Easy, Tiger: Five Considerations for Becoming Unbothered
New ways of looking at anxiety, love, time, and personal identity
First, these are not rules. I can’t stress that enough. I don’t have the calling or authority to write rules for other people. I suppose my children would beg to differ on that point, but little secret on that: the majority of the time I’m simply enforcing rules that were handed down to me while feeling deeply uncertain as to whether they’re appropriate or necessary at all. I’ll call these considerations as that’s all they really are – something to think about in passing and to take or leave. Ultimately, the hope is that you’re prompted to formulate your own guiding principles for navigating the world as a more self-possessed, confident person.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time contemplating the intentions, choices, and behaviors I’ve enacted over time with the goal of either embracing or dumping them. I’m a deeply introspective person and believe me – that is not a flex. Although I do think introspection is a fine quality, there comes a point where it becomes torturous. It’s this default setting that forces me to over-examine every move I make, past, present, and prospective.
<Jim Gaffigan voice> Why should we listen to advice from a overthinking anxious person? Because introspection, although tedious at times, yields a lot really good fertilizer for growth. Now she’s talking about fertilizer? Why did I subscribe to this mess? Because introspection also creates excellent writers. Oh, so you think you’re an excellent writer and you’re bragging about it? Now I’m spiraling my way through a piece about being unbothered. So very on-brand.
So yeah, welcome to my weeknight spiral - that’s a good place to start, actually.
Consider regulating your reactions. Listen, unbothered people are not always anxiety-free. It’s hard to claim a life well-lived without some good old-fashioned anxiety peppered throughout. The difference is how you claim, regulate, and grow from that anxiety. This is not about asking “what’s the worst thing that could happen?” Take it from me, the answer options on that one are deep and wide. It’s really about confronting what’s happening now, assessing it in realistic terms, and treating associated feelings not as good or bad, but merely as data points to inform your next step. On the point about assessing the situation in realistic terms, I’m going to circle back to something I touched on in my very first Okay Pokay – the “who told you that” trick. Speak your insecurities and fears aloud. Then, simply ask yourself “Who told you that?” Many times, the answer will be no one. And if they did rightly call you out, it’s now your thing to take or leave. Allow Salma Hayek to explain:
Salma said, “THROW IT BACK IN THEIR FACE!” Who can argue with that?
Consider letting go of your missing pie pieces. Imagine the love in your life like a Trivial Pursuit game piece, with many but not all pie pieces in the available slots. We’re led to believe that just one or two people in your life will be able to fill in all the pie pieces – often a partner, parent, or child. And, when they inevitably fail to fill in all the slots, you panic and try to find replacement pieces. Desperately recruiting these new pie pieces often leads to co-dependency and toxic vices. What if, instead of constantly chasing that elusive missing pie piece, we learn to just accept that no one really has all eight pieces at any given time? Besides, maybe we shouldn’t have cut the pie into eight little pieces in the first place. Just cut it into four big pieces and take the pressure off everyone, especially yourself.
Consider reclaiming your time. I remember reading an article about time management a few years ago that said, “The biggest obstacle we have to organizing time is our perception of it. We think of it as intangible, relative, qualitative. But it’s impossible to manage if you think of it like that.” I realized that as a right-brained, type b, Enneagram 7, my relationship with time is absolutely this fluid, squishy concept. Unfortunately, I am not a bohemian manic pixie dream girl who can flutter about the world on my flights of fancy. Flights of fancy would cause me to default on my mortgage.
Did I suddenly stringently compartmentalize my day like an IKEA storage solution? No, because that would make me want to die. But not having some structures in place actually undermined my ability to be creative, spontaneous, and fun. I learned that by intentionally carving out more structured time blocks in my day, week, and month, I was able to prioritize the good stuff and take a pragmatic approach to the necessary trade-offs between the fun that sustains my soul and the obligations that would otherwise crush it.
Consider detaching titles from your identity. So, there’s no clear evidence around the genesis of the terms “mom” and “dad” and all its multinational variations. “Dad” was first recorded in the 1500s, as was “mamma” which became “mom” in the 1800s. Linguists tell us they’re likely derived from the sounds infants make, apparently making babies the arbiters of paternal identity. This really bothers me. Without going on a tangent that will take up this entire newsletter, I find it interesting that once you have a child, you become shrouded in this controlled identity that comes with a million arbitrary rules and is supposed to be this universal tie that binds you to other parents by virtue of title. I don’t call my two children Kid and Kid; I call them by their names. But yet it’s an affront to decency and etiquette if your kid calls you by your name? If you’re not attuned to the social impositions of this title, you start to lose sense of who you are and how you relate to others on an intimate level. It’s why so many mothers in particular have a crisis when they become empty nesters. “Mom” is not who you are, it’s a thing you do.
And it’s not just familial titles that carry all kinds of imposed identity rules, it’s work titles, too. Anyone who has ambitiously climbed the corporate ladder knows that each rung comes with a title that you’re reaching for. They’re important in the context of corporate hierarchy, but they also cloud our relationship with ourselves, our colleagues, and our employer. Whether at home or at work, if you start to feel crushed under the weight of the expectations that your titles carry, say to yourself: [Title] is not who I am, it’s a thing I do. This helps untether you from arbitrary rules that feel inconsistent with who you actually are. It puts your intrinsic human identity in the driver’s seat and makes it much easier to make thoughtful, personal decisions about your life.
Consider embracing your inner creature. Gender discourse is currently at a fever pitch. I’m not expertly equipped to distill the nuances of the gender spectrum, but I will say that, similar to titles, the rules of gender have made my journey to confidence and ease very rocky. I don’t see myself in so many women figures on TV, in songs, in magazines. Although I present to the world in a very womanly way, I don’t always feel that way inside. Presentation doesn’t always match the insides, nor do I believe it’s always necessary. Besides, how can tangible, limited, trend-restricted commodities like fashion and makeup organically reflect an intangible, wholly unique phenomenon like one’s spirit? It can’t, because the bounds of true self-expression are like the answer to the equation in Mean Girls: The limit does not exist.
I’ve intellectually labored over the art and science of my gender my whole life. Gender has caused me massive insecurities, unnecessary comparison and competition, and a crushing pressure to behave and perform in ways that have not always served me. So, in a weird way, I’ve mentally reconfigured my sense of self to that of a creature more than a lady. Anyone who has watched me attempt yoga or eat spaghetti while wearing a white shirt can attest to this.
From the Cambridge English Dictionary:
Creature – (noun) Any large or small living thing that can move independently
This is probably my strangest consideration for you today, but honestly – creating codes for myself under the banner of creature has liberated me from so much crap over the last few years, I can’t even explain it. It doesn’t mean there aren’t gendered rules that I abide by but as a creature, I’ve made so many tweaks to better serve me a long the way. It’s like RuPaul once said, ““We're all born naked and the rest is drag.”
So, there you have it, my five considerations for living with more confidence and moving through the world with more ease:
Regulate your reactions, own your foibles, and be selfish with your mistakes.
Let go of the missing pieces of your love pie and relish the ones you have.
Take a Nietzschean approach to time management – there is no pleasure without pain, so structure your life around both.
Detach your identity from your titles – delineate between who you are and what you do.
Embrace your inner creature.
It’s not a perfect system, but being deliberate around rethinking and reframing the areas that have tripped me up and held me back has done wonders for how I’m propelling my life forward.
Bravo!