What is Your Truth?

Standing on the platform at King’s Cross station during rush hour, I watched hundreds of people stream past, each seemingly locked in their own invisible performance. The woman adjusting her blazer for the third time. The man checking his reflection in his iPhone  screen. The teenager tugging at her skirt, seeking that impossible balance between self-expression and acceptability.

It struck me that we are all actors in a play we never auditioned for, following scripts we didn’t write.

When Melani Sanders, Instagram influencer, sat in her car after that food shopping trip and declared she didn’t care about shaving her legs or wearing a “real bra,” she wasn’t just having a moment of rebellion. She was experiencing what happens when the weight of endless expectations finally becomes too heavy to bear. Her viral “We Do Not Care Club” resonated with millions because it named something many of us feel but rarely voice. We are exhausted with constantly performing how to be accepted.

In my work with clients across the UK, from Yorkshire solopreneurs to London executives, I have witnessed this same quiet despair. The marketing director who has worn a series of suits she hates for the last fifteen years. The university lecturer who apologises before every presentation, despite being an expert in her field. The mother who spends Sunday evenings in a spiral of anxiety about the week ahead, not because of the work itself, but because of all the ways she might fail to meet invisible standards.

The Invisible Cage 

This is what I have learned through decades of helping people unravel their limiting beliefs-most of our anxiety isn’t actually about our lives, it is about our performance of life. We’re not just living, we are curating, editing, and constantly adjusting ourselves to fit frameworks that were never truly ours to begin with.

In the Core Truths System, I call this “living from borrowed definitions of success.” These aren’t just societal pressures, they are inherited blueprints for how to be a “good” woman, man, parent, or professional. 

They whisper that if we just try hard enough, perform well enough, shrink ourselves small enough (or expand ourselves impressively enough), we’ll finally earn the approval that will make us feel safe and worthy.

But it is time for an uncomfortable truth, that approval never comes, or if it does, it’s fleeting and conditional. Because we’re performing for an audience that’s too busy performing their own roles to truly see us.

The British Art of Polite Suffering

There’s something uniquely British about this performance anxiety. We have elevated the art of “keeping up appearances” to a cultural institution. We queue politely while seething inside. We say “sorry” when someone else bumps into us. We endure terrible weather, poor service, and social awkwardness with a stiff upper lip, as if our capacity to suffer in silence is a measure of our character.

It breaks me every time I see this in clients who have so much to shout about. There’s Jane, a brilliant architect in Manchester, who spent years apologising for taking up space in meetings, prefacing every innovative idea with “This might be silly, but…” There’s Sarah, a GP in York, who worked through her lunch breaks for two years because she was afraid of being seen as “not dedicated enough.” These women weren’t just following professional norms,they were unconsciously adhering to a deeply ingrained belief that their worth was conditional on the basis that they diminish themselves.

The pressure isn’t limited to professional settings. Walk through any UK town centre and you will see it, the perfectly coordinated mothers outside the school gates, each performance of effortless competence masking the chaos and self loathing underneath. The fathers at weekend football matches, projecting casual confidence while internally cataloguing all the ways they’re falling short. The teenagers on social media, crafting personas that bear little resemblance to their actual lived experience.

The Filter of Perception

In the Core Truths framework, the first concept is that our minds filter reality rather than reveal it directly. This is never more evident than in our fear of judgment. We construct elaborate narratives about what others think of us, forgetting that they’re doing exactly the same thing, filtering their perception through their own anxieties, projections, and preoccupations.

The irony is exquisite: we are all so worried about what everyone else thinks that none of us are actually paying as much attention to each other as we imagine. That colleague who you think noticed your mismatched socks? They were probably wondering if anyone noticed they wore the same shirt twice this week. The neighbour who you think judges your overgrown garden? They’re likely too busy worrying about their own domestic shortcomings to focus on yours.

Arthur C. Brooks was right when he noted that most fears about judgment are overblown. Our ancient survival instincts, designed to keep us safe within small tribal groups, are woefully mismatched to modern life. We treat the opinion of every stranger on the internet as if it were a matter of life and death, when in reality, most people are far too absorbed in their own inner dramas to spend much time thinking about ours.

Liberate yourself through Strategic Indifference 

Not caring isn’t about becoming callous or disconnected. It’s about becoming discerning. It’s the art of conscious choice about whose opinions matter and whose don’t.

I think of Maya, a textile designer in Yorkshire who spent the first decade of her career creating work that she thought would be commercially successful, constantly second-guessing her instincts based on market trends and buyer feedback. Then she had what she calls her “not caring moment”, not about her craft or her clients, but about whether her work fit into existing categories. She started creating pieces that felt true to her vision, and suddenly found herself at the forefront of a movement she had inadvertently helped create.

Or consider my friend David, a headteacher in York who realised he’d been making decisions based on what he thought the school governors, parents, and Ofsted inspectors wanted to hear, rather than what he knew was best for his students. When he shifted to caring deeply about educational outcomes while caring less about approval, he became not just more effective, but more authentic in his leadership.

Be Courageously Disappointing

In British culture, disappointing others feels particularly transgressive. We are raised on the notion that consideration for others is the highest virtue. But there’s a difference between genuine consideration and the performance of consideration. The former comes from a place of wholeness and choice; the latter from fear and obligation.

True consideration sometimes requires disappointing people. It means saying no to requests that drain your energy without adding value. It means expressing opinions that others might disagree with. It means showing up as yourself, rather than as the version of yourself you think others want to see.

This isn’t about becoming selfish or inconsiderate. It’s about recognising that when we constantly shape-shift to avoid disappointing anyone, we end up disappointing everyone, but mostly ourselves. We become so focused on being acceptable that we forget to be authentic.

Reclaiming Your Internal Compass

The question isn’t whether to care, but what to care about. When we stop expending energy on the endless performance of acceptability, we free up that energy for what actually matters: our values, our relationships, our contribution to the world, our own inner sense of integrity.

This shift often starts small. Maybe it’s wearing the outfit that makes you feel confident rather than the one you think others expect. Maybe it’s sharing an opinion in a meeting without prefacing it with three apologies. Maybe it’s posting a photo that captures a real moment rather than a curated one.

Each act of strategic indifference is a small rebellion against the tyranny of external validation. It’s a step toward living from the inside out rather than the outside in.

Let Authenticity Rule

When we stop performing and start living, something magical happens: we give others permission to do the same. Our refusal to play the game of endless accommodation becomes a quiet invitation for others to lay down their own performances.

I have seen this in my group programmes. When one person admits they’re struggling, it breaks the spell of collective pretence. When someone shares their real thoughts rather than their polished opinions, the whole room exhales. Authenticity is contagious in the most beautiful way.

The Path Forward

The art of not caring, or selectively caring is a practice. It requires ongoing awareness of  performing versus when we are being. It demands that we regularly ask ourselves: “Whose approval am I seeking right now, and why does it matter to me?”

Sometimes the answer reveals that we genuinely value someone’s opinion because we respect their judgment or because the relationship matters to us. Other times, we discover we’re seeking approval from people we don’t even particularly like, simply because the habit of external validation runs so deep.

In a world that profits from our insecurity, that sells us solutions to problems we didn’t know we had, that constantly whispers we’re not enough as we are, the act of not caring becomes radical. It’s a quiet revolution, fought not with placards and protests, but with the simple, subversive act of living according to our own inner compass.

So perhaps the question isn’t whether you’re brave enough not to care. Perhaps it’s whether you’re brave enough to care about what truly matters, including the beautiful, imperfect, irreplaceable truth of who you are when you’re not performing for anyone at all.

The revolution starts the moment you stop asking “What will they think?” and start asking “What do I know to be true?”

For more information on the next Core Truths System Group Mentorship, book a Truth Session with Nicole:

https://thecoretruthssystem.as.me/