Want to be More Productive and Confident? Learn How Not Giving a F*** Can Help!

Summary
In this conversation, Layla Dawn discusses the importance of personal growth, mindfulness, and the power of saying no. She emphasizes the need to declutter the mind, prioritize what truly matters, and set boundaries with technology. The discussion also touches on authenticity, self-perception, and the energy we give to others and ourselves. Layla encourages listeners to reflect on their priorities and to take control of their energy and time.

Takeaways
Decluttering your mind can lead to greater clarity.
Recognizing your priorities is essential for personal fulfillment.
Saying no can create space for more meaningful opportunities.
Your energy flows where your attention goes.
Authenticity is key to self-acceptance and confidence.
Setting boundaries with technology is crucial for mental health.
Writing down thoughts can help clear mental clutter.
You can't please everyone; focus on your own happiness.
Self-care includes the ability to say no without guilt.
Audit your time and energy to align with your priorities.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Not Giving a F*ck
02:14 The Art of Not Caring
03:00 Understanding Emotional Energy
04:59 Prioritizing What Matters
09:21 The Power of Energy and Attention
14:09 Authenticity and Self-Perception
18:35 Setting Boundaries and Saying No
23:16 Intentional Living and Energy Management

Do Life Website

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Transcript

0:00

Hi friends, welcome to the Do Life podcast where we talk about life, its challenges, and some common ways to overcome those obstacles with cutting edge technology. scientific research, and a splash amount of physical properties. I'm your host, Life Coach Layla. I'm a certified life and business coach, a trained facilitator in the six phase meditation specializing in forgiveness. I'm also studying NLP, RTT, and hypnotherapy My goal is to share my information and knowledge with as many people as I can and save them the time of effort of doing all of the research themselves. So if that's something that you resonate with, let's see what today's episode is about. Hi friends, welcome to today's episode. What am I wearing? Why do I look like an Egyptian goddess or Why do I look like I'm getting ready to go to a Halloween party? Well, I'll tell you. I had an interesting conversation with my partner last night where he expressed an interest in wanting to wear a specific type of hat but then didn't want the attention that came with wearing a specific type of hat which led into a very long in-depth conversation of why do you give a fuck? Why do you care so much about what other people think about you wearing a hat? If you want to wear the hat, wear the hat. And this was a very long drawn out conversation, and we've had multiple conversations like this before. I wore a big wide brimmed hat on a cruise ship and nobody else has a hat on. And I didn't feel any kind of way about it. because I wanted to wear the hat. I thought it looked good with my outfit. I felt good in the hat and I didn't care that I was the only one wearing the hat or that people were looking at me funny because I was wearing a hat. And it really brought to my attention how there's an art form behind not giving a fuck and it's not so subtle. And there's an easy way to do it and not many people know how. So here's me and all my glory and all of my zero F's given today. I'm wearing this because I feel cute and wanted to wear it. And why should I have to subject myself to wearing cute things that I feel good in for Halloween? I'm about to go to the grocery store. I'm leaving this on. You know why? Because I don't give a fuck and neither should you. And today's episode, I'm going to teach you how to... Stop wasting your time focusing on things that don't matter and people's opinions who shouldn't either, Stop caring about things that are just energetically draining you for no reason whatsoever when they could be Giving you joy and purpose So let's get into it So today we're diving into a topic that has... gained a lot of traction and attention in self-help circles, but let's be real. This has been around for centuries, And that's the subtle art of not giving a fuck. And you've probably heard of a book by the same title written by Mark Manson. let's go beyond the title for a second. The idea behind it is you can't give your energy to everything. Life throws a lot at you and let's be honest, most of it's not worth stressing about. So how do we determine what's actually worth our time and energy and focus? So Today we'll unpack how to stop caring about what no longer serves you and how to focus on what really matters using a mix of old school wisdom. new tech and some metaphysical properties to make it stick. favorite. So here's where we get into the nitty gritty of things. The human brain is wired to care. We care about everything. We care about what others think. We care about our success. We care about our community. our failures, our shortcomings, our appearance, everything. but the emotional energy that goes into it is finite. It's like a battery and you can only drain it so much. It's like storage on your phone. Every picture, every sound bite, every ringtone, every app, every second that you're using it is... It's just clutter. And the same goes for everything you worry about. It's just clutter in your brain. And if you don't clean that out, both in your phone and your brain, your system starts to slow down. So what if we could optimize our mental storage like we do our devices? There's not just a Control Alt Delete button for your brain. So obviously it's gonna take a little more work than just. deleting your cache. so thinking about technology for a moment, when you do delete old photos, old apps, things you don't use anymore. then boom, your device is faster, right? your brain works the same way. So by choosing where to spend your energy, time, focus, and attention on, you'll free up all that space that's consumed by clutter, unnecessary clutter, and boom, you're smarter, faster, more cognitively available. But here's the twist. The more you say no to, the more space you free up for the things to say yes to. The more meaningful yeses you give yourself, the more fulfilled you feel. That's not a coincidence. So how do you do this in practicality? Let's break it down. Recognize your priorities. Your family, your friends, your business, your relationship, your money, your finances. That's the same thing, I guess, kind of technically, whatever. Your health, your diet, your religion, your politics, whatever it is, where's your priorities? What matters most to you? Make a list, write it down. The more stuff we can get out of our brains and down onto paper, the less clutter, like I picture our brain with a big squiggle, like you know, cartoon squiggle lines in the speech bubbles. That's our brain, is just a big ol' squiggle line. And when we talk about things to other people or we write them down on paper, we're basically pulling that line out of our brain. We're pulling it out of our brain and we're putting it onto the paper. We're pulling it out of our brain and we're giving it to somebody else to help us process and digest. So that squiggle line. like is the more squiggles you have in your brain the darker and more dense it is so the part where it's just a big black speech bubble it's a big black hole there's so much squiggles in there you can't even see the space in between the squiggles you can't even tell it's a line it's just a big black space so the more of that that we can get out of our brain and put somewhere else the lighter and more room there is For more squiggles and lines like I look at it like everything I put out is room for something else to come back in when I'm struggling with a specific idea or thought or you know, you hyper focus on something or hyper fixate on Something that happened and you keep replaying that over and over in your head. I will write it down I will write down what happened and it's it's kind of cathartic. It gives you a sense of release and you're able to Let go of it and it clears up that space in your brain So a new solution can come in or an idea or something completely unread And I feel like the more that we focus on the things that are in our brain currently the less space that we leave for new ideas and thoughts and processes and And that's just my short little rant on why it's so important to get things out of our brain. So when you're planning things and trying to figure something out, like how many people made a New Year's resolution or birthday resolution or any kind of goal and they didn't write it down, it's just an, in the back of my brain, I'm gonna remember that I wanna do that. But when you write it down, you can organize your thoughts, you can gather them and create more specific ways to figure out. how exactly you wanna tackle certain things. So when you're thinking about what matters most to you and where your priorities lie, make a list of things you want to give an F about. What do you want to give? There's all these memes and jokes and things where, I'm all out of fucks to give, I don't have any more, so. What do you wanna give a fuck about? What do you want to give them too? If you have a finite amount of fucks to give, where do you want to give them? Write that down, prioritize them, because that's what's important to you. And if it doesn't fall into those buckets, it is not worth your time or effort. My list does not have what other people think about me as a priority. It is not on that list. So guess what I don't give a fuck about? That. So choose where your priorities are, what you want to give a fuck about, what you want to care about, and everything else can just throw it away. It's not relevant. It's not worth your fucks. And I know old school pen and paper, not everybody wants to do that anymore. That's fine. Download an app on your phone. have. I have an app on my phone called Color Notes and I use that thing for everything like any any little thing. It's like basic notepad and you can organize it into tasks, checklists, all you can color code it. I love it. I've been using it for like 15 years. It's my favorite thing. have like five. I'm not going to keep going into it, but download an app, whatever your app you're going to use is the best one that you should download. and write down your priorities. And when you're focused on something that's consuming a lot of time and space in your brain, hold it up against that list. Does it fall into any of those buckets? If not, let it go. Get rid of it. Quit wasting your mental energy and time and thought process on things that don't matter. So if it doesn't align with your priorities, if it doesn't fall in those buckets, it's garbage. Throw it away. Get it out of your brain. Away. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about my favorite, the metaphysics. Taoists, Buddhist monks, almost any kind of quantum physics will tell you we are all energy. Everything is energy. And where attention goes, energy flows. So what you give your attention to is where you give your energy. the more you think of something, the more you're drawing energy to it. So when you hear people talk about manifesting money, you don't think about the lack, you don't think about the bills you have to pay or the money that you don't have for the things you wanna do. You think about what you do have and you're grateful for what you do have and you use that to flip the switch. Let me go a little further into that. Okay, so I have a master class on confidence, and I talk about when you're in a bikini and you're in a swimsuit and. You're not confident. You're thinking about what everybody else thinks about you. You're worried about how you're being portrayed. Everybody can see your fat rolls and, know, you're just you're so self conscious that you try to curl yourself up in a ball. You don't even necessarily know that you're doing this, but you physically try to curl yourself up, almost like you're trying to hide. And. In doing that, people can see the. lack of confidence you have and it makes you, we see you as you see you. We see you as you see us seeing you, if that makes sense, because that's the energy you're bringing. You're bringing the attention of negativity and judgment to you in your mannerisms and your behaviors and the way that you're acting. Whereas if you see these big girls and I'm. a big girl, so, you know, don't come at me for saying that. But they're running around in two pieces and everything is everywhere and they don't care. And when you look at them, you don't necessarily think, my God, I can't believe she wears that. You you think good for you. Good for you for having that confidence. Or you think. Nothing. You think nothing of somebody wearing whatever they want because they're confident in how they look as opposed to if they're wearing it and then they're curled up acting like, my God, please don't see me like. I don't know if this is, if any of this is making sense, but it's basically just talking about how the energy that we are perceiving ourself in, the way that we see ourself is what we're attracting to us. So that energy is constant. So if you're afraid to wear this hat because you think people are gonna judge you, like again, I showed up on my podcast, which is. You know, a self-help podcast where we talk about some serious things on here and I'm wearing basically a Halloween costume. I could lose followers. People could not click on my thing. They could, you know, I could have thought about all these things. I'm going to lose followers. I'm going to lose subscribers. People aren't going to take me seriously. That's not on my priority list. I don't give a fuck. If you don't want to watch my podcast because I have a silly crown on them, don't then it's not I'm not here for you. And that's the energy that I'm bringing to the table is I'm gonna do what I want and either you accept me for who I am or you don't and that's fine. Like if I'm not here for everybody, I'm not everybody's cup of tea. I don't need to be. And that's fine with me. And so if you're putting an awful lot of thought and effort into what other people think about you, why? Why is that so important to you? Why have you made it so important to you? If you don't pay my bills and you're not my children, then I don't care. I don't care about your opinion. That's that's basically how I see that. So I don't want to keep rambling about this, but. Maybe do some deep meditation and think about where you're giving your energy. Why are you giving your energy there? What's the worst that can happen? I show up with this crown on. What's the worst that can happen? People don't follow me. They unsubscribe. They don't take me seriously. well, that's on them. I'm here to prove a point. I'm here to give my message about how I don't care about things that aren't relevant and explain to you why you shouldn't care about certain things and how you can go about not caring as much about things that aren't relevant to you. I don't want to see you waste your time on people's opinions that have zero to do. At the end of the day, do you remember those people? Say you wore a swimsuit to the pool and you were so embarrassed. Do you remember a single one of those people that saw you? Do you think for a second that any one of those people remember you? Why did it take up so much space in your brain? Why did you let it occupy your thoughts so much? What if you spent the day just enjoying yourself and having a great time and not so concerned with what everybody else thought about you? Do you think your overall outcome would be different? What do you think is better for you in the long run? I'm going to go to the grocery store in this and. It might strike a conversation with someone and it might not. I might just get funny looks and either way at the end of the day, I'm OK with that because their opinion doesn't matter. And in a week from now, I'm not going to exist in their brain. I'm not going to occupy space in their brain. And the second I come home, whatever dirty looks I got are not in my brain anymore. I don't I don't hold on to that. I don't need that. So dig deep inside what energy are you bring into the table? What energy are you showing up with and how are you giving that energy to people or things that don't matter and do a meditation about it. And you can look into apps like Headspace or Calm and get you in a mindful meditative state and really do some reflective work like is this really worth my time? And. And go from there. Speaking of meditation, take a deep breath. And when you take a step back, realize that you're in control of your responses. You are in control of your reality. The things that normally trigger you, work, kids, spouse, family, whatever drama. social media, you can start choosing how you react and respond to those things. It's like tuning out the background melody of your life. Something I talk often about is how hard it was for me to learn how to respond and not react. And it is definitely something that you have to train your brain to do because we're wired to just react to whatever. Like that's normal. to respond to something as opposed to react is different. And when you're scrolling endlessly on social media and you're constantly triggered and you're met with things that just reinforce what you're already thinking, is that where you wanna give your energy? Is that where you wanna give your time? I remember thinking so much about like, I'm gonna post this thing, how am I gonna be seen if I post this thing? Are people gonna think I'm funny or people gonna think I'm trashy? Like, it used to take up so much space in my brain about what I was gonna post on social media and how it was gonna be perceived. And then finally I was like. I'm authentic, I just wanna be authentic. I just wanna be me and I wanna show me and I wanna do me and if you can't accept me, then that's on you and I'm okay with that. It took a long time for me to learn how to get okay with that. And I just know that being authentic is the highest form of vibration. There's. There's theories out there that being authentic and being true in your true nature is a higher vibration than love, which has been thought of for the longest time to be the highest vibration. So. We're gonna we're gonna get back out of the metaphysical things for now. I'm done on my little rant. But I really just want to say that learning how to be authentic and when you're in your authenticity and you're being you and you're being true to you, what everybody else sees you as is a reflection of them and not you. And when you understand that and you embody that and you learn from that, then how they see you doesn't affect you as much OK, so I spent the summer in Estonia and there was a girl on stage. I can't remember her name. I really wish I could because she was brilliant. Dole. Dorota, dotera, Dorota, Dorothy, Dorothy. Mm man, I'm I wish I have it written down somewhere. I should go look it up, but I'm taking too much time anyway. She was on stage and she said, you know, 500 people in this room. She said, there could be 500 people in this room and every single one of you will perceive me how will perceive me as a reflection of you. You will see things in me that you like or dislike based on your own personal reality, your own personality, your brain basically. And I just thought that that was so impactful because that's true, like you can't make everybody happy, you can't live your life to make everyone happy because you're not going to be able to. My youngest child struggles with that. They want everybody on the planet to be happy and they don't want there to be any kind of disrupt or disconnect and they will jeopardize their own happiness so much to make sure that everyone around them is happiness and it's an never ending cycle. Their parents aren't together. Mom hates dad, dad hates mom, Mom hates stepmom and child is criticized for having any kind of emotional attachment or bond with stepmom or dad or anything and it's just it's so chaotic and confusing for their brain and I hate this for them. But that's a side effect of trying to make everybody happy. It's impossible and you're gonna drive yourself crazy trying and you're never gonna be happy because everybody around you isn't gonna be happy and you can't place your own happiness on everybody around you. That was a lot of words. I'm sorry if that was too much. But I do, just I love the idea that everybody sees you. How they see you, they don't know you, they haven't been through your life and your trials and tribulations, they don't know what you've been through, they don't know the real you just from a perspective. perception. I walk into the grocery store with this crown and people are gonna think I'm off my rock or they think I'm absolutely insane and maybe I'm a crackhead, maybe I'm on drugs. I've been sober for a long long time and they can have that perception and it's just funny to me. So it doesn't matter what they think of me because what they think of me is based on what they know about me, which is nothing, which is that I have a crown on in a grocery store and that the mentality that you have to have to have a crown on in the grocery store is whatever mentality they come up with. If they can't understand the idea of someone being so confident and not giving any kind of concern or care to their opinion, their brain isn't gonna come up with that. I'm just going to be a cracked out druggy to them because that makes sense in their brain. Does this make sense to you? Any any of this resonating? So, yeah, people can only perceive you to the level that they can perceive themselves. I guess is a fancy way of saying what I'm trying to say. Let's shift to the fun part. Let's let's get into the technology of some things that you could do. Here's the deal, your phone is not your boss. Your phone does not get to dictate. Like my friends get so mad at me, my phone stays on silent 100 % of the time. I have a Samsung watch that will give me notifications if it's important for you to text me or call me. Do not add me to a group chat. You can add me to a group chat on Messenger or. any of the social media apps that I can turn off, but my text messages and my phone calls are important to me. So those are the only notifications that I'll get on my watch. So I can be recording this podcast episode and if I get a message and it's important, I'll see that. Otherwise, my notifications are on silent. My phone doesn't dictate what I do when I do. You don't get to tell me what I get to do. when I get to do it. I will look at my messages when it's convenient for me. I will get back to my employees when it's convenient for me. I need I need that space. That's a boundary that I've set with my life and everybody around me is aware of that. I want me to text you back in two seconds, that's not going to happen. If I'm in the middle of recording this podcast episode, I'm not going to stop and text you back because you want to know where we want to eat on Saturday. That's not important for you to know right now. It's Tuesday. So I just want you to know that notifications don't need to run your life. And if you're giving too much energy to your phone and your notifications and your likes and your followers and your friends and your bosses and your colleagues and their conversations, maybe that needs to be put up against your list. Is it on your priorities list? Does it need to be? What are your thoughts on that? Again, I'm not here to tell you how to live your life or what to do. Just giving suggestions. If your phone is overtaking so much of your energy that you're not focused on anything outside of it, then maybe it's time to figure out where that lies on your priorities and how much attention and energy you're giving to it. So like I said, I have the notifications on damn near everything on my phone turned off. I don't care what deals are coming up with Priceline. I don't care about, I'll let the Duolingo show up because it's funny and I like to see the elegant mad at me because I wait till it's 40 seconds before. I lose my streak, but anyway, that's it's fun for me. Anyway, what I'm saying is I have all the notifications turned off. If it's not relevant to me, I don't I don't need notifications on my phone. I will check the apps when when I unlock my phone, I'll see all the icons and all the notifications. And if I feel like checking it, I will. I don't need constant reminders and dings on my phones going off right now. So wherever. So that's just something that I've implemented that I think is an easy fix that you could also implement if you're giving a lot of time and energy to something like that that doesn't matter if you have a stupid little game downloaded on your phone and it's constantly sending you messages and it's frustrating you and aggravating you turn the notifications off. It's so easy. So simple. So that's one thing that you can do. And this one, this is another tool that you have that's not so easy to do. It's not as easy as turning a notification off on your phone, but this is the act of saying no. It's so hard for so many people to do. I'm guilty of it. Sometimes I will say yes to things because I'm in a great mood and I say yes and then the time comes and I am not in that same mode. I'm like, I don't know who she was. I don't know what mindset that was, but this is not a thing I want to do. I can't believe I agreed to do it in the first place. And so I'll often reflect like, hey, are you still coming to this thing tonight? No, no, I'm sorry. I know I said I would, but I'm not. And that's so hard. It's so hard to be like, yeah, I know I said I was going to do this thing, but I really don't want to. I saw a shirt the other day and it was like, sorry, I'm late. I didn't want to be here. I love that I need that, but maybe I don't. But anyway, it's just it's it's so hard for us to say no to things, and especially if you've already said yes to them. I don't wanna get into essays and trigger warnings, but sometimes we say yes to something and then we change our mind and say no to something. No is a complete sentence. No isn't a bad word. There shouldn't be so much negative energy attached to the word no. If somebody asks me to do something and I say no, I don't think so, you shouldn't get upset. I don't understand. My partner would get so upset. We would go downstairs. We would go downstairs and like watch a movie or something. And then I would fall asleep down there and he would be like, you need to come up and come to bed. So I'm not going to walk all the way across my basement, all the way up the stairs, all the way across the house to go to bed when I'm already comfy and I'm already sleeping. Like that would drive me crazy. And he would get so mad at me for saying no. And I don't understand that. And I wish more people would stop. getting mad at the word no. Like I look at the word no as you being honest and I appreciate that. And I really and I I really appreciate that. I really appreciate you being honest and open and comfortable enough to meet with me to say, no, that's not really something I want to do. If you really want me to go, I will I will go. I will be there. I'll be supportive, but I'd rather not know. No, thank you for saying no. Thank you for being honest. So if there's something that you could learn, a tool to help you not give away your energy to things that you don't want to, saying no is a big deal and something that I know a lot of you struggle with. But it's it's not rude. It's a form of self care. It's a form of setting boundaries. I've already posted episodes on all those things. I'll link them below if you want to read, if you want to read, if you want to listen to or watch them, because I go into grave detail on why it's important for you to be able to say no. And not giving a fuck about something is very much aligned with setting healthy boundaries and self care. Like those all three of those things are very, very close knitted. And I like I like thinking about like, what's the worst that can happen? If you say no to this thing, the world's still going to turn. The party's still going to happen. People are still going to be there. and you're not gonna feel obligated to go. You're not gonna, like, when you think about doing something that you don't want to do, how much energy that takes, how draining is that? Energetically, mentally, emotionally. When I'm getting ready to go someplace that I don't want to be at, when I'm getting, like, the whole day is just a drag. Everything takes longer, everything is slower, everything drags on, it's just draining. When you say no to something that you're not actually interested in doing, you feel so much lighter, so much more energetic. You're actually excited about not doing the thing. As daunting as it is to do the thing, you're that much more excited about not doing it. So as difficult as it is to say no in the first place, what's the worst that can happen? Somebody might be upset for a second or two, but if they care about you, they consider themselves a friend or somebody who you should be going out of your way to do things for, they should understand when you say no and you set those boundaries. So it's worth it in the long run. So here's the bottom line. Not giving a fuck is not about being reckless or rude or disrespectful or. rebellious. or even indifferent. It's about being intentional. It's about choosing where we give our energy. it's choosing to prioritize our energy and our fucks on the things that matter to us and that are important and not so much on the things that we don't care about. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. Let's use our time doing things that elevate us instead of deplete us. Let's use our time doing things that add to the energy that we want to give and not take the energy that we have. So as we wrap up today's episode, I want to leave you with this challenge. I want you to audit where you're spending your time this week. I want you to write your priorities down, what you prioritize. I want you to make that list for sure. And then I want you to audit where you're spending your time, where are you giving your energy. Is it in line with those priorities? How many things can you let go of and how many things do you actually want to give a fuck about? And whatever you don't, let go. And let me know in the comments what it is that you're working on, what you thought about this episode. Like, share, subscribe if you found value. I meant to say this earlier in the episode. really bad at that. But anyway, just, wanna say thank you so much again for being here. Follow me on socials, sign up for my newsletter, go to my website if you wanna go deeper and do one-on-one coaching with me. I would gladly teach you how to not give a fuck. My favorite type of person to coach is someone who wants to be more. empowered who wants to be more confident, who wants to embrace their authenticity. That is my favorite. That is my specialty. I love that. I would love nothing more than to help you do that. So once again, I truly do love you and appreciate you being here. Let's go do life without giving a fuck.