Getting unhooked and not giving a hoot is a break for the psyche, says Life Coach Carole Ann Rice
“Do I look like someone who gives a hoot?” was one of those 1980's smart, on-the-nose, Woody Allen-esque witticisms which have the handy dual facility of being able to put someone down whilst giving yourself the thumbs up on the credibility front.
A kind of studied insouciance is the aim of the seriously stylish and cool. Too cool to care, too cool to get hooked up with trivial things like human emotions and too cool to lasso themselves to anything that in the great existential scheme of things doesn't amount to a hill of beans anyway.
In another parlance it could be seen as ignorance being bliss. But that's the preserve of the dumb and clueless and doesn't have the shrug-shoulder hip of those who “don't give a ...”.
However, there is something to be said for taking things lightly and weighing up the time, significance and energy one needs to invest in the seemingly infinite demands and delicious attractions thrown across our existence like a sushi conveyor belt.
When some of us have just got to grips with trilobites do we need to embrace the terabyte until it comes up and, well, bites us? As one old lady I know says “I can't be asked to do this” (no one has the heart to correct her) so it is that many of us are resisting the ceaseless tide of technology, new trends and social mores, not out of a sort of fuddy duddy resistance, but simply because we are at capacity.
Saying no or not joining in feels liberating. I can confess to never watching a Swedish “noir” drama, nor House of Cards nor Game of Thrones and have got through years without viewing anything with Simon Cowell in, on or around it.
I high five myself for the wonderful mental storage it buys me when I don’t have to contribute to conversations and can allow a delightful switching off moment where I mentally drool and smile at the wall in wanton imbecilic glee.
I even tried selective muteness recently such was my choice to duck out of conversations on the EU Referendum, the Isis crisis or Kate Moss dating an 18-year-old. Let me tell you it was bliss. To shrug and offer hands up in a “I don't know, nor do I care” so of submission was what it must be like to live in a world of complete air-headedness and it was, albeit, a temporary status, really rather nice.
Oh, I have opinions almighty, loud and strident but it actually feels like a week in a Swiss Alps spa to not have to join in and make or prove a point. And breathe.
Let's face it we all know plenty of people on permanent broadcast talking at us and spouting forth their observations or simply recalling the minutiae of their last week in real time without a care for our sensibilities. So, if they won’t give us a break give yourself one.
Leave them to do the heavy lifting I say. Sometimes it's nice to sit back, unhook, let it go and press delete on all those annoying thoughts, distractions and scientific gewgaws which fight for our connection and suck us of energy and storage space.
And here's a guarantee (don't you love one of those?) – whatever it is you are worried or feeling anxious about right now you will have forgotten about by this time next week.
How cool is that?
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