What I learned about mental health from reading “The subtle art of not giving a fuck”...

When I was a founder, I kept looking for books about mental health, but most of them were generic and sounded like they were written by academics and not real people facing real problems. Then, I went to a book signing in Brooklyn, where I met Mark Manson and bought his book. Here are three things I learned about mental health:

1. You'll have fewer problems when you choose the things you want to give a fuck about. “The problem with people who hand out fucks like ice cream at a goddam summer camp is that they don’t have anything more fuck-worthy to dedicate their fucks to”—Mark Manson. If you don’t know what to care about, you’ll start caring about a lot of unimportant sh*t, and that’s when you start finding problems everywhere. So, even if you don’t want to, you are forced to choose what to give a fuck about.

2. Suffering is essential to your growth. The book teaches us that suffering is inevitable, but even better is knowing that the same hell you can’t avoid will play an essential role in your growth. And the light is accepting that without that suffering, growth is not possible. Mark Manson explains how only through discomfort, suffering, and pain can you grow. This happens because only discomfort will lead to seeking change. He writes: “We suffer for the simple reason that suffering is biologically useful. It is nature’s preferred agent for inspiring change”.

Life’s tough, and that’s ok. When you get to understand this simple truth, things don’t affect you the same way. It’s important to understand that things will not always go the way you planned; events will go wrong, people will act against your expectations, bad things will happen, and you’ll be unfairly beaten down too often. But that’s normal!