I Don't Care Anymore - Phil Collins

Well you can tell everyone I'm a down disgrace, drag my name all over the place, I don't care anymore…

I simply love this Phil Collins track for it’s pure anger and hostility, mainly directed at his failed first marriage. Now, rather than talking marriage guidance in this blog, I’m going to concentrate more on Collins ‘Don’t care’ attitude of which I’m a big fan. I believe there’s a lot to be said about not caring about what anyone else thinks as long as you believe in what you are doing, and that it feels like you are doing the right thing, for your own needs.

So many folk, wear their hearts on their sleeves, or on Facebook nowadays searching for folk to ‘Rubber Stamp’ their every move and decision. Pre-internet, it makes me wonder how folk ever got through life with only their self-confidence to get them through rather than typing every life-crisis into a box and pressing ‘post’.

Ok, it’s great to bounce your ideas off a trusted friend but to live life constantly asking for recommendations and approval from an online cabal seems somewhat crazy to me. It’s an ‘Ask the Audience’ kinda answer on ‘Millionaire’ but without four answers to choose from if you get my drift.

You can tell everybody 'bout the state I'm in, you won't catch me crying 'cos I just can't win…

You see, that would be an admission of failure for me (something I wouldn’t be happy in sharing) and an intrusion into my inner world. That’s a place where only I’m allowed, a private place of reflection and somewhere that my ‘Metacognition of Life’ can process the ups and downs of ‘Me’ living with ‘Me’. As for Phil’s crying, well I get that as I’ve shed a few tears over the years’ myself, but you certainly wouldn’t catch me crying if I wasn’t as he says ‘Winning’. Nothing is ever that serious, is it?

I don't care what you say, we never played by the same rules anyway… 

But what are ‘The Rules’? And who makes them? I’m not sure they are even written down anywhere. I do know that most ‘Rules’ that can be applied to anything we do in life can be interpreted in many different ways and play anyone at Monopoly or Scrabble and most households have their own slant on how they play the game. If you are wondering, at our house, both are played exactly to ‘The Rules’ and we don’t play Scrabble anymore after the ‘ZO-Gate’ incident where I played the two-letter word much to Lady C’s annoyance.

'Cos every day I'm feeling fine with myself, and I don't care now what you say…

And if you sever your ties with trying to please other people, it is possible to find self-satisfaction and then future happiness and personal fulfilment. The moment of realisation that the self-imposed pressure of pleasing other people’s expectations is over is just one of the most satisfying and liberating occurrences that anyone can ever experience. The planning of a brighter less complicated and more rewarding future is something that I love to work on with my clients. Getting them to appreciate themselves and their journey, is my goal and the self-satisfaction for them is a far better reward than a ‘Well done’ from me.

If you do end up ‘Feeling fine with yourself’, then enjoy the empowerment it delivers and see just how easy it can be when you don’t worry too much about what folk say. Especially if they have little knowledge or experience of what it is they you are trying to achieve.

Try not caring so much and see what happens eh?

1,016 Marathons - 246 Ultras - 15 Marathon des Sables - 9 Guinness World Records