No Fucks Given

I learned the phrase “no fucks given” from some friends in Sydney.

But I do not mean what most people mean when they say it, especially those friends of mine.

I do not mean ignore everyone.

I do not mean disrespect people.

I do not mean become selfish, refuse advice, or act like an asshole.

Sometimes people use that phrase as permission. Permission to be careless. Permission to stop listening. Permission to treat their own impulses like wisdom.

That is not what I am talking about.

What I mean is this: other people’s opinions are input. They are not authority over your life.

Listen. Consider what people say. Question yourself. Be grateful. Treat people well. Do not burn bridges.

And then, when all of that is done, make the decision you believe is right for your own life, because you are the one who has to live with the consequences.

Everybody else gets to comment and then go home.

The Impossible Game

Here is the thing about living your own life in front of other people.

You cannot win.

• Stay at the job, and you are a coward who is afraid to take a risk. Leave it, and you are disloyal, chasing a paycheck.
• Take the money, and you are a sellout. Turn the money down, and you are an idiot.
• Work hard, and you are obsessed. Rest, and you are lazy.
• Save, and you are cheap. Spend, and you are reckless.

There is no version of your life that everyone approves of.

That life does not exist.

It has never existed.

So if you are waiting for a decision that nobody will criticize, you are waiting for a decision you will never make.

You are running the impossible game, and the only way to win is to stop playing it.

I learned that game on a jobsite, long before I had words for it. And I learned it through a strange thing the criticism did.

It changed directions on me.

When I Was Green, They Gave Me Shit

Early in my construction career, when I was green, my bosses and supervisors rode me constantly.

I was not getting enough done. I was too slow. I had to redo work. I made bad calls because I simply did not know better yet.

I had not built the judgment, the speed, or the experience that would come later.

Here is the part I want to be honest about, because it matters.

Some of that criticism was dead right.

I was learning. I made real mistakes. Sometimes the work genuinely needed to be redone, and my boss was correct to send me back to fix it.

The job was teaching me.

And I needed to get better.

And I did.

But then something strange happened.

As I got faster and more productive and more capable, the criticism did not disappear.

It just changed sources. Now it was not the bosses on my back. It was some of the guys working beside me.

And their complaint was the exact reverse of the first one.

You are making the rest of us look bad.

Think about that for a second.

When I was not doing enough, people gave me shit for being too slow.

When I became more productive, a different set of people gave me shit for doing too much.

Different people.

Opposite criticisms.

Same me.

That forced me to face something uncomfortable.

There was no level of performance, no speed, no effort, no standard, that guaranteed everybody around me would approve.

Whatever version of myself I showed up as, somebody could find a reason to tear it down.

Whether I was acting like an 80 percenter or pushing to be one of the 20 percenters, somebody had a problem with it.

Slack off and you are not pulling your weight.

Push and you are making everyone else look bad.

The target keeps moving because the target belongs to other people.

So somewhere in there, I had to tell myself something harder than any of that criticism.

My coworkers were not responsible for whether I kept my job.

They were not responsible for my paycheck, my reputation, my craftsmanship, my employability, my pension, my family, or my future.

I was.

Now, I want to be careful about how I frame this, because there is a version of this philosophy that turns into “every man for himself,” and that is not me and never was.

I spent decades working on crews, and construction is not a solo sport.

You are interdependent.

You help the apprentice. You support the crew. You do your part and you do not leave people hanging. You are someone other people can count on.

I believe all of that down to my bones.

But there is a boundary buried in there, and it took me years to see it clearly.

If somebody who works beside me is helping me do the work, we are coworkers.

If they are doing their own job and leaving me to do mine, that is fine too.

But if they are actively trying to stop me from doing good work because my performance makes them uncomfortable, then in that particular moment, they are not functioning as my teammate.

They are functioning as an opponent.

Not an enemy.

I am not walking around a jobsite seeing threats in every corner.

But a title is just a word. It tells you a person’s position. It does not tell you whether their behavior is actually on your side.

A relationship label does not override observable behavior.

Someone can hold the title “coworker” while doing everything they can to make you smaller.

Which brought me to the deepest version of this lesson, the one it took me years to learn to say plainly.

I cannot sacrifice my relationship with myself in order to preserve somebody else’s comfort with me.

I cared about my coworkers. I wanted to be part of a crew. I had no appetite for unnecessary conflict.

None of that changed.

But if keeping someone’s approval required me to work below my ability, or stop improving, or lower my standards, or risk my livelihood, or make myself smaller just so they could feel bigger, then the price of that relationship had become too high.

Cooperation is not self-erasure.

Being a good teammate does not mean deliberately becoming less competent so somebody else feels better.

Being respectful does not mean giving someone veto power over your standards.

Being liked is not the same thing as being trustworthy.

And belonging to a group does not require handing the group the keys to your judgment.

I was willing to protect the relationship until protecting the relationship required betraying my own standards.

Then the math changed.

For a while I thought this was just jobsite behavior.

A construction problem.

Then I kept seeing the same thing in other rooms, wearing different uniforms.

And I realized I had been wrong about what I was looking at.

The Instructor Who Left

I had just gotten back from Mexico, two weeks away.

I walked into Meraki and found out that an instructor I genuinely like, respect, and consider a total badass had decided to leave.

They were moving to another school.

I had heard all kinds of things about that other school, and about what the opportunity might offer them.

Some of it may be true.

Some of it may not.

I am not going to repeat any of it, because I do not know it is true, and because it is not the point.

Here is the point.

The moment I heard the news, I felt the pull.

I started building an opinion about another person’s decision from incomplete information.

Maybe they were chasing money.

Maybe they were making a smart move.

Maybe they were making a mistake.

And then I stopped myself.

Because I recognized this.

Not the exact situation.

Not even close.

The shape of it.

The same human pattern I had spent thirty-five years working through on jobsites.

A guy makes a move, and it is almost automatic to start interpreting it.

Was it money?

Opportunity?

Frustration?

Ambition?

Loyalty?

Something personal?

I was doing it myself.

And the truth was, I did not know the complete answer.

I probably never will.

Because here is the truth I was about to forget.

I do not have to live their life.

Maybe they got more money.

Maybe they got a better opportunity.

Maybe they wanted a new challenge.

Maybe something else entirely was pulling at them that I know nothing about.

I probably never will.

I do not know.

And I do not need to know.

It is their decision.

They are the one who trains there, teaches there, drives there, builds their life around it.

They are the one who has to live with whatever it becomes.

A construction crew sees it through hard hats.

A martial arts school sees it through gis.

Change the setting and the uniforms, and the social dynamics are still there.

Different industry. Same human nature.

No industry, tribe, team, profession, or community is immune to this.

Not construction.

Not martial arts.

Not any other room full of people watching somebody make a choice.

And that is the realization.

This was never a construction lesson. It was a people lesson.

Construction just happened to be the first place I was forced to learn it.

The whole thing brought me straight back to the specific rules that carried me through those years.

Never Leave for a Lateral Move

I was a union electrician for thirty-five years.

And during those years, there were times when other contractors tried to recruit me.

They would see my work on jobs where our companies were working side by side, and they would try to poach me.

I remember there was even a photograph somewhere of me in my shop truck, parked at another contractor’s headquarters to take a meeting.

When you are good at what you do, people notice.

That was flattering.

But early on, I set myself one rule about changing jobs.

Never leave for a lateral move.

If I was going to jump ship, something meaningful had to improve.

More money.

More autonomy.

More responsibility.

More interesting work.

Better conditions.

More learning.

More room to grow.

Something that mattered specifically to me.

What I refused to do was run sideways because I was pissed off.

And here is the part that matters beyond the jobsite.

A lateral move can look, and sometimes genuinely be, purely personal.

What is a step sideways for one person is a step up for another.

I am not the judge of anybody else’s move.

The principle is the only thing I hold onto.

Know what the move is buying you.

Move toward something better.

Do not merely run sideways because you are angry.

Thank You for the Opportunity

But there was a second rule, and it mattered just as much.

Over thirty-five years I dragged up from jobs.

I got laid off.

I left contractors I liked and contractors I could not stand.

No matter which one it was, before I left I did the same thing.

I found the supervisor, shook his hand, looked him in the eye, and said:

“Thank you for the opportunity.”

And I meant it.

Every single time.

Even the times I hated the guy.

Even the times I could not wait to get out of there.

Why?

Because for however long I worked there, that contractor was filling my coffers.

Helping me pay my bills.

Giving me work and experience.

Teaching me something, sometimes without meaning to.

Sometimes the lesson was just:

“I never want to work like this again.”

That is still a lesson.

That still has value.

So when I left, I left clean.

I did not set fires on my way out the door.

And here is the hinge, the thing it took me years to put into words.

Gratitude Does Not Create Ownership

You can appreciate what someone gave you without owing them your future.

That sounds simple until you try to live it.

You can respect a teacher without remaining their student forever.

You can respect an employer without working there forever.

You can appreciate an opportunity without surrendering the right to pursue a better one.

You can be loyal without becoming trapped.

You can say thank you, and mean it, and then walk through the door.

That can be harder than it sounds, because gratitude feels heavy to a lot of people.

Like it comes with a hook in it.

Like if someone was good to you, you owe them the rest of your decisions.

Like leaving means the thank you was a lie.

It was not.

The thank you was real.

The leaving is also real.

Both are true at the same time.

This is the difference between being loyal and being owned.

And that is actually what "no fucks given" has meant to me, the whole time.

It is not ingratitude.

It is gratitude with a spine.

The flip side of this matters just as much, so let me name it before I move on.

This can become an excuse.

It is easy to use “no fucks given” as cover to be selfish, impulsive, and immune to feedback while calling it freedom.

To refuse every hard conversation because it is more comfortable to be right than to be corrected.

That is not agency.

That is cowardice wearing a costume.

The real thing is harder.

It means caring what thoughtful people think, considering it seriously, and still refusing to outsource the final judgment to them.

That is a narrow line to walk, and it is supposed to be.

If it were easy, everyone would do it.

Everybody’s Advice Is About Them

Here is why you cannot simply hand your decisions to other people, even people who love you.

Everybody who gives you advice is looking at your life through their own eyes.

Their values.

Their fears.

Their ambitions.

Their financial situation.

Their family situation.

Their tolerance for risk.

Their identity.

Their ideas about loyalty.

Their definition of success.

Their regrets.

Their insecurities.

None of that makes them stupid.

None of it makes them malicious.

It makes them human.

But it also means their advice cannot substitute for your judgment.

They can tell you what they would do.

What they would do is filtered through a lifetime of being them, not being you.

They get to comment.

They do not get to become the person who lives out the consequences.

It is easy to spend years trying to make choices everyone around you will approve of, consulting every voice in the room except the one that has to carry the outcome.

That is not wisdom.

That is a committee running a life that has no committee in the obligation column.

At some point you have to take the input, thank people for it genuinely, and then decide.

The Steering Wheel Is Yours

So let me bring it back around, because I do not want this to land as some soft “follow your heart” bedtime story.

• Respect people.
• Listen to people.
• Question yourself.

Consider the criticism you would rather not hear, because sometimes it is the truth and sometimes the truth is sitting right behind it.

Be grateful for every opportunity somebody gave you.

Say thank you, and mean it.

Do not burn bridges.

That is just foolishness dressed up as boldness, and it always costs more than it pays.

And then, when all of that is done, make your own call.

Not because other people are fools.

Because other people do not have to live your life.

You do.

Everybody gets an opinion. You get the consequences.

No fucks given.

⚔ The Dojo Drill

Today’s training:

The Gratitude Drill

Write down 3 people who helped you in your life.

Send one a thank-you message.

📚 Leader’s Library

​Factfulness by Hans Rosling​

Why?

Because this book is a great reminder that the world in our heads is not always the world that actually exists.

We naturally notice dramatic stories, divide things into simple categories, and give more weight to bad news than slow improvement.

Rosling shows how easily those instincts can distort our judgment—and how looking at the data can change the picture.

For leaders, that matters.

Better decisions begin with seeing reality more clearly, not merely believing the story we’ve already told ourselves about it.

P.S. Know a martial arts gym owner who’s stressed about money or student numbers?

Do them a favor: send them to The Leader's Dōjō, my website where I help owners get more students and keep them longer with simple systems.

One forward from you could change their gym: The Leader's Dōjō​

Chuck