The Gentle Art of Not Giving A Fuck

With all the information available now, it seems everyone is an expert on everything. It can be tempting to join in the constant hysteria and try to sway or enlighten your company with your own meaningless points of view… Or, perhaps, you prefer to submit in obedience to your nearest alpha-intellect with his or her loud, sharply tongued, finely articulated line of bullshit.

We are wired to bend, flex, hide, and attack for the sake of our own survival,even when our lives aren’t really at stake. And we all have a preferred method of avoiding fear, depending on who’s around.

Command Z invites you to take a step back from the lunacy of power hungry, void filling conversations, take a deep breath, have a little chuckle, and KNOW you don’t have to vomit your opinions all over everyone you meet just to feel important. Nor do you have to be affected by other peoples vomiting.

Command Z invites you to stop giving a fuck.

Not giving a fuck can sometimes carry the stigma of being apathetic, lazy, or cruel. Don’t get confused! All too often, the people who claim not to give a fuck, clearly do give a couple fucks.

Not giving a fuck isn’t about posturing, pandering, criticizing or thinking you are better, tougher, smarter than everyone you meet. Not giving a fuck is a gentle art and is quite effortless in its application.

But first, before you can naturally not give a fuck, it will help you to test out your own personal boundaries a little bit…

To push my own not give a fuck boundaries, I decided to spice things up with a tactic I learned from the Radical Undoing 101 course. An Adventure called Mis-Pronounce Words.

Heres how it goes:

I had a particular manager at my work that I was a little intimidated to deal with. I wasn’t sure how to approach him. We seemed like oil and water, always having tense and awkward conversations.

The 101 Adventure instructed me to engage in a conversation with someone and just start mis-pronouncing words randomly. Thinking about the adventure before hand I thought to myself, piece of cake!

I walked into the manager’s office to go over a couple things on a Tuesday morning. My heart started RACING. You would think I had entered the room to shoot the man!

Clearly my body was identifying this situation as far more threatening than it really was in fact. I felt my gears turning trying to find a moment to slip in a mispronounced word. Fuck, I thought, this is way harder than I thought.  But, Eventually, the words started to spill out… B’s became P’s, F’s became S’s.  I must have sounded like I had my tongue chopped off.

My brain felt like it was overheating, I became so uncomfortable.

MRI image of Lance’s brain activity during the Mispronouncing Words Adventure.

The strange thing is, this guy didn’t even appear to notice! What kind of autopilot was this man on, I wondered. Not even a raised eyebrow! It made me wonder what would have happened if I had gone in and dropped my pants. Would he have even noticed? Would he just ignore that too? Or if I flipped his desk over and spit in his face? What would it take to get a spontaneous response out of this man’s body?

As I left the office and felt something wash over me, I’ll call it “relief.” This shortly turned into a giggle as I asked myself, What the hell is going on here?

There are 52 Tuesday’s in a year. I couldn’t tell you what I did on 51 of them. But I will for the rest of my life remember the day I Mis-Pronounced words. I find this type of experience is pretty common in the CZ work….

Try it yourself; Purposely mis-pronounce words while talking to your friends, co-workers, boss, strangers. See the effect this has on them and you. At the very least it will jolt you out of the mutually shared trance you may have been sharing. And the next time you speak to this person you may feel a little more free. Try it out!

If you’re still asking, “why even do that?” Continue reading…

As I learn to give less and less of a fuck, in a genuine way, I’ve found that I am more and more ready to react and respond to life in more natural ways. Ways that don’t drain me, or leave me feeling discontent, guilty, regretful, special or any other pointless emotions.

The indifferent freedom that kindly… not giving a fuck allows, frees me from being ensnared in other people’s bullshit, no matter who they are, and no matter what their credentials. This opens life up in interesting ways and frees you to live it YOUR way.

Radical Undoing 101 encourages you to make yourself the only priority in your life. The great part is that the people who matter will stick around with you to live a more fun, less judgmental, more adventurous life, while seemingly changing along with you. The people who don’t matter, well, they might not be around to annoy you anymore, or, you may just become incapable of being annoyed.

Radical Undoing 101: take the power back (which you never really lost).

-Lance Leeson. Inner Circle Member. Command Z Consultant.