popular, 
more productive, more envied, and more admired. Be perfect 

and amazing and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets before 
breakfast each morning while kissing your selfie-ready spouse 
and two and a half kids goodbye. Then fly your helicopter to your 
wonderfully fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing in- 
credibly meaningful work that’s likely to save the planet one day. 
But when you stop and really think about it, conventional life 
advice—all the positive and happy self-help stuff we hear all the 
time—is actually fixating on what you lack. It lasers in on what 
you perceive your personal shortcomings and failures to already be, 
and then emphasizes them for you. You learn about the best 
ways to make money because you feel you don’t have enough 
money already. You stand in front of the mirror and repeat affir- 
mations saying that you’re beautiful because you feel as though 
you’re not beautiful already. You follow dating and relationship 
advice because you feel that you’re unlovable already. You try 
goofy visualization exercises about being more successful be- 
cause you feel as though you aren’t successful enough already. 
Ironically, this fixation on the positive—on what’s better, 

what’s superior—only serves to remind us over and over again 
of what we are not, of what we lack, of what we should have been 
but failed to be. After all, no truly happy person feels the need to 
stand in front of a mirror and recite that she’s happy. She just is. 
There’s a saying in Texas: “The smallest dog barks the loud- 
est.” A confident man doesn’t feel a need to prove that he’s 
confident. A rich woman doesn’t feel a need to convince anybody 
that she’s rich. Either you are or you are not. And if you’re dream- 
ing of something all the time, then you’re reinforcing the same 
unconscious reality over and over: that you are not that. 
Everyone and their TV commercial wants you to believe that 
the key to a good life is a nicer job, or a more rugged car, or a 
prettier girlfriend, or a hot tub with an inflatable pool for the kids. 
The world is constantly telling you that the path to a better life is 
more, more, more—buy more, own more, make more, fuck 
more, be more. You are constantly bombarded with messages to 
give a fuck about everything, all the time. Give a fuck about a new 
TV. Give a fuck about having a better vacation than your 

coworkers. Give a fuck about buying that new lawn ornament. 
Give a fuck about having the right kind of selfie stick. 
Why? My guess: because giving a fuck about more stuff is 
good for business. 
And while there’s nothing wrong with good business, the 
problem is that giving too many fucks is bad for your mental 
health. It causes you to become overly attached to the superficial 
and fake, to dedicate your life to chasing a mirage of happiness 
and satisfaction. The key to a good life is not giving a fuck about 
more; it’s giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what 
is true and immediate and important. 

The Feedback Loop from Hell 
There’s an insidious quirk to your brain that, if you let it, can 
drive you absolutely batty. Tell me if this sounds familiar to you: 
You get anxious about confronting somebody in your life. 
That anxiety cripples you and you start wondering why you’re so 
anxious. Now you’re becoming anxious about being anxious. Oh 
no! Doubly anxious! Now you’re anxious about your anxiety, 
which is causing more anxiety. Quick, where’s the whiskey? 
Or let’s say you have an anger problem. You get pissed off at 
the stupidest, most inane stuff, and you have no idea why. And 
the fact that you get pissed off so easily starts to piss you off 
even more. And then, in your petty rage, you realize that being 
angry all the time makes you a shallow and mean person, and 
you hate this; you hate it so much that you get angry at yourself. 
Now look at you: you’re angry at yourself getting angry about 
being angry. Fuck you, wall. Here, have a fist. 
Or you’re so worried about doing the right thing all the time 
that you become worried about how much you’re worrying. Or 

you feel so guilty for every mistake you make that you begin to 
feel guilty about how guilty you’re feeling. Or you get sad and 
alone so often that it makes you feel even more sad and alone 
just thinking about it. 
Welcome to the Feedback Loop from Hell. Chances are 
you’ve engaged in it more than a few times. Maybe you’re engag- 
ing in it right now: “God, I do the Feedback Loop all the time— 
I’m such a loser for doing it. I should stop. Oh my God, I feel 
like such a loser for calling myself a loser. I should stop calling 
myself a loser. Ah, fuck! I’m doing it again! See? I’m a loser! 
Argh!” 
Calm down, amigo. Believe it or not, this is part of the beauty 
of being human. Very few animals on earth have the ability to 
think cogent thoughts to begin with, but we humans have the 
luxury of being able to have thoughts about our thoughts. So I 
can think about watching Miley Cyrus videos on YouTube, and 
then immediately think about what a sicko I am for wanting to 
watch Miley Cyrus videos on YouTube. Ah, the miracle of 

consciousness! 
Now here’s the problem: Our society today, through the won- 
ders of consumer culture and hey-look-my-life-is- 
cool-than-yoursyours social media, has bred a whole generation 
of people who believe that having these negative experiences— 
anxiety, fear, guilt, etc.—is totally not okay. I mean, if you look at 
your Facebook feed, everybody there is having a fucking grand 
old time. Look, eight people got married this week! And some 
sixteen-year-old on TV got a Ferrari for her birthday. And another 
kid just made two billion dollars inventing an app that automat- 
ically delivers you more toilet paper when you run out. 
Meanwhile, you’re stuck at home flossing your cat. And you 
can’t help but think your life sucks even more than you thought. 
The Feedback Loop from Hell has become a borderline epi- 
demic, making many of us overly stressed, overly neurotic, and 
overly self-loathing. 
Back in Grandpa’s day, he would feel like shit and think to 
himself, “Gee whiz, I sure do feel like a cow turd today. But hey, I 

guess that’s just life. Back to shoveling hay.” 
But now? Now if you feel like shit for even five minutes, 
you’re bombarded with 350 images of people totally happy and 
having amazing fucking lives, and it’s impossible to not feel like 
there’s something wrong with you. 
It’s this last part that gets us into trouble. We feel bad about 
feeling bad. We feel guilty for feeling guilty. We get angry about 
getting angry. We get anxious about feeling anxious. What is 
wrong with me? 
This is why not giving a fuck is so key. This is why it’s going 
to save the world. And it’s going to save it by accepting that the 
world is totally fucked and that’s all right, because it’s always 
been that way, and always will be. 
By not giving a fuck that you feel bad, you short-circuit the 
Feedback Loop from Hell; you say to yourself, “I feel like shit, 
but who gives a fuck?” And then, as if sprinkled by magic fuck- 
giving fairy dust, you stop hating yourself for feeling so bad. 
George Orwell said that to see what’s in front of one’s nose 

requires a constant struggle. Well, the solution to our stress and 
anxiety is right there in front of our noses, and we’re too busy 
watching porn and advertisements for ab machines that don’t 
work, wondering why we’re not banging a hot blonde with a rock- 
ing six-pack, to notice. 
We joke online about “first-world problems,” but we really 
have become victims of our own success. Stress-related health 
issues, anxiety disorders, and cases of depression have skyrock- 
eted over the past thirty years, despite the fact that everyone has 
a flat-screen TV and can have their groceries delivered. Our crisis 
is no longer material; it’s existential, it’s spiritual. We have so 
much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t 
even know what to give a fuck about anymore. 
Because there’s an infinite amount of things we can now see 
or know, there are also an infinite number of ways we can dis- 
cover that we don’t measure up, that we’re not good enough, 
that things aren’t as great as they could be. And this rips us apart 
inside. 

Because here’s the thing that’s wrong with all of the “How to 
Be Happy” shit that’s been shared eight million times on Face- 
book in the past few years—here’s what nobody realizes about 
all of this crap: 
 
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. 
 
This is a total mind-fuck. So I’ll give you a minute to unpret- 
zel your brain and maybe read that again: Wanting positive expe- 
rience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a 
positive experience. It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to 
refer to as “the backwards law”—the idea that the more you pur- 
sue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as 
pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the 
first place. The more you desperately want to be rich, the more 
poor and unworthy you feel, regardless of how much money you 

actually make. The more you desperately want to be sexy and de- 
sired, the uglier you come to see yourself, regardless of your ac- 
tual physical appearance. The more you desperately want to be 
happy and loved, the lonelier and more afraid you become, re- 
gardless of those who surround you. The more you want to be 
spiritually enlightened, the more self-centered and shallow you 
become in trying to get there. 
It’s like this one time I tripped on acid and it felt like the more 
I walked toward a house, the farther away the house got from me. 
And yes, I just used my LSD hallucinations to make a philo- 
sophical point about happiness. No fucks given. 
As the existential philosopher Albert Camus said (and I’m 
pretty sure he wasn’t on LSD at the time): “You will never be 
happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. 
You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” 
Or put more simply: 
Don’t try. 
Now, I know what you’re saying: “Mark, this is making my 

nipples all hard, but what about the Camaro I’ve been saving up 
for? What about the beach body I’ve been starving myself for? 
After all, I paid a lot of money for that ab machine! What about 
the big house on the lake I’ve been dreaming of? If I stop giving a 
fuck about those things—well, then I’ll never achieve anything. I 
don’t want that to happen, do I?” 
So glad you asked. 
Ever notice that sometimes when you care less about some- 
thing, you do better at it? Notice how it’s often the person who is 
the least invested in the success of something that actually ends 
up achieving it? Notice how sometimes when you stop giving a 
fuck, everything seems to fall into place? 
What’s with that? 
What’s interesting about the backwards law is that it’s called 
“backwards” for a reason: not giving a fuck works in reverse. If 
pursuing the positive is a negative, then pursuing the negative 
generates the positive. The pain you pursue in the gym results in 
better all-around health and energy. The failures in business are 

what lead to a better understanding of what’s necessary to be 
successful. Being open with your insecurities paradoxically 
makes you more confident and charismatic around others. The 
pain of honest confrontation is what generates the greatest trust 
and respect in your relationships. Suffering through your fears 
and anxieties is what allows you to build courage and perse- 
verance. 
Seriously, I could keep going, but you get the point. Every- 
thing worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated 
negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid 
it or quash it or silence it, only backfires. The avoidance of suf- 
fering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a strug- 
gle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is it- 
self a form of shame. 
Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it 
out is not only impossible, but destructive: attempting to tear it 
out unravels everything else with it. To try to avoid pain is to give 
too many fucks about pain. In contrast, if you’re able to not give 

a fuck about the pain, you become unstoppable. 
In my life, I have given a fuck about many things. I have also 
not given a fuck about many things. And like the road not taken, 
it was the fucks not given that made all the difference. 
Chances are you know somebody in your life who, at one time 
or another, did not give a fuck and then went on to accomplish 
amazing feats. Perhaps there was a time in your own life when 
you simply did not give a fuck and excelled to some extraordinary 
height. For myself, quitting my day job in finance after only six 
weeks to start an Internet business ranks pretty high up there in 
my own “didn’t give a fuck” hall of fame. Same with deciding to 
sell most of my possessions and move to South America. Fucks 
given? None. Just went and did it. 
These moments of non-fuckery are the moments that most 
define our lives. The major switch in careers; the spontaneous 
choice to drop out of college and join a rock band; the decision 
to finally dump that deadbeat boyfriend whom you caught wear- 
ing your pantyhose a few too many times. 

To not give a fuck is to stare down life’s most terrifying and 
difficult challenges and still take action. 
While not giving a fuck may seem simple on the surface, it’s a 
whole new bag of burritos under the hood. I don’t even know 
what that sentence means, but I don’t give a fuck. A bag of bur- 
ritos sounds awesome, so let’s just go with it. 
Most of us struggle throughout our lives by giving too many 
fucks in situations where fucks do not deserve to be given. We 
give too many fucks about the rude gas station attendant who 
gave us our change in nickels. We give too many fucks when a 
show we liked was canceled on TV. We give too many fucks 
when our coworkers don’t bother asking us about our awesome 
weekend. 
Meanwhile, our credit cards are maxed out, our dog hates us, 
and Junior is snorting meth in the bathroom, yet we’re getting 
pissed off about nickels and Everybody Loves Raymond. 
Look, this is how it works. You’re going to die one day. I know 
that’s kind of obvious, but I just wanted to remind you in case 

you’d forgotten. You and everyone you know are going to be 
dead soon. And in the short amount of time between here and 
there, you have a limited amount of fucks to give. Very few, in 
fact. And if you go around giving a fuck about everything and 
everyone without conscious thought or choice—well, then you’re 
going to get fucked. 
There is a subtle art to not giving a fuck. And though the con- 
cept may sound ridiculous and I may sound like an asshole, 
what I’m talking about here is essentially learning how to focus 
and prioritize your thoughts effectively—how to pick and choose 
what matters to you and what does not matter to you based on 
finely honed personal values. This is incredibly difficult. It takes a 
lifetime of practice and discipline to achieve. And you will regu- 
larly fail. But it is perhaps the most worthy struggle one can 
undertake in one’s life. It is perhaps the only struggle in one’s 
life. 
Because when you give too many fucks—when you give a 
fuck about everyone and everything—you will feel that you’re 

perpetually entitled to be comfortable and happy at all times, that 
everything is supposed to be just exactly the fucking way you 
want it to be. This is a sickness. And it will eat you alive. You will 
see every adversity as an injustice, every challenge as a failure, 
every inconvenience as a personal slight, every disagreement as a 
betrayal. You will be confined to your own petty, skull-sized hell, 
burning with entitlement and bluster, running circles around 
your very own personal Feedback Loop from Hell, in constant 
motion yet arriving nowhere. 

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck 
When most people envision giving no fucks whatsoever, they 
imagine a kind of serene indifference to everything, a calm that 
weathers all storms. They imagine and aspire to be a person who 
is shaken by nothing and caves in to no one. 
There’s a name for a person who finds no emotion or mean- 
ing in anything: a psychopath. Why you would want to emulate a 
psychopath, I have no fucking clue. 
So what does not giving a fuck mean? Let’s look at three “sub- 
tleties” that should help clarify the matter. 
 
Subtlety #1: Not giving a fuck does not mean being indif- 
ferent; it means being comfortable with being different. 
Let’s be clear. There’s absolutely nothing admirable or confi- 
dent about indifference. People who are indifferent are lame and 
scared. They’re couch potatoes and Internet trolls. In fact, indif- 
ferent people often attempt to be indifferent because in reality 
they give way too many fucks. They give a fuck about what 

everyone thinks of their hair, so they never bother washing or 
combing it. They give a fuck about what everyone thinks of their 
ideas, so they hide behind sarcasm and self-righteous snark. 
They’re afraid to let anyone get close to them, so they imagine 
themselves as some special, unique snowflake who has prob- 
lems that nobody else would ever understand. 
Indifferent people are afraid of the world and the reper- 
cussions of their own choices. That’s why they don’t make any 
meaningful choices. They hide in a gray, emotionless pit of their 
own making, self-absorbed and self-pitying, perpetually dis- 
tracting themselves from this unfortunate thing demanding their 
time and energy called life. 
Because here’s a sneaky truth about life. There’s no such 
thing as not giving a fuck. You must give a fuck about something. 
It’s part of our biology to always care about something and there- 
fore to always give a fuck. 
The question, then, is, What do we give a fuck about? What 
are we choosing to give a fuck about? And how can we not give a 

fuck about what ultimately does not matter? 
My mother was recently screwed out of a large chunk of 
money by a close friend of hers. Had I been indifferent, I would 
have shrugged my shoulders, sipped my mocha, and down- 
loaded another season of The Wire. Sorry, Mom. 
But instead, I was indignant. I was pissed off. I said, “No, 
screw that, Mom. We’re going to lawyer the fuck up and go after 
this asshole. Why? Because I don’t give a fuck. I will ruin this 
guy’s life if I have to.” 
This illustrates the first subtlety of not giving a fuck. When we 
say, “Damn, watch out, Mark Manson just don’t give a fuck,” we 
don’t mean that Mark Manson doesn’t care about anything; on 
the contrary, we mean that Mark Manson doesn’t care about 
adversity in the face of his goals, he doesn’t care about pissing 
some people off to do what he feels is right or important or 
noble. We mean that Mark Manson is the type of guy who would 
write about himself in third person just because he thought it 
was the right thing to do. He just doesn’t give a fuck. 

This is what is so admirable. No, not me, dumbass—the 
overcoming adversity stuff, the willingness to be different, an 
outcast, a pariah, all for the sake of one’s own values. The will- 
ingness to stare failure in the face and shove your middle finger 
back at it. The people who don’t give a fuck about adversity or 
failure or embarrassing themselves or shitting the bed a few 
times. The people who just laugh and then do what they believe 
in anyway. Because they know it’s right. They know it’s more 
important than they are, more important than their own feelings 
and their own pride and their own ego. They say, “Fuck it,” not to 
everything in life, but rather to everything unimportant in life. 
They reserve their fucks for what truly matters. Friends. Family. 
Purpose. Burritos. And an occasional lawsuit or two. And be- 
cause of that, because they reserve their fucks for only the big 
things that matter, people give a fuck about them in return. 
Because here’s another sneaky little truth about life. You can’t 
be an important and life-changing presence for some people 
without also being a joke and an embarrassment to others. You 

just can’t. Because there’s no such thing as a lack of adversity. It 
doesn’t exist. The old saying goes that no matter where you go, 
there you are. Well, the same is true for adversity and failure. No 
matter where you go, there’s a five-hundred-pound load of shit 
waiting for you. And that’s perfectly fine. The point isn’t to get 
away from the shit. The point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing 
with. 
 
Subtlety #2: To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first 
give a fuck about something more important than adversity. 
Imagine you’re at a grocery store, and you watch an elderly 
lady scream at the cashier, berating him for not accepting her 
thirty-cent coupon. Why does this lady give a fuck? It’s just thirty 
cents. 
I’ll tell you why: That lady probably doesn’t have anything bet- 
ter to do with her days than to sit at home cutting out coupons. 
She’s old and lonely. Her kids are dickheads and never visit. She 
hasn’t had sex in over thirty years. She can’t fart without extreme 

lower-back pain. Her pension is on its last legs, and she’s prob- 
ably going to die in a diaper thinking she’s in Candy Land. 
So she snips coupons. That’s all she’s got. It’s her and her 
damn coupons. It’s all she can give a fuck about because there is 
nothing else to give a fuck about. And so when that pimply-faced 
seventeen-year-old cashier refuses to accept one of them, when 
he defends his cash register’s purity the way knights used to de- 
fend maidens’ virginity, you can bet Granny is going to erupt. 
Eighty years of fucks will rain down all at once, like a fiery hail- 
storm of “Back in my day” and “People used to show more re- 
spect” stories. 
The problem with people who hand out fucks like ice cream 
at a goddamn summer camp is that they don’t have anything 
more fuck-worthy to dedicate their fucks to. 
If you find yourself consistently giving too many fucks about 
trivial shit that bothers you—your ex-boyfriend’s new Facebook 
picture, how quickly the batteries die in the TV remote, missing 
out on yet another two-for-one sale on hand sanitizer—chances 

are you don’t have much going on in your life to give a legitimate 
fuck about. And that’s your real problem. Not the hand sanitizer. 
Not the TV remote. 
I once heard an artist say that when a person has no prob- 
lems, the mind automatically finds a way to invent some. I think 
what most people—especially educated, pampered middle-class 
white people—consider “life problems” are really just side ef- 
fects of not having anything more important to worry about. 
It then follows that finding something important and mean- 
ingful in your life is perhaps the most productive use of your 
time and energy. Because if you don’t find that meaningful some- 
thing, your fucks will be given to meaningless and frivolous 
causes. 
 
Subtlety #3: Whether you realize it or not, you are always 
choosing what to give a fuck about. 
People aren’t just born not giving a fuck. In fact, we’re born 
giving way too many fucks. Ever watch a kid cry his eyes out 

because his hat is the wrong shade of blue? Exactly. Fuck that 
kid. 
When we’re young, everything is new and exciting, and every- 
thing seems to matter so much. Therefore, we give tons of fucks. 
We give a fuck about everything and everyone—about what peo- 
ple are saying about us, about whether that cute boy/girl called 
us back or not, about whether our socks match or not, or what 
color our birthday balloon is. 
As we get older, with the benefit of experience (and having 
seen so much time slip by), we begin to notice that most of 
these sorts of things have little lasting impact on our lives. Those 
people whose opinions we cared about so much before are no 
longer present in our lives. Rejections that were painful in the 
moment have actually worked out for the best. We realize how 
little attention people pay to the superficial details about us, and 
we choose not to obsess so much over them. 
Essentially, we become more selective about the fucks we’re 
willing to give. This is something called maturity. It’s nice; you 

should try it sometime. Maturity is what happens when one 
learns to only give a fuck about what’s truly fuckworthy. As Bunk 
Moreland said to his partner Detective McNulty in The Wire 
(which, fuck you, I still downloaded): “That’s what you get for 
giving a fuck when it wasn’t your turn to give a fuck.” 
Then, as we grow older and enter middle age, something else 
begins to change. Our energy level drops. Our identity solidifies. 
We know who we are and we accept ourselves, including some 
of the parts we aren’t thrilled about. 
And, in a strange way, this is liberating. We no longer need to 
give a fuck about everything. Life is just what it is. We accept it, 
warts and all. We realize that we’re never going to cure cancer or 
go to the moon or feel Jennifer Aniston’s tits. And that’s okay. 
Life goes on. We now reserve our ever-dwindling fucks for the 
most truly fuck-worthy parts of our lives: our families, our best 
friends, our golf swing. And, to our astonishment, this is enough. 
This simplification actually makes us really fucking happy on a 
consistent basis. And we start to think, Maybe that crazy 

alcoholic Bukowski was onto something. Don’t try. 

So Mark, What the Fuck Is the Point of This Book Anyway? 
This book will help you think a little bit more clearly about what 
you’re choosing to find important in life and what you’re choos- 
ing to find unimportant. 
I believe that today we’re facing a psychological epidemic, 
one in which people no longer realize it’s okay for things to suck 
sometimes. I know that sounds intellectually lazy on the surface, 
but I promise you, it’s a life/death sort of issue. 
Because when we believe that it’s not okay for things to suck 
sometimes, then we unconsciously start blaming ourselves. We 
start to feel as though something is inherently wrong with us, 
which drives us to all sorts of overcompensation, like buying 
forty pairs of shoes or downing Xanax with a vodka chaser on a 
Tuesday night or shooting up a school bus full of kids. 
This belief that it’s not okay to be inadequate sometimes is 
the source of the growing Feedback Loop from Hell that is com- 
ing to dominate our culture. 
The idea of not giving a fuck is a simple way of reorienting 

our expectations for life and choosing what is important and 
what is not. Developing this ability leads to something I like to 
think of as a kind of “practical enlightenment.” 
No, not that airy-fairy, eternal bliss, end-of-all-suffering, bull- 
shitty kind of enlightenment. On the contrary, I see practical en- 
lightenment as becoming comfortable with the idea that some 
suffering is always inevitable—that no matter what you do, life is 
comprised of failures, loss, regrets, and even death. Because 
once you become comfortable with all the shit that life throws at 
you (and it will throw a lot of shit, trust me), you become invin- 
cible in a sort of low-level spiritual way. After all, the only way to 
overcome pain is to first learn how to bear it. 
This book doesn’t give a fuck about alleviating your problems 
or your pain. And that is precisely why you will know it’s being 
honest. This book is not some guide to greatness—it couldn’t 
be, because greatness is merely an illusion in our minds, a 
made-up destination that we obligate ourselves to pursue, our 
own psychological Atlantis. 

Instead, this book will turn your pain into a tool, your trauma 
into power, and your problems into slightly better problems. 
That is real progress. Think of it as a guide to suffering and how 
to do it better, more meaningfully, with more compassion and 
more humility. It’s a book about moving lightly despite your 
heavy burdens, resting easier with your greatest fears, laughing at 
your tears as you cry them. 
This book will not teach you how to gain or achieve, but 
rather how to lose and let go. It will teach you to take inventory of 
your life and scrub out all but the most important items. It will 
teach you to close your eyes and trust that you can fall back- 
wards and still be okay. It will teach you to give fewer fucks. It 
will teach you to not try.