This is not as bad as it sounds. Really, I think it’s pretty much the same as “don’t sweat the small stuff”. It just seems that, in order to really resonate with me personally, it needs to be expressed in this somewhat more aggressive fashion.
I have a tendency to care too much about things that don’t really matter all that much. It’s kind of a mild OCD-type thing. A recent rather traumatic event occurred to me (not catastrophic, just a severe shake-up) which I was having a hard time figuring out how to handle emotionally, in order to be able to continue functioning. Anyway, I stumbled upon the philosophy of IDGAS which I’m finding is giving me a sense of control, not just over this one event but in general. It’s like I was spending so much effort caring about so many little things not being exactly the way I wanted them to be that I was getting lost in all that crap – losing touch with the ordinary, real world. IDGAS seems to be allowing me to feel more in contact and more confident. This may seem paradoxical but I think it’s also allowing me to be more considerate of others (because I’m not so focused on my own artificial requirements).
That’s all. Just wanted to share some thoughts. If you DGAS, that’s fine.
I took on this philosophy about five years ago and it’s brilliant. I have particularly applied it to my working life - I was getting way over invested in the places I worked at and it was driving me batty.
I’ve tried this and, well, I found it to be disastrous. Yes, spending too much energy on small things is extremely stressful and time consuming and likely a bad thing, but not spending enough means that small things get overlooked and they become larger things. Sure, sometimes it isn’t worth the time and energy because you just end up redoing things, other times it makes sense to deal with it when it’s small or it quickly becomes unmanagable.
Instead, though I’m still pretty bad at it, I prefer an approach of trying to use my energy in the most efficient way possible to ensure that my priorities get handled. Sometimes that means letting little things slide because big things will otherwise become unmanagable. Sometimes it even means letting big things slide because it isn’t going to get any more difficult to handle in the time it takes me to handle small things that will get worse.
But most of all, though it seems like it feels empowering to let go of small things because the impact of each one is relatively small and the total energy for lots of small things often seems less efficient and so you have all that extra energy to spend on other things, you’re also abdicating your control over all of those small things. Those small things can easily add up to as much or more than any big thing you’re handling. Realizing that, I just don’t think it’s worth the trade-off of failing to exercise will in as many aspects of my life as possible.
You make good points. But there are little things that matter, and little things that don’t matter. And things that may matter, but you can’t do anything about them. Taking care of things in the first category (which is what I think you’re talking about) makes sense. Stressing out over things in the second and third categories doesn’t.
I am reminded of a particular quote about being apathetic…
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
Hopefully your “not giving a shit” attitude will not get in the way of you standing up for what you believe is right
I hope so too. As I indicated above, I think this is about not caring too much about stuff that, in reality, doesn’t matter a whole lot. In the OP I was going to add the sentence “This doesn’t mean I don’t give a shit about anything” but didn’t.
Yeah I got the overall sense that you weren’t in particular danger of becoming an apathetic slob… I just really like that quote so I saw an opportunity to use it, not that most people probably haven’t already heard it.
Honestly, it sounds like you are being reasonable and taking things in stride. I have a similar attitude as you, it sounds like. I used to get so fired up over things over which I had little control, and then realized it was pretty stupid.
Sounds like a boiling down of the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
The wikipediaarticle on that is kind of interesting too.
God, grant me the serenity to not give a shit about unimportant stuff
The courage to give a shit about the important stuff
And the wisdom to know what to give a shit about
