Quotes

But our attention is limited. There’s no way we can process the tidal waves of information flowing past us constantly. Therefore, the only zeroes and ones that break through and catch our attention are the truly exceptional pieces of information (…) This flood of extreme information has conditioned us to believe that exceptionalism is the new normal (…) the deluge of exceptional information drives us to feel pretty damn insecure and desperate.

People who feel entitled view every occurrence in their life as either an affirmation of, or a threat to, their own greatness.

Negative emotions are a call to action. When you feel them, you are supposed to do something.

True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.

The secret sauce is in the solving of the problems, not in not having problems in the first place.

The emotional pain of rejection or failure teaches us how to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. And this is what is so dangerous about a society that coddles itself (…) we lose the benefits of experiencing healthy doses of pain, a loss that disconnects us from the reality of the world around us.

There’s no value in suffering when it’s done without purpose.

If you find yourself consistently giving too many fucks about trivial shit that bothers you, chances are you don’t have much going on in your real life to give a legitimate fuck about. And that’s your real problem.

You can’t be an important and life-changing presence for some people without also being a joke and an embarrassment to others.

Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.

If you go around giving a fuck about everything and everyone without conscious thought or choice-well then you’re going to get fucked.

To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain.

Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience.

Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience.

Because there’s an infinite amount of things we can now see or know, there are also infinite number of ways we can discover that we don’t measure up.

The problem to giving too many fucks is bad for your mental health. It causes you to be overly attached to the superficial and the fake.

The world is constantly telling you that path to a better life is more (…) You are constantly bombarded with messages to give a fuck about everything all the time (…) Why? My guess: because giving a fuck about more is good for business.

Conventional life advice (…) is actually focusing 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.

Self-improvement and success often occur together. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are the same thing.

Let the punishment match the offense.