Book of The Week: "Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope" by Mark Manson

The sequel to Mark Manson's "The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck" was released earlier this year titled "Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope." As soon as I heard there was going to be second book coming out soon, it was only a matter of time before the book landed in my hot little hands - for a couple reasons.

First, I enjoyed reading Mark's first book and second, my "Book of The Week" analysis in February of this year did well. You should really go check it out, I'll leave link right here in parenthesis ("The Subtle of Not Giving A F*ck). One person actually went out and purchased the book on Amazon right after reading my post, so if that's not another good reason to pick up the book I don't know what to tell you.

THE "CONSCIOUSNESS CAR"
Interesting fact, we actually have two types of brains: The Thinking Brain and The Feeling Brain. Contrary to what most humans think, it is our Feeling Brain that is actually driving the car, not our Thinking Brain. Boy that's a scary thought, but it's true. All of our decisions are based off emotions, and those emotions come from the Feeling Brain. Our Thinking Brain is in the passenger's seat adding a little of logic to the situation.

Imagine if it was the other way around. What if our Feeling Brain was sitting on the passenger's side and the Thinking Brain was driving? Why do I think the conversation in the car would be like this Uber Driver and his passenger if the Thinking Brain was driving?

While still on the subject of the thinking brain, one of the thing that caught my eye was Mark's analogy to a page-turning, thrilling novel. You may be physically turning the pages, but it's the Feeling Brain that is making you turn the page and what makes good writing is the ability to connect with both the Thinking Brain and the Feeling Brain.

"FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR"
Only I would make a connection to the 1986 Disney adventure movie "The Flight of the Navigator" when Mark begins talking about about Einstein refuting the "time and space continuum. Mark uses the analogy of twins going into outer space, one's in a slow moving spaceship, while the other craft is going noticeably faster. The two twins agree to float around for a bit before returning to Earth, but when they return one twin has aged 20 years while the other barely aged at all.

This because as one twin was approaching the speed of light, time slows down, but the for the other twin it remains the same; thus resulting in the latter twin aging twice as fast. It is exactly what happened in "The Flight of the Navigator."

Young 12-year-old David Freeman went out in search for his little brother one July 4th night in the the late 1970s. He was abducted by alien spaceship, but what he thought was a mere minutes was, in actuality, eight years. His little brother (who he was looking for) was now older than him, his parents were noticeably older, and, yeah, by the way they moved away from their Fort Lauderdale home. Kind of creepy isn't it? But great movie. If you can find it out there on the great unknown of the internet, check it out.

IT'S ALWAYS "SEVEN"
I came across this notion before when I read Mark McCormack's "What They Don't Teach You In Harvard Business School." (Go check out that "Book of the Week" if you haven't. Great read!) But McCormack mentioned when he wanted people to decisively rate something, he would take the number seven away from the rating. McCormack found that "seven" always seemed to be a happy medium, but couldn't really gauge if someone liked it or not.

This is exactly what researchers found out when conducting research on happiness. No matter how good or bad something was in a person's life, they always ranked it as a seven. It comes back to a concept that was mentioned in "The Untethered Soul" (another good book to check out) and by the young YouTuber Tanner Braungardt, we are, as a society, constantly looking for something better. We want the next thing, just as "The Boss" taught us with the song "Badlands" - "poor man want to be rich, rich man want to be king, and a king ain't satisfied until he rules everything."

You know exactly what I'm talking about. "I'll be happy if I can get that job, promotion, or big dream house." But when you finally get it you're still not satisfied. It's a vicious cycle that leads to constant anxiety and you're never happy. You'll only be happy when you're living presently, in the now, the precious present.

Stay tuned for next week when we stick with Mark Manson's latest book and talk about pain.