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So, Mark, what the fuck is the point of this book anyway?

Choosing to find the important and the unimportant. Reorienting out expectations for life.

It’s okay for things to suck sometimes.

Practical enlightenment: becoming comfortable with the idea that some suffering is always inevitable
– that no matter what you do, life is compromised of failures, loss, regrets, and even death.

The only way to overcome pain is to first learn how to bear it.

Greatness is merely an illusion in our minds, a made-up destination that we obligate ourselves to
pursue, our own psychological Atlantis.

Turn your pain into a tool, your trauma into power, and your problems into slightly better problems.
Moving lightly despite your heavy burdens, resting easier with your greatest fears, laughing at your
tears as you cry them. Not teach you how to gain or achieve, but rather how to lose and let go. Take
inventory of your life and scrub out all but the most important items. Teach you to close your eyes
and trust that you can fall backwards and still be okay. To give fewer fucks. To not try.

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CHAPTER 2: HAPPINESS IS A PROBLEM

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Life itself is a form of suffering. The rich suffer because of their riches. The poor suffer because of
their poverty. People without family suffer because they have no family. People with a family suffer
because of their family. People who pursue worldly pleasures suffer because of their worldly
pleasures. People who abstain from worldly pleasures suffer because of their abstention. This isn’t to
say that all suffering is equal. Some suffering is certainly more painful than other suffering. But we all
must suffer nonetheless.

The pain and loss are inevitable and we should let go of trying to resist them.

THE MISADVENTURES OF DISAPPOINTMENT PANDA

The greatest truths in life are usually the most unpleasant to hear.

Disappointment Panda

- None of us would want but all of us would need.

- Proverbial vegetables to our mental diet of juk food.
- Make our lives better despite making us feel worse.
- Stronger by tearing us down, brighten our future by showing us the darkness.
- Watching a movie where the hero dies in the end: you love it even more despite making you
feel horrible, because it feels real.

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Suffering is biologically useful. It is nature’s preferred agent for inspiring change.

We are wired to become dissatisfied with whatever we have and satisfied by only what we do not
have.
The constant dissatisfaction has kept our species fighting and striving building and conquering.

Pain, in all of its forms, is our body’s most effective means of spurring action.

Physical pain is a product of our nervous system, a feedback mechanism to give us a sense of our
own physical proportions – where we can and cannot move and what we can and cannot touch.
When we exceed those limits, our nervous system duly punishes us to make sure that we pay
attention and never do it again.

Pain

- To pay attention to when we’re young or careless.

- Shows us what’s good for us versus what’s bad for us.
- Understand and adhere to our own limitation.

It’s not always beneficial to avoid pain and seek pleasure, since pain can, at times, be life-or-
death important to our well-being.

Research has found that our brains don’t register much difference between physical pain and
psychological pain. So when I tell you that my first girlfriend cheating on me and leaving me felt like
having an ice pick slowly inserted into the center of my heart, that’s because, well, it hurt so much I
might as well have had an ice pick slowly inserted into the center of my heart.

Psychological pain is an indication of something out of equilibrium, some limitation that has been
exceeded. The motional pain of rejection or failure teaches us how to avoid making the same
mistakes in the future.

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“Life is essentially an endless series of problems, Mark. The solution to one problem is merely the
creation of the next one. Don’t hope for a life without problems. There’s no such thing. Instead, hope
for a life full of good problems.”

HAPPINESS COMES FROM SOLVING PROBLEMS

Problems never stop; they merely get exchanged and/or upgraded.

Happiness comes from solving problems. The keyword here is “solving”.

To be happy we need something to solve. Happiness is therefore a form of action; it’s an activity, not
something that is passively bestowed upon you.

Happiness is a constant work-in-progress, because solving problems is a constant work-in-progress –

the solutions to today’s problems will lay the foundation for tomorrow’s problems, and so on. True
happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.

Denial. Deny that their problems exist. They deny reality, they must constantly delude/distract
themselves from reality. Leads to insecurity, neuroticism and emotional repression.

Victim Mentality. That there is nothing they can do to solve their problems even when they in fact
could. Blame others or blame outside circumstances. Leads to life of anger, helplessness and despair.
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EMOTIONS ARE OVERRATED

Sadness of being alone teaches you not to do the things that made you feel so alone again.

Negative emotions are a call to action. When you feel them, it’s because you’re supposed to do
something.

Emotions are part of the equation of our lives, but not the entire equation. Just because something
feels good doesn’t mean it is good. Just because something feels bad doesn’t mean it is bad.
Emotions are merely signposts, suggestions that our neurobiology gives us, not commandments.
Therefore, we shouldn’t always trust our own emotions. In fact, I believe we should make a habit of
questioning them.

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An obsession and overinvestment in emotion fails us for the simple reason that emotions never last.
Whatever makes us happy today will no longer make us happy tomorrow, because our biology always
needs something more.

Hedonic Treadmill. The idea that we’re always working hard to change our life situation, but we
actually never feel very different.

Everything comes with an inherent sacrifice – whatever makes us feel good will also inevitably make
us feel bad. What we gain is also what we lose. What creates our positive experiences will define our
negative experiences.

This is a difficult pill to swallow. We like the idea that there’s some form of ultimate happiness that
can be attained. We like the idea that we can alleviate all of our suffering permanently. We like the
idea that we can feel fulfilled and satisfied with our lives forever. But we cannot.

CHOOSE YOUR STRUGGLE

Because happiness requires struggle. It grows from problems. Joy doesn’t sprout out of the ground
like daisies and rainbows. The solution lies in the acceptance and active engagement of that negative
experience – not the avoidance of it, not the salvation from it.

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People want an amazing physique. But you don’t end up with one unless you legitimately appreciate
the pain and physical stress that come with living inside a gym for hour upon hour, unless you love
calculation and calibrating the food you eat, planning your life out in tiny plate-sized portions.

People want a partner, a spouse. But you don’t end up attracting someone amazing without
appreciating the emotional turbulence that comes with weathering rejections, building the sexual
tension that never gets released, and staring blankly at a phone that never rings. It’s part of the
game of love. You can’t win if you don’t play.

WHAT IS THE PAIN YOU WANT TO SUSTAIN?

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I was in love with the result but I wasn’t in love with the process. I wanted the reward and not the
struggle. I was in love with not the fight but only the victory.

Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for. This is the most simple and basic
component of life: our struggles determine our successes. Our problems birth our happiness, along
with slightly better, slightly upgraded problems.

See: it’s a never-ending upward spiral. And if you think at any point you’re allowed to stop climbing,
I’m afraid you’re missing the point. Because the joy is in the climb itself.