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Brainy quote: “Too many of us spend money we don’t have, buying things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like”
I can’t remember exactly where I was or what I was doing when I saw the quote above but one thing is for sure… it got to me. The quote above is basically saying that a lot of us give too many f*cks about the wrong things in life and if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll see that it’s the truth. You and I sometimes care too much about the wrong things in life – what people think about you, or what some insulting jackass yelled at you in traffic on your way back from work last Thursday for example.
The general underlying theme of this book is quite simple… No matter who you are, you (just like me) are going to die soon and in the limited amount of time each of us have here on this beautiful third rock from the sun, we only have a limited number of f”cks to give. The onus then is on us to give as much of our attention to the things in life that are important (or “f*ck – worthy” according to the author), and do our best to ignore the rest. There are many great ideas in this book, but the one that I gained the most from is the act of properly and carefully selecting one’s own values being a good predictor of general happiness. You see, a major reason why some of us get upset or angry is because our expectations aren’t met by other people and our expectations are generally defined by our values. When someone doesn’t like us and we feel offended, it is because we place value on everyone liking us. The issue with a value like this is that you don’t have complete control over it which in effect is tantamount to giving some of your power away. If we make a subtle switch to this value by making it something like: “I’ll treat people with the required decency that I value, and stand up for myself to jackasses who are generally unpleasant”, things change pretty dramatically for the better. With this newly refined value, your actions and your actions alone define success. Following this new value means that you treat everyone with respect and stand up to those who treat you badly. Those actions are a lot more controllable by you than the value of “wanting to be liked by everyone which is pretty nigh impossible as I’m guessing you’ve probably figured out by now. You’ll find this and many more other nuggets of wisdom in this book. A highly recommended read!
Without Wax
Chuba Oyolu Ph.D.
chubaoyolu.org
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