Ep#187 The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F---

In this episode, I unpack some of the core ideas from The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k by Mark Manson — and how they relate (or don’t) to burnout recovery. We’ll explore why the pursuit of positivity can backfire, what “choosing your struggles” actually means, and how to take radical responsibility without shame or blame.

You’ll hear my take on:

• Why you shouldn’t try to care about everything
• The role of values, pain, and freedom in how you spend your energy
• Where “extreme ownership” helps burnout — and where it harms
• Why accepting the bad is key to getting your power back

This isn’t about blaming yourself. It’s about choosing what really matters — so you can stop the self-abandonment cycle and start living with purpose again.

📍 Mentioned:

• Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
• The Last Word on Power by Tracy Goss

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:23 Exploring 'The Subtle Art Of Not Giving a...
• 1:08 Mark Manson's Philosophy on Happiness
• 2:20 The Role of Pain and Avoidance in Burnout
• 4:35 Understanding Entitlement
• 6:15 Taking Responsibility and Developing Self-Awareness
• 8:19 Improving Human Relationships
• 9:19 Conclusion and Call to Action

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi everyone. My name's Dex Randall, and this is the Burnout Recovery Podcast where I teach professionals to recover from burnout and get back to passion and reward at work. Hello my friends. Today we're going to explore The Subtle Art Of Not Giving an... (okay kids listening).

[00:00:31] And I'm doing this in case, like me, you've seen this book for years on airport bookshelves and walked straight past its expletive-laden orange cover. Surely it is a repellent for conscious, educated people like you and I, right?

[00:00:49] And indeed, the first chapter, aptly titled Don't Try, is so f-bombed, it's actually a tiring read. In it, Mark Manson, the author, frames Charles Bakowski -poet, womanizer and drunk- as a success simply because he embraced his failure. Mark wants us to do the same, since trying to create positive experiences is itself a negative experience.

[00:01:17] I must confess, I began to be intrigued.

[00:01:21] He goes on to say, the more you pursue feeling better, the worse you feel, because wanting focuses on lack. If you want more success, all you ever think about is not having enough. Mark suggests instead, we choose what we care about more carefully, since happiness is achieved through the struggle of solving problems. So, upgrading the problems we are trying to solve will help us feel better.

[00:01:51] The remainder of the book describes the impediments Mark sees, to creating satisfaction with our quality of life. And the methods of upgrading our thoughts, values, and behaviors to sustain a fulfilling life and relationships.

[00:02:08] And I guarantee that unless you've read this book, some of these will shed new perspective on old problems. They did for me, and I've studied human problems for quite a while now.

[00:02:20] One belief that Mark and I share is that human overreactivity to emotional pain leads most of us to avoidance -of situations, perceptions, failure, relationship conflict, and of course pain itself.

[00:02:38] And for avoidance, read addiction of any kind. Choosing to change emotional state artificially.

[00:02:45] Life is 50-50, pain and pleasure, about 50% painful emotions, 50% pleasurable emotions that guide our experiences. We literally can't avoid pain. Only switch the immediate visceral pain for the pain of shutdown and separation. This dynamic plays a surprisingly important part in burnout, where we start seeing adversity everywhere.

[00:03:17] In reality, painful feelings are simply a prompt from our brain to solve a problem. Mark claims that his book will turn your pain into a tool, your trauma into power and your problems into slightly better problems. Rather than it being a manual on the pursuit of greatness, since greatness is a made up standard that we then obligate ourselves to pursue. Fruitlessly, usually.

[00:03:48] It all sounds a tiny bit trite, but let's see how we go.

[00:03:51] Mark notes that what you care about, your values, determine your quality of life. In a culture that overemphasizes being extraordinary, so-called good values are reality based, socially constructive and under your control. Things such as honesty, responsibility, curiosity.

[00:04:17] Whereas so-called bad values are destructive or externally driven, like always being liked, being the best, seeking constant pleasure.

[00:04:31] But here's why I'm going to recommend that you read this book. The part about entitlement, you know, that cultural phenomenon attributed to the younger generations.

[00:04:43] Do I have entitlement? Absolutely not. Don't be daft. Oh wait. Yes, I do!

[00:04:52] Entitlement is wanting good things to happen without earning them.

[00:04:58] It sees life events as an endorsement of, or a threat to, our greatness. It's a precarious state of denial. Entitlement turns us into victims. We blame something else for us not having the life that we want. We embrace helplessness. We forget to care about what we choose to create. If pain is part of life and it helps us to solve problems, then choosing what pain to work with is the key to our growth, not avoiding all pain.

[00:05:33] My own view on entitlement is that in early life, approval, love and protection were given to us perhaps only if we behaved well. And when we didn't get our childhood needs for attachment and authenticity met because of this, we understood that we were defective, permanently defective, denied agency over our own survival, and then we became entitled.

[00:06:01] There's really no need to add self blame to that.

[00:06:04] In our journey through life we are making decisions constantly. We're choosing how to respond, not what happens to us, which is largely outside our control. But what we can do is choose to see ourselves as responsible for what happens to us, no matter what the external circumstances are.

[00:06:27] A vital way to create more power for ourselves is to take this responsibility -for what happens to us and for how we respond. And to do this, we need to develop a very strong self-awareness to interrupt our old patterns, to interpret what happened in a new way, and then make solid values-based behavior choices. So for this, we need to know where we want to go and why. In this context, recognizing that we are wrong or failing is a major advantage because then we can choose a new path.

[00:07:05] I do like books like The Last Word on Power by Tracy Goss, about embracing your personal power in corporate leadership; Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink about taking absolute responsibility for oneself in military leadership. They share a focus on "power with and for" not "power over" that stems from honestly facing what is. Honesty or emerging from self-delusion is a fundamental skill to develop in living a better, more fulfilling life.

[00:07:41] The power you develop will rest on choosing authenticity, being true to yourself warts and all, accepting failure, accepting feeling bad, accepting the possibility of rejection.

[00:07:57] In daily life, when we reflect on our own performance, we often feel bad about feeling bad, which creates a loop of self-judgment. It sounds a bit like "I'm anxious about being anxious", or "I'm frustrated about being frustrated". Instead, we can accept that negative emotions are normal and stop feeding that loop.

[00:08:19] Mark goes on to expand his success blueprint into how to improve the quality of your human relationships, both professional and personal. The chapters on boundaries, saying no, accepting disagreement and making space for the differentness of others is both insightful and accessible.

[00:08:45] I won't spoil it for you, go read it. In fact, I'm quite curious if this short precis has left you feeling inspired to read this book, which I found very content rich and concept rich. So I have only presented a little glimpse, but let me know your thoughts. And I'll leave you with this: Caring less about the trivial frees you to care deeply about what's truly important and iteratively pursue better and better problems.

[00:09:19] Thank you for listening today. If you value this content, please do share it with your people and rate and review the podcast, which helps us reach more people who suffer.

[00:09:31] If you identify with the difficulties presented in this episode or indeed in the book, and if you'd like to upgrade your quality of life, banish burnout, and reduce suffering, let's talk and discover how you can get there from here. You can book an appointment at dexrandall.com.