Book Author: Mark Manson
ISBN: 978-0-06-264154-0
Year Published: September 13, 2016
Pages: 224
Reviewed by: Juvaughn Mahabeer
Other books by the author:
(1) Attract women through honesty
(2) Everything is f*cked: A book about hope
“The desire for more positive experience is a negative experience.”
-Mark Manson
1. The Author’s backstory.
The author Mark Manson is a blogger turned author. He started a dating advice blog back in 2008 after he finished College.
As illustrated in his book, he started at a point in his life when he had nothing, so his thought process was “what do I have to lose?”.
He worked hard the next few years, and before he knew it, he was making a decent income selling PDFs and online courses.
He then decided to travel and see the world. He did this for the next five years, during which time he lived in 55 countries, the last being Russia. He marked this period in his life as being a time of growth and personal development. Now he is settled with his wife in Manhattan, New York.
2. Why did the author write the book?
I believe he wrote this book for the simple reason of sharing the knowledge he gained through his experiences of caring too much about the unimportant and neglecting what was most important.
This can be seen in his mindset as he set out to travel the world versus the person he became towards the end of his travels 5 years later.
From my research, he did not write this book in response to a previous argument or claim.
3. What is the Author’s thesis?
The author’s thesis is how to live a meaningful life by focusing on the things that matter most.
4. What is the Author’s purpose?
His purpose was to give advice that would spark reflection within his readers related to choosing what’s most important and handling suffering.
He shared it best,
“This book will turn your pain into a tool, your trauma into power, and your problems into slightly better problems, that is real progress”.
Think of it as a guide to suffering and how to do it better, more meaningfully, with more compassion and humility.
5. What were three arguments the Author used in defense of his thesis?
ARGUMENT 1
The first argument (pages 4-5) can be summarized in the following two-word phrase “Don’t try,” he talks about how we are constantly bombarded from all angles to do more and be more, for example, to have the newest TV or phone, to have a better vacation than your coworkers, to have the right kind of selfie stick, or to be smarter or prettier, to have more money or to be more successful.
He illustrates how this can harm our minds in the following quote,
“This fixation on the positive —on what’s better, what’s superior—only serves to remind us over and over again of what we are not, of what we lack, of what we should have been but fail to be.”
Thus, the key here is to not care about more but instead to care about less, which includes caring about the most important things. Personally, It would be my beliefs, family, friends, and goals for the future.
ARGUMENT 2
If you don’t find meaningful things to care about or to dedicate your time and energy to, then your mind will automatically invent or create meaningless or frivolous problems that will occupy your conscience and influence your behavior(pages 17-18).
I think this argument is strong because, in life, you are never stationary. You are either going forward or going backward.
Self-improvement and the advancements in one’s ambitions are an active pursuits and not passive.
So if we are passive in what we choose to think or care about, we will find the mundane and unimportant start to seep into our life.
To purchase this book on Amazon, Click here.
ARGUMENT 3
The third argument I would like to discuss can be found in Chapter 8, ‘The importance of saying no’, and how that translates to either having a healthy or unhealthy relationship.
He quotes two points in describing the difference between a healthy versus an unhealthy relationship, these were:
1) How well each person in the relationship accepts responsibility
2) The willingness of each person to both reject and be rejected by their partner.
He argues that there should be boundaries in the relationship and that each individual should take responsibility for their own problems, with the support of their partner.
In an unhealthy relationship, one would neglect his or her own responsibilities and try to take on the responsibility for the partner’s problems.
He went on to say that there should be support in a relationship, but what makes this support healthy is that the individual wants or choose to give it, and not because he or she feels obligated or entitled to do so.
I believe this argument was very supportive of the thesis because the quality of the relationship we have with our partner should be one of our highest priorities.
6. What was the author’s conclusion?
He concluded that life is a constant psychological battle between what’s mundane and unimportant and what’s meaningful and eternal. So we have always to be consciously aware of those forces to make the best decisions.
He quoted Bukowski to make his point, it reads,
“We’re all going to die, all of us. What a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by life’s trivialities; we are eaten up by nothing.”
Thus, knowing that we are going to die should motivate us to love each other, live our best life, and strive to make a mark on this world in a positive way.
To purchase this book on Amazon, Click here.
7. What is my conclusion about the book?
I would not recommend this book to children because even though it was rich in meaningful self-help content, it was also filled with swear language and crude humor.
INTENDED AUDIENCE
In my opinion, this book would most help millennials.
The book gave blunt and straightforward advice in the form of stories from the author’s life, many of which happened in his younger years.
He is currently 35, making him a millennial; thus, he had great advice about navigating that generation.
OVERALL READABILITY AND EFFECTIVENESS
I think this book was solid in its readability, each section flowed really well into the next, and I never got bored reading.
This book was effective in many ways, one of which was to help me think about the most important things in my life.
He stressed not being preoccupied with things that don’t matter because no matter what we think, we always care about something, so we should make that something count.
WHAT SHOULD YOU EXPECT TO GET OUT OF THIS BOOK?
You should expect to get great life advice, many of which I consider gems, from a man with a very diverse array of life experiences.
I would give this book a 4.4/5.
To purchase this book on Amazon, Click here.
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Juvaughn Mahabeer
Founder at Books Galore 2.0
Hi There! My name is Juvaughn Mahabeer. So funny story, I grew up being self-conscious about my reading ability because I thought I was behind everyone else. In my late teens, I decided to make it a habit, and over a few years of reading on and off, I grew a love for it. Now I see the importance of reading, so my current goal is to encourage others to make it a habit.
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