Recently a couple of very close friends gifted me a few books. One of them was the book - "The subtle art of not giving a ****" by Mark Manson. I think other than life experiences, some books have this extraordinary capability of subtly changing your trail of thinking. I would probably say that this is one of those books for me. My structure for this post is I am going to pen down one of the most incredible anecdotes I have read ever from this book followed by a list of insights I gained from this book.
PART I - TALE OF 2 MUSICIANS
In one of the anecdotes in this book, the career trajectories of 2 musicians who were chucked out unceremoniously from their band are traced.
a) A guitarist named Dave Mustaine belonging to a band who had just signed on a record deal was out of the blue, chucked out of the band without any explanation allegedly because of excessive drinking and drug problems. The guy on his bus ride home vowed that he would form his own band which would be so much greater than the band that he was chucked out of and would teach his former wretched bandmates a lesson with his success. True to his word, he became really famous and successful with his heavy metal named named Megadeth. However the band that he got chucked out of was Metallica which is considered one of the greatest rock bands in music history.
b) The drummer of the Beatles initially was not Ringo Starr. They started out with a drummer known as Pete Best. Pete Best was talented and incredibly good looking. It turns out that John and Paul in particular were jealous of Pete especially because of the female adulation he received and in 1962 asked their manager to chuck him out of the band (so effin horribly petty I know!). And their manager after some hesitation just asked him to leave. After beatlemania engulfed Britain in 1963 and the US in 1964, Pete Best was understandably depressed, took to drinking, failed in his other musical ventures and almost committed suicide in 1968 only to be stopped by his mother.
So 2 vastly divergent career paths for 2 musicians who were dealt an unfortunate deck of cards right at the start of a very promising career. But this is where the story gets really interesting.
In 2003 Dave Mustaine in a deeply personal interview gets teary eyed and states that despite the fame he got, he S-T-I-L-L feels like an utter failure because he feels that at the end of the day, he will always be the guy who got chucked out of Metallica
In sheer contrast, Pete Best in an interview states that he is happier than what he would have probably been had he still been with the Beatles. He explains that the circumstances that he found himself after his firing lead him to his wife and children - a stable and very happy family life. He still got to tour across Europe as a drummer playing for different bands so he still got to do what he loved. The only thing he missed out on was intense fame and adulation but what he had gained instead was much more meaningful to him.
The book argues that the metrics you choose to judge your life with and your underlying values determine how you cope after a devastating setback and ultimately how you lead your life. Dave Mustaine's metric on how he judged his life (whether he knew it or not) was whether he was more successful than Metallica or not an by that count he was a failure.
It really is interesting to ask yourself - would you rather be a Pete Best or a Dave Mustaine?
Personally I know that my younger version would have rather been a Dave Mustaine. But now it repulses me to think of having hate and revenge as your prime motivators of success and even when you work that hard to achieve it, you still are not at peace and are filled with self loathing. I take this is as a sign of growing up But I do know that a lot of people would not be comfortable with the idea of being a metamorphic Pete Best as well especially those who have burning ambition to achieve the highest levels of success/fame and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But what I believe is crucially important is to be brutally honest to yourself as to what values matter to you and with which you would want to judge yourself and others. And as far as possible, make sure those values are not shallow and superficial values. Most importantly accept those values/metrics which give you peace of mind. Otherwise you end up like a Dave Mustaine still bitter and unhappy.
At the end of the day, not all things in life that you think you want out of life are worth the importance and investment in emotion you give them. Choose wisely what what you want those things to be.
PART TWO - INSIGHTS FROM THE BOOK
1) Action is most times a cause and not an effect of motivation. Do something
2) Pain, regrets, rejection, loss, failures suffering and death are an inevitable part of life. Nobody is immune to these and is entitled to feel good and positive all the time. Life is lived by engaging with and not avoiding negative experiences.
3) Happiness comes from solving problems and is a constant work in progress
4) Problems and their severity of it are not unique to you. If you have a problem chances are millions have and face them. Responsibility to solve them lies with you and this is what builds up emotional resilience
5) Be more accepting of lying in the middle of the normal curve of life and not feel the need for claiming entitlement by lying on extreme ends of it
6) Be aware of your own mortality. This will give perspective whether what you are stressing so much about really matters so much in the grand scheme of things
7) Desire to avoid conflict, confrontation and rejection is a subtle form of entitlement because of the need to feel great all the time by avoiding hurting yourself and others
8) Indifferent is the worst thing you can be. There is a name for a person who finds no emotion or meaning in anything - a psychopath
9) Emotional healthy relationships are those where people support each other to solve their own shit. Nobody can or should 'save' you and you can't or shouldn't take responsibility for anybody's problems. The pain of confrontation leads to greater trust and respect in truly healthy relationships.
Penning this down really drills into me some very valuable truths to be accepted about life. My hope is that I or any person reading this can adopt some of these learnings in the practical sense.
