Things will go wrong. It always does. That doesn’t mean you have to hide in the corner and start crying again. You can burn the darkness and overcome all this shit right now. All you have to do is be unfuckwithable.
The world is a crazy place, and right in the middle of it all if you, trying to make a decent go of things. Then life starts fucking with you. Messing up your plans. Letting you down. Throwing a drink in your face.
Not just life, but people too. Yeah, actual humans who come along with their own ideas and plans and who aren’t backward in telling you how to do things or where you’re going wrong.
It’s not fair.
So when life starts fucking with you, wouldn’t it be cool to be a little bit more…unfuckwithable? A bit more resilient. A bit less fragile. A whole lot more confident. Because then, you could do more of what you want rather than feeling like you’re dealing with obstacle after obstacle.
Well, is this your lucky day, because here are five ways you can be more unfuckwithable, starting right now.
Related: 3 Ways You Can Use Your Darkness To Awaken Your Light
How To Be Unfuckwithable: 5 Solid Ways
1. Get Real With Yourself
You can’t be unfuckwithable while you’re fucking yourself over. So, first of all, you have to get real with yourself.
The things you’re pushing away need to be faced. The things you’re denying the need to be accepted. The things you don’t want to think about the need to be welcomed in.
This is not easy, not by a long stretch. It takes courage and it takes time. But squaring up to how you’ve been doing yourself a disservice is essential, otherwise, there’s a whole universe of things that will keep fucking with you.
It starts with a little honesty. Some real, bare, honesty that shines a light on the things that you’re trying to keep in the dark. These don’t need to be big, life-changing secrets, like being with the wrong person, denying your sexuality, or not facing grief. They can be smaller, more subtle things like a fear of intimacy, shame about being an introvert, or not facing up to an issue in your family.
You have to get real with yourself, no matter what you do with what you find. Call it tough love, but it is love. A radical act of love towards yourself to own who you are and where you are.
2. Tell Better Stories
The stories you tell yourself will fuck with you longer and deeper than anyone else ever will.
When you tell yourself the story that “other people are better at this than me”, you’ll feel on the back foot and not good enough. When you tell yourself the story that you need to “fit in”, you’re prioritizing the safety of not be singled out over bringing everything you’ve got to the moment you’re in. And when you tell yourself the story that “I can’t screw up or fail”, you’ll never risk much of anything and never gain much of anything.
Your stories shape your experience. When you start telling yourself better stories, you get a better experience.
Your brain constructs stories that fit its MO to minimize risk, maximize reward. Anything that keeps you safe stops you from being rejected or keeps you from risking failure is all the reward it needs. So those are the stories it tells you.
But there are different stories. Better stories. Like the one about how you’ll be okay, no matter what happens. Or the one where you’re greater than the sum of your parts and can learn and grow in ways that means to you. Or the one where you’re already worthy of love and belonging. A huge part of being unfuckwithable is seeing the stories you tell yourself that fuck you over, then finding new stories that serve you better.
Related: The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck
3. Park the Drama
Drama is for the Kardashian-loving, opinion-spewing, self-important fools of the world.
Drama is mired in detail. He said, she said. Who did what? Who didn’t do what? Who likes who. Who hates who. The real problem is. What should have happened is. I can’t believe they did that. And then what happened is. And then. And then. And then. And then. And then.
When you’re in the drama, all you can see is the endless, rolling, tumultuous detail and how unfair it all is. It puts you in a place where the whole world is fucking around and not listening to you. It puts you in a place where you’re endlessly fucked with.
The drama keeps you busy while your view of what really matters gets clouded. And it’s the stuff that matters to you—whether it’s love, creativity, contribution, laughter, connection, or whatever else—that makes life rich with texture and possibility.
Being unfuckwithable means elevating yourself above the stuff that keeps fucking with you. Go to where the meaning is, not the trivial. Go to where the potential is, not the problems. Go to where the vision is, not the vultures.
4. Engage, don’t struggle
How many times in your life have you struggled against where you found yourself? A relationship that didn’t feel right or took an unwanted swerve. A job that bored you or kept you feeling stuck. Or a life that seems to be a string of “almosts” and struggles to come into focus.
It sure seems like life is a struggle for a lot of people, but I wonder about that. I wonder about the idea of struggle as a noble or necessary thing. The idea that you’re like a beleaguered soldier, trying to do what’s right and battling against all the stuff out there that’s against you.
It sets up conflict right from the start. You against the world, in a forceful effort to get free of constraint or resist attack. It’s a conflict that’s not just exhausting but fucks with how you see yourself and how you see your place in the world.
So don’t struggle, engage. When you find yourself in a situation or circumstance that you’d rather not be in, own it. Welcome it. Love it.
Because it’s only when you love the hell you’re in that you get to make choices based on the best of you rather than your worst. It’s only when you drop the weighty and frustrating “Why me…?” and start the weightless and freeing “Now then…” that you get to make good choices based on the fact that you’re already whole and worthy of love and belonging.
So fuck struggling. Engage.
Related: 3 Types of People Who don’t Give a Fuck and How to be One of Them.
5. Take a stand
Taking a stand is that thing you do when someone or something comes at you and asks you to step aside. Literature, movies, and history are filled with people who did it—Martin Luther King. Erin Brockovich. Captain America. Mother Theresa. Harry freakin’ Potter.
Of course, if your spine happens to be made from damp socks then you’ll fold quicker than Superman on laundry day.
Rolling over instead of taking a stand for something that matters to you does 3 things:
- Diminishes your sense that you can have a meaningful impact
- Sets up patterns of behaviour where people-pleasing and fitting in is more important than making a decision that matters
- Fucks with you
Now, this doesn’t mean that you always have to come out swinging, that you have to transform a community or save the world. Taking a stand might simply be saying “No” when you’re asked to work the weekend because you want to spend quality time with someone you love.
It might mean prioritizing a personal project (getting fit, writing a book, setting up a business) over slouching in front of the TV. Or it might mean making a choice towards gratitude and wholeheartedness instead of cynicism and judgment.
Say no when you need to. Face a challenge when it’s right to. Be responsible when it’s easier not to. Because when you know what really matters to you, and that includes what you will and won’t compromise on, you can’t be fucked with.
So many ways to fuck with yourself
There are so many more ways you get to fuck with yourself. Trying to self-validate your identity by people-pleasing and being a bottomless pit. Chasing an unchallenged notion of success because that’s what you’ve been told or trained to do. Not owning your story or yourself because there’s something there that makes you uncomfortable or challenges your beliefs, only to find that same lack of ownership is exactly what’s keeping you stuck.
With all these ways to fuck with yourself, it’s a miracle you get anything done.
But you do get things done. You have times when you do something that gives you the warm fuzzies because, well, it just matters. You have times when you smash through a challenge because you bring your best to it and do what comes naturally. And you have times when you connect with someone deeply or laugh yourself silly because you accept the fact that you’re already enough.
Related: 4 Core Paths To Developing Confidence In Your Life
Acceptance over denial. Ease over struggle. Integration over separation. This is how you stop fucking with yourself and start living.
Steve Errey is a confidence coach who helps people to 1. Overcome crappy thinking, 2. Feel more confident and 3. Get more peace of mind. Get more at https://confidence.coach.
Written by Steve Errey
Originally appeared in Confidence Coach
