I have an announcement to make: I don’t care. (And I love it.)
Yep. I don’t care about a lot of things and it makes me a better person. Today, I will teach you how to be a better person too… by not caring.
And by god, you are going to learn. I don’t care if you want to or not. This is too important of a lesson to miss. It will really help cultivate some amazing stealth wealth skills too.
Today I will show you:
- Why we want to learn to not care
- Mastering the skill of temporary non-caring
- Care about something bigger
- Train your I-don’t-care muscles
(By the way, to cheer both of us up, I’ll include some “I don’t care” memes and quotes to help you power through this important life lesson.)
This is a guide to learn to not care and it will be glorious! Here we go!
I don’t care meme #1
I don’t care quote #1
I don’t care what you think of me, unless you think I’m awesome. In which case you are right.
– Anon
Why would I want to LEARN to not care?
There will come a time in your life while you are working hard towards a crazy goal and people will try and stop you. Or at least they’ll call you stupid to your face.
If you care about what they say you will get distracted or derailed. Learning to not care about what they think is a skill you can learn to help you chase your dreams and not be easily derailed along the way.
And trust me, at first it will be hard. It will take effort, grit, and determination. But if you persevere, you too can stop caring.
I talk a lot about personal finance here (go figure) but there’s something more important than calculations, more important than the best money tricks, or any other funny business when it comes to your early retirement.
Being in control of your attitude.
- If you have a bad attitude about something you won’t put your weight behind it.
- If you have a strong, positive attitude to get behind a goal you will accomplish it.
- No matter how stupid or hard it is.
If you were motivated enough, you could probably just quit your job right now and do something you like better. Maybe a virtual retirement, or just live on very little but if you are behind something enough you can accomplish almost anything.
That’s why you need to learn to not care.
Somehow, someone will try to break that motivation.
If you have a dream and you get behind it, someone will think you are an idiot. They will try to bring you down. It doesn’t matter if your dream is to buy a bunch of rental properties to retire in your thirties, or to go back to school to become a doctor – someone will have a problem with it.
You need to gain the ability to not let others derail your dreams.
(By the way, if you need a theme song for this new phase of your life play this every day when you wake up to really juice yourself up. I’m a 90’s ***** (kind of…80’s whatever), I don’t care and I love it too!
I don’t care Quote 2
I got this feeling on the summer day when you were gone
~ Icona Pop from I Love It
I crashed my car into the bridge, I watched, I let it burn
I threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs
I crashed my car into the bridge
I don’t care, I love it
I don’t care
I don’t care meme #2
I Don’t Care Training
Step 1 – You aren’t turning into a monk
Understand that not caring is a cultivated and controlled state of mind. I don’t want anyone to turn into a monk or weird uncaring philosopher type.
Learning to not care, is taking control over your mind and making an active decision about what you DO care about. Then you can say “I don’t care” to all the junk that isn’t worth caring about.
It’s a muscle of non-caring that you can choose to flex when you feel like it. It doesn’t have to be on all the time and it lets you care more about things that do matter.
If your hopes and dreams are to be a Wall Street banker and you’re making progress, that’s good. It doesn’t matter if someone thinks your shoes don’t match your socks. You can care about it and buy more socks…
OR you can not care and focus on being successful on Wall Street.
You are creating choices
I recommend you don’t care about those socks. You only have so much time in a day and you should spend it driving towards what matters most.
Experts in not caring: Comedians are masters of not caring and George Carlin is one of the best. They have to go do awkward things in front of thousands of people who are all judging them. Developing a strong non-caring muscle is a mandatory step in a comic’s life so we should learn from them.
Caption: I discovered the interviewer is a creeper but I don’t care, this video is about George Carlin, not creepy Charlie Rose.
I don’t care Quote #3:
When you say to yourself, I don’t care. It gives you a broader perspective.
~ George Carlin
I don’t care meme #3
Everyone told me I should give up – I didn’t care
Along my retirement journey I have had a lot of people tell me I am an idiot or that I won’t succeed. But I had a secret skill. I didn’t care what they thought and it let me be more successful than them.
While they were spending their time judging my goals, or telling me what they thought would happen All the while, I was out grinding my way to success.
I retired in my early 30’s. Back when I used to tell people of my success or my plans do you know how many people were supportive?
No. Body.
I stopped telling people since it wasn’t getting me anywhere but I also didn’t give a crap when people weren’t on board. I was making progress towards my dreams and everyone else could get on board or bugger off.
The beauty of not caring, I could be friends with people who weren’t on board because I just moved past their comments onto something we could productively talk about. They weren’t helping and that was fine. They obviously didn’t have a goal like I did.
And that takes me to my next step…
Step 2 – Have something better
If you are just floating around without something great to push towards in your life, then you will likely care about everything that comes up in front of you.
You have to conserve yourself for what really matters.
So to stop caring about what others think you first need to have something that you really do care about and compare everything to that.
You want to develop that hot new app and you are committed to really driving towards that with your heart and soul. Great!
Someone tells you that you are a loser with a basic bowl-based haircut? It doesn’t matter. It’s not part of your caring area (I could call that a Carea?!? No that’s horrible).
Bill Gates ignored all the people who must have told him to cut his hair. Fast forward a few years and blamo! He’s a billionaire.
I don’t care Quote #4
I’m extremely willful to win, and I respond to challenges. Scoring titles and stuff like that… it sounds, well, I don’t care how it sounds – to me, scoring comes easy. It’s not a challenge to me to win the scoring title, because I know I can.
Kobe Bryant
I don’t care meme #4
Step 3 – Practice
Well look at you. You’re developing an uncaring muscle that you can flex whenever you want.
But how do your muscles get big and strong?
By working them out.
Your uncaring muscles must be powerful when a trial comes to you. So I recommend a daily workout of conscious non-caring.
The person who embodies this daily practice of not caring the most is my uncaring role model. Ricky Gervais. He says what he wants to make himself happy and hopes to get some laughs along the way.
(Plus a bonus of Ricky at the Golden Globes. He doesn’t even care when he’s being paid millions and is on live TV. His uncaring muscles are strong!)
I started the practice of conscious non-caring pretty early in my life and it really helped me as I traveled through adulthood.
My first practice in conscious non-caring was gross
I will admit. My early experiments in practicing conscious not caring were a little crude. When I was in crunch time right before an exam I would stop changing my clothes and showering just to remind myself when I looked down (or sniffed) what my priorities at that time were.
Yep, somehow I’m married. Luckily I don’t write exams anymore. 😛
A more refined method to practice non-caring
Nowadays I keep things a little more civil, but still breaking social norms a bit everyday.
It’s like daily prayer for me, but it’s my daily conscious non-caring workout. Just one little thing at the start of the day to remind myself I don’t need to fall in line if I don’t want to.
Here are some examples of what you too can use to start your day:
- Stare someone in the eye a little bit too long on the bus. You know that moment when you cross someone’s gaze. I just live in it for a little bit.
- I send a joke in an email at work that I know only I will find funny.
- When I go down flights of stairs I rotate the wrong direction (I swear it’s faster).
I still practice this every day and I keep getting better.
In 50 years I am going to be AMAZING at not caring. Old people already have a certain air of not caring about them because they know what’s really important. I quite frankly can’t wait to be old and REALLY not care about anything.
My late grandpa would fart all throughout our family dinners and my hundred-year-old, deaf grandma just breaks into conversation with what she wants to talk about. From what I gather, it takes a long time, but it’s worth it.
So why should I stop caring again?
Take a moment to think about all the dreams you’ve given up on or changed because someone said it can’t be done, (or that it’s too hard to succeed, or that it’ll never work, or that you must be an idiot, or whatever) starting from when you were four and wanted to be a dinosaur.
Now maybe these sages in your life were right, but almost certainly if you worked hard something amazing would have happened.
And when it comes to your financial dreams…
Wouldn’t you like to find out for yourself?
I don’t care quote #5
If you know me, you know that nothing embarrasses me. Anything could happen to me on live television, and I sincerely don’t care.
Giuliana Rancic
I don’t care meme #5
TL;DR
- I hope that you can also learn the valuable life skill to say “I don’t care”
- It has helped me be a better person
- It can help you get ahead by letting you focus on what really DOES matter to you
- Then you need to practice every day to be good at not caring when the time comes.
- With enough determination, you too can learn to stop caring.
Now it’s your turn. Has caring what people think ever held you back?
