Have any of you read that book the subtle art of not giving a
by Mark Manson? Such a great book! My story about reading this book is that I was on road
to Santorini and I had a long day of traveling because it's really hard to get to an island,
i guess from another island.... I thought i'd bring a book with me just to occupy
my day since i was going to be on two flights and I had a lot of waiting time.
I read the film book in that one day. I couldn't put it down. The only time i put it down was to
show my passport at passport control. I found it super easy to read and there was a lot of good
points on it. So, I was just starting the book and it was a 7 30 a.m flight to London, so all the
business people were getting on the flight and i'm sitting there with a book with curse word on it.
And these two businessmen turned round to me just looked at me and was like "respect".
It felt quite freeing actually. Now i want to bring up a couple
of different points in this video, i have a few things i want to talk about but to summarize it:
1. No one cares about you as much as you do yourself
2. Mistakes happen 3. If it's not harming anyone
and you have the best intent, who cares? So there's this well-known phenomena
called the spotlight effect, and i guess the term comes from when we're in theater or
in a musical and we have the spotlight on us to show that we're the main character; that we're
the person that everyone should be focusing on. But the truth is most of us walk around our day
with our own spotlight effects. we think that we're the main character. We think that the world
revolves around us. We think that if we mess up everyone sees it. I mean, it sounds pretty
narcissistic when you put it in that way but it's just naturally how we are.
I'm not trying to say you're not important -you are the main character of your own movie- but
it's also the thing that's holding us back. Think about something that you really wanted
to do one time and you held yourself back because you thought of the embarrassment because everyone
would see it and everyone would make fun of you. It took me two years to start a YouTube channel:
two years! And it wasn't because i didn't have ideas, or i didn't have the means to do it...
i was just so worried about what everyone around me would think and when i posted my first video,
no one cared! No one watched it, no one cared. It's been six or seven months and i'm still going.
Another story about my own spotlight effect is: i am the world's worst driver. I can't drive,
I failed my driving test numerous times i feel anxious on the roads. The reason i feel anxious
isn't because i'm a bad driver, but because i'm so busy thinking that every car on the road is
looking at my car and judging if i'm a little bit shaky, or if i took the corner too tight
or something like that. It makes me so nervous and the reality is no one cares. They're too busy
in their own spotlight, in their own bubble, worrying about their own car.
So in the section of the video, i'm asking you to think about something that you have wanted to do
for the longest time but you felt so embarrassed, you felt that you might get made fun of or
there's someone else stopping you because you're too busy thinking about yourself.
Next up mistakes happen uh this is an obvious one but if you're like me you might go to bed
sometimes thinking "oh my god five years ago i can't believe i said that that was the worst
everyone laughed at me everyone's gonna remember me for that" and the truth is it's the same as the
last one.... no one cares. No one cares about a mistake you made five years ago except yourself so
you need to accept that mistake happened, learn from it and move on with your life. Listen, humans
all have faults, we all make mistakes in the same way that we are prone to getting the cold or the
flu every now and then we can't help it- we're not perfect. I feel like holding on to the past
and holding on to your previous mistakes is one of the reasons that we struggle to move forward
and it holds us back from our own happiness and our own joys. So, step one is letting go because
that mistake is gone it's happened and it's over: learn from it and move on.
Speaking about lack of control: how many of you out there have been worried or
got upset about something that's out with your own control? maybe you had a really nice trip planned
last summer and covid had it canceled maybe you're like me and your Erasmus got cancelled because of
the pandemic. Of course it sucks but it's out of our controls, are we gonna waste our time moping
over it are we gonna move on with our lives ? Taking a stoic view here: if you can't control
it you're gonna have to accept it move on. "The chief task in life is simply this
to identify and separate matters so that i can say clearly to myself which are externals and not
under my control in which do i have the choices i can actually control." This is a really good
quote by Epictetus, i guess the protagonist of the stoicism movement and it's so true.
If it's out of our control we should let it be out of our control in our minds.
Last thing here: as much as i've just talked about getting us out of our own
spotlight and stop thinking that everyone sees our actions , maybe we should stay
in our own bubble in the sense that we should stop caring about what everyone
around us is saying what everyone around us is thinking about our choices and our actions.
If singing makes you happy even though you're the worst singer in the planet,
who cares? Go enjoy it! Go have fun and sing some ABBA for me. If you are the world's worst
musician but it brings you tranquility please continue and if you've been thinking about making
a Tiktok account or a YouTube channel or tutoring someone and you have your own doubts who cares
you get there by learning i've been told many times i'm the world's worst singer
and they're probably right. But it makes me happy, so do you know what i'm gonna go do now ?
I'm gonna go have some fun and have a dance party by myself.