Stop Being So Nonchalant
In college I have noticed the pressure to act nonchalant and be perceived by all your peers as the cool guy. This article is a call to action to myself and anyone struggling with the same thing to stop caring how you are perceived and just start being yourself.
Stop being so nonchalant. Don’t act like you’re too cool for something to mess with you. Stop trying not to put in effort because it might make you look like you care. Stop thinking you’re too cool to do something someone else might find cringy, but you secretly want to do.
Now, if you know me at all, you probably have realized that I live a lot of my life by the ideas laid out in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson. Well, you might rightly bring up that this book and my charge to stop being nonchalant seem to be in stark contrast. Isn’t the entire point of Manson’s book to stop caring about little things in life that aren’t important? Isn’t that being nonchalant?
No. Being nonchalant is rooted in the paranoia of what others think. Its foundation is in performance - if you act a certain way, people might view you as aloof, cool, or mysterious: traits you might want to give off. The whole point is that if you act like you don’t care, people might view you as someone they want to hang around. I think the opposite is true. At first, your facade might work; people might be drawn to you. After a while, however, people become frustrated. Frustrated that you don’t seem to care. Frustrated that you don’t seem passionate about anything. Frustrated that you don’t have any personality. But the deeper problem is the toll it takes on you. I find it exhausting to give off a fake version of myself in the hopes that someone likes me. Could I really keep that up forever?
To not give a f*ck would mean not caring about how others view you. Stop caring about the little ways you are perceived by other people. Stop suffocating your imperfections; rip off your fake mask and let the imperfect you beneath breathe. Tearing off the mask means you must be deeply secure in yourself, and the idea that people might not like the raw version of you, and that’s inevitable. Taking off the mask is a sign of strength. We wear the mask as a shield to protect ourselves from negative perceptions. However, when you stop wasting your energy caring about meaningless perceptions by people you will likely never see again, you retain your energy for things that truly matter, like showing up for your loved ones with consistency or making important decisions that could have large impacts on the rest of your life.
Start being chalant. Start by not worrying about saying the right thing or giving off the right vibe. Go do your weird dance to a cringe pop 2k banger. Go laugh way too loudly at a joke. Go sing a terrible karaoke cover of your favorite song. Remember, there is no uniqueness in perfection. It is the “perfect imperfections” as John Legend puts it, that make someone beautiful.