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Four Keys to Success… According to Self-Help Anti-Guru
Psychology
In a market as saturated as that of self-help – in which there is a lot of demand but also a great supply – the disruptive visions are the ones that are making room for themselves. Smiling for no reason and unwarranted optimism are disappearing in favor of more honest theories and away from the “soft” coffee cup messages. The American writer and blogger Mark Manson is one of its exponents and with titles such as “The subtle art of giving a shit to everything” or “Everything is screwed up” has sold nine million books worldwide. Positivism is dead, long live realism.
In two lectures held at the Sharjah International Book Fair (United Arab Emirates), Manson distilled much of his theory. “I wanted to write a book that did not tell people how to be happy or how to be successful,” he admitted to dozens of schoolchildren. «People are already reading all these books and yet we have a existential crisis and poor mental health like never before. That said, these would be the keys that the author provides for the path to self-realization:
Don’t start the game losing
“You can be happy in a terrible place and unhappy in a wonderful place,” defends Manson. With this he came to say that it does not matter what “weapons” you have at first (such as your family background or your abilities) but what you are capable of doing with them. There is no use regretting what you do not have if you do not you get to take advantage of what you do have. It is about concentrating on the strengths in order to forget (or omit) the weaknesses.
Don’t chase happiness
A good part of the self-help manuals present the path to happiness as a search, as a long-distance race that often ends in abandonment due to fatigue. Manson what he recommends is “chasing the pain”: «Sacrifice is essential for success, so the difference will be in our ability to resist pain and our ability to fight, because that is where we find meaning in our existence. In the fight”. As a paradigm of this statement, he gave as an example the “runners”, who find in discipline and in a certain amount of suffering the recipe that gives meaning to their life. They know how to enjoy both the journey and the end of it.
Choose your challenges
Instead of choosing and pursuing the situation that you would associate with happiness (success at work, more money, good personal relationships) what you should look for are challenges that give us something to fight for. It doesn’t have to be anything extraordinary or epic, just “focus on what really matters to us.” Something, Manson points out, so we wouldn’t mind trying hard. “Everyone wants success, but not everyone accepts challenges,” he concluded.
Less is more
Motivation is overrated. You are not special. You just have to do ordinary things but extraordinarily well, “explains Manson, again throwing good-natured theories out the window. “And the same with your personal relationships: focus on few people but take care of them brilliantly.” In the end, a misunderstood ambition can lead to frustration if you also have no tolerance for pain or specific failures. “To be good at anything we have to know how to enjoy the pain associated with it, because with the associated success everyone knows how to enjoy.”