If you’ve come to learn more about marketing then you’ve come to the right place. You just happen to come on the wrong day. Let’s talk about a great pair of books that I just finished reading.
Who here has read The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck??? That book kicked my ass and I loved it.
I just read his follow up Everything Is F*cked. My God, that book will make you want to swan dive off of the nearest bridge. This book might as well have quoted George Carlin’s campaign slogan of “F*ck Hope, The Public Sucks.” But there were some great points to take away from both books aside from just the entertaining ones.
The first is all about suffering, fear of failure, and those usual suspects that come up. I had a buddy of mine who was an incredible songwriter and musician.
Music was his life. When you would ask him, he would say that it was all he wanted to do for the rest of his life.
But when it came time to showing him the ropes of how to get out there online, how to set up a tour, and how he should build an audience… he would immediately pull back.
He said things like:
🗣“It would take the fun out of it.”
🗣“I don’t want to force it.”
🗣“I would love to do it full time, but if it happens it just happens. No need to bust my ass working on it.”
What I realized was that he really didn’t want to do it. Even though he loves music, he didn’t REALLY want to. Why? His fear of failure and struggle was greater than his love for music.
And that’s ok.
Taking a good hard look in the mirror reveals to me why I was able to churn out release after release in bands, but never a solo record.
The Subtle Art of Safety
The second point is a much different one… it’s a pretty uncomfortable one, too. He points out within the culture how we’ve managed to overreact about everything in order to avoid pain.
We fail to see good in others when they don’t agree with us. We believe that we’re living in a horrible time period when, in fact, we’re in the most prosperous time in human history.
Everyone on each side of the extremist political spectrum acts like a baby playing a victim card.
The biggest takeaway from the book is something important that is a problem on a sociological level that we can fix within ourselves… our reactions.
The issue in modern society is that everyone wants reality to curve around them. They want everything to cater to their own experience in order to feel comfortable.
This is the wrong way to go about things. By owning your emotions, your needs, and your experience, you can liberate yourself from living in a perpetual state of victimization.
I see a lot of that happening in today’s world under the guise of altruism.
Now don’t get me wrong… there are plenty of great causes that support human progress. And plenty of things that we can improve upon.
But we live in a time where people cherry pick things to get offended about.
I was literally in a Texas BBQ place this weekend in Asia where this group of self-entitled hippy brats came in bitching at the owner that there were no vegan options for them on the menu.
You’re in a 🤬ing Texas BBQ place, you shit stain. I don’t go to my local vegan restaurant and expect pork ribs.
That same week someone was posting online how Steak N’ Shake should have vegan options… it’s literally called “Meat N’ Milk” they don’t need vegan options for you.
This isn’t to pick on vegans, either. It is just the most recent thing that I happened to see.
God knows there are moronic upper class middle-aged white guys who think there’s a white genocide going on because they heard a bit of Spanish during an NFL commercial. (Why don’t try traveling more than 20 miles out of your hometown a bit, ya turd).
The Cultural Symptom
Make no mistake… this epidemic is not generational, racial, religious, atheist, or dietary.
Nor is this simply an epidemic PROBLEM. The problem is not that we’re all a bunch of babies. This is an epidemic SYMPTOM of the bigger problem. The cultural reaction.
This is a direct reaction of:Â
📺And the cut-throat entertainment that we seek (turn off the reality shows)
Why am I sharing this? Is it to rant? Yeah, a little bit. Ok, a lot. I happen to enjoy complaining.
But honestly, these books made me feel uncomfortable as hell. Because it reflected back a bunch of selfish bullshit that I know that I have done in my life. Victimizing non-sense disguised as excuses. We all do it!
If you catch yourself doing it then you might be reflecting your internal struggles by blaming the external world.
Know that when you can take ownership of a narrow view of yourself and society then you can break it.
I hope that if you read this and squirmed a little bit so that you could grow, too. And a huge thanks to Mark Manson for inspiring me to start another book myself and to allow me to be a bit more authentic with myself.
If you’re being honest with yourself, do you find yourself doing this?