Initially, this title did make me roll my eyes. I saw the book in the self help section of a library or shop, and thought wow, has our self help genre been taken over by the gen alpha or something. But I was starting to hear such good recommendations about it that I couldn’t help but buy a copy when I saw it in an Indian bookstore for a quarter of the price.

And surprisingly, yet unsurprisingly, I really enjoyed it and took a few good lessons from it.

Reading the book felt like I was being sat down by an old uncle to be told the hard facts of life. And that’s why I loved it.

I think it’s the same reason why it’s one of the top self help books out there.

We have too many books in the self help genre that sometimes blunt the realities of life too much. There’s so much focus on teaching us how to reach this perfect equilibrium of life to succeed — morning routines, affirmations and more. It requires so much of our life to already look good for us to be able to apply its principles. But sometimes it’s hard to kind of make use of it for our really tough ugly parts of life.

This book makes you shift your mindset about the struggles of life. It makes you face the difficult ugly parts of yourself to realise, hey they’re actually not ugly, or hey it’s ugly and that’s ok.

The underlying lesson of this book is not that we shouldn’t ‘give one’ about anything. It’s not the typical 16 year old line you hear of ‘I dont give one about anything, YOLO (I’m not really sure if this exists anymore!)’’. But it’s about how we need to stop ‘giving one’ about everything. The dangers of ‘giving one’ about everything and what you should really ‘give one’ about.

The book is split into nine chapters. The first 4 chapters lays down the framework for what ‘self improvement’ should really look like for a person. It builds it up from the foundation — our values and how to build the correct ones. The last 5 chapters discuss 5 counterintuitive values — values that are really unpopular to have but ones that are actually the most beneficial.

Please note: the book is scattered with profane language, which was my only issue with it. I’d find it difficult to recommend it to people younger than me.

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My personal favourite lessons from the book were:

1. The importance of choosing good values

The way we feel about a situation or problem is based on what values/ metrics of success we hold. If someone believes they are only successful once they earn £1 million, even though they have an extremely comfortable posh life with £900k in their bank, they will still feel unhappy and like a failure.

Reevaluating what our values are helps reevaluate what we see as success and failure.

As a Muslim, I feel like this is such an important lesson that we’ve been taught again and again, but one we tend to forget. In Islam, we know what our success metric, our values should be — our intention. If we intend to do something for Allah, then you can class that action as a success, regardless of if it fails in a worldly sense. But if it is other than for Allah, then it’s a failure, regardless of if you succeed in a worldly sense.

Our Lord has set down what our values are meant to be, but we tend to forget about it, and we tend to run after the values set down by society instead — money, status, prestige.

It’s as simple as starting a new class in your community. If your intention was to do it to benefit the community, so it will be pleasing to Allah, then you have succeeded. This is regardless if anyone turns up to this class or not. But if you did it more to make yourself known, then even if the class is brimming with students, that would be a failure. But how many of us see that as a failure?

2. Choosing your struggle

Life is a series of problems. Rich people have problems and poor people have problems. Corporate careers have problems and stay at home mums have problems. And anytime you solve a problem, eg. you become rich, that brings with it a new set of problems.

Therefore, it’s up to you to choose which struggles you would hate to have, and the ones you’re ok with.

Even though this lesson can sound a bit pessimistic, I feel like it just provides such a realistic way to look at choices in life. Sometimes, we over-aggrandise our dreams for the future. We imagine that the struggle we are going through now is worth it for this perfect future. We’re happy to hustle hard now, we’re ok hating life for now, because we think once we get the bigger paycheck, things will be perfect. But then we get the pay check, and we find ourselves as unhappy as before. Sometimes even more unhappy. Because we were not expecting this host of problems with this success, and now we’re having a mid life crisis.

I feel like I saw that play out in my own life with the way I studied throughout my schooling and university years — the subjects I chose, the ones I gave up…all to be able to get a job at a prestigious firm with a hefty paycheck. I was ok sacrificing a lot since I was fighting for my goal. I thought things would all fall in place once I reached that goal.

But then I began my job and I ended up more unhappy than ever. Because with the job, it brought a problem. A huge problem that I was not able to ignore. The lack of meaning, the lack of creative space.

It was a problem I had throughout my life fighting for this goal, but I was able to solve that problem for the short-term by telling myself that working towards that job was meaningful. But then I began the job and the problem magnified. I was no longer able to ignore it. I was no longer able to lie to myself. I realised at that point I had to make a choice between the struggle of uncertainty (of no longer having a dream job, a secure paycheck, etc) and the struggle of misery (the lack of meaning).

And it was that moment when I realised I had to choose which struggle I preferred over which dream I wanted, I was able to make the choices most true to myself.

Expecting there to be problems regardless of the dream you achieve is so important. Because it makes you choose your goals more realistically. You stop expecting the future to be perfect and you choose your future based on the hardest parts of it. That’s when achieving your dreams becomes the most fulfilling because you know you chose all of it — the good bits and the ugly parts.

3. You’re not special and that’s ok

Manson makes a really important point about the impact of mass media on our self worth. He talks about how mass media thrives on sharing the extreme. Extremely bad news, extremely good news, the best successes, the craziest adventures, etc. This is simply because that’s what gets the most attention which then yields them the biggest bucks.

But the impact that has on us, on us average peeps, is that being exceptional now feels like the norm. Not succeeding by your early 20’s, not having a multi-million business by your 30’s is seen as a failure. No wonder insecurities are higher than they’ve ever been!

But he goes on to say that the best way to make your way to becoming exceptional is to see yourself as a constant work in progress. To see yourself constantly on the path of improvement. You might never reach being exceptional, but that’s ok. That’s most of us out there. But the beauty of seeing yourself like this is that you’ll have grown more than ever. More than that version of you that was upset for not being born exceptional.

I’m planning to share a few of my favorite quotes soon, so stay tuned :)

Thank you for reaching till the end of this post.

I hope we get to meet each other in the next one too. Until then, if you have any thoughts about what you’ve just read, let me know. I’d love to start a conversation! Or feel free to check out other book reviews.

Until next time,

Thasneema 🌻