Last week I wrote about the lose-lose situation in always feeling guilty about whatever you’re not doing right now. I also listed several mindfulness methods for focusing on what you are doing now, as a way to avoid that guilt. Like I said at the end of that post, the real change for me, is to avoid guilt altogether.
I thought about this concept again this week when I was folding one of my daughter’s shirts:
On the one hand, hilarious, and just my sentiment. I don’t care. The house is a mess? I don’t care. Kids not eating healthy snacks? I don’t care. Not exercising enough? I don’t care.
To be precise, it’s more intricate than just “I don’t care.” In fact, I have other priorities for that day (work, playing with my kids, spending time with my father.) So I tell myself that I’m doing something that’s higher priority, and therefore, I’m not going to let myself feel guilty for something that’s not so important. It’s super natural to believe everything is equally important. If you feel that a clean sink and doing excellent work for a client are both equally important for your happiness, then by all means, make sure you do both. But for me, it’s true:
- I love a clean sink,
- cleaning can be meditative,
- and I love going to bed when the kitchen is in perfect order because it makes me happy to wake up to it.
Yet, it is not even remotely close to how much more joy I can derive from doing good work with my clients! So I have to remind myself not to beat myself up about the sink. I don’t care. I don’t care enough to feel bad.
The issue I take with this t-shirt, though, is the assumption behind it. The women are all from the Disney Villains series. Don’t care = villain. Care = princess. It’s the usual choice between being nice and being a witch. Since the shirt isn’t from 1980, I’m assuming it’s tongue-in-cheek girl power. But it still bugs me. I feel like it’s part of so many social constructs and limiting beliefs that I’m still fighting. So I choose to take just the power and we don’t care. I remind myself that I’m a nice, valuable human being even if I don’t do all the things and be everything for everyone else. Prioritizing myself and my own values is my right, it’s smart, it isn’t egotistical, and my self worth has nothing to do with the state of my kitchen sink.
Now try putting that on a t-shirt…
Kitchen photo by Roam In Color on Unsplash (not my kitchen, ha!)
GREAT reflections on keeping focused Shlomit. I found myself thinking about how to not care when I care about things that are misaligned with my purpose. I’m mulling over that,
Such a great reminder, Shlomit. Thanks for pointing this out.
I love this. Sometimes caring turns into enabling or doing for others what they’re fully capable of doing for themselves. I’m not talking about me of course…
Love this!
@christywright says “be where your feet are
Love the way you write and raise my awareness! I think you should talk to Brian Behm about that T-shirt too. Right up his alley!
Always love your posts! “I don’t care enough to feel bad” is a great mantra to dispel that guilt.
My take-away: True caring is about prioritizing according to your own values and feeling so GOOD about that that you don’t waste your emotional energy feeling bad about the stuff that didn’t get done.
Exactly!! You summarized it so nicely, Susanna.
I love this. It’s easy to put aside your own needs when doing exactly that creates resentment which is counter productive in itself. “I don’t care” is a great phrase to anchor yourself (internally) to what matters most.
Yup! We all need the t-shirt…
Oh, interesting reflections. I think I’ve internalized caring too much for most of my life and to my detriment because there has been this correlation between caring and being a good person that’s self-defeating. For me, learning not to care is less about being uncaring and more about being comfortable with who I am and how I’m showing up in the world – feeling affirmed and validated from within instead of requiring approval from others to feel like I am worthy.
Precisely! Well said.
Love this Shlomit. It’s a good reminder to focus on what matters, what really matters to us, not other people.