Stop Ruminating on What You Can’t Control. Here’s How to Live an Unbothered Life

Bria Jones is giving zero f**** energy these days. It’s no surprise considering she’s almost three months postpartum. Three months as a new mom to her beautiful son, Melo Jones, (who she gave birth to in late March) has boosted her unbothered energy, and she wants you to get on her level.

On a recent episode of Because I Love You, Jones shares wise wisdom about getting out of your own way. All the things that keep you stuck and bothered—the thoughts, the patterns, the need to be right, and the fear of being misunderstood—Jones says it’s time to let theml go. It’s time to reassess how you think of yourself, how you talk to yourself, and the habits that you have. If you’ve been feeling stuck, it’s time to pause, reflect, and release.

“There’s really nothing standing in the way of the quality of life that I want to have other than me and what I do with the life I have been given,” Jones says. 

Follow these five steps to get out of your own way and live a life that is truly unbothered. 

1. Let go of the need to be right.

In the internet age, we spend so much time trying to prove that we are right. Everyone wants the last word, especially on social media. Jones explains that people are always going to look for pieces of the puzzle to support their truth, so there’s no point in trying to argue someone down from their opinion. While Jones encourages healthy discourse, it’s important to understand that arguing is not winning. People will hear what they want to hear. If you want to be unbothered, you have to accept that people aren’t going to understand you sometimes, and that’s okay. 

“Showing up as an empathetic and kind person in this cultural climate is difficult. It feels easy to go low, but instead, learn to bite your tongue,” Jones gently explains. “You’re not going to win. Let people believe what they want to believe.”

2. Let go of the illusion that things needed to go differently.

When things don’t go as planned, it can be easy to replay scenarios in your head over and over again. But Jones says that it needed to happen that way to teach you something. “It happened in the way it was supposed to happen. Everything is either a blessing or a lesson—it really comes down to those two things,” she explains.

When you replay situations in your mind, Jones says you are basically imprisoning yourself. While you can’t go back and change the past, disappointments and obstacles can be the greatest teachers. They can also help you learn how to pivot and get back up.

“That’s the beauty of life. Life is going to keep showing you patterns until you recognize them, and once you do, you start to learn how to figure them out,” Jones says. “It happened. It’s over. We have to move on from it.”

3. Let go of trying to win people over.

Remember in middle school when you spent so much time trying to be with the “in crowd?” You are not crazy for wanting people to love and accept you. Jones says this need for acceptance is a primal instinct. 

The truth is that you can do everything right and people will still choose not to like you. “There’s a need to have people accept you, but at what cost? When you put the need to be accepted first, you bend, you shrink, and you over-explain yourself to people who are choosing not to see you,” Jones says.

Jones has a rude awakening for the person constantly trying to win people over—acceptance that has to be earned through a performance is not acceptance; it’s transactional. “Just continue to show up as a kind person and that’s all you need to do. You don’t need to prove anything to anybody,” Jones explains. 

4. Let go of the fear of being misunderstood.

We all want to feel understood, but the truth is we don’t need everyone to get us. Embracing unbothered energy means letting go of the fear of being misunderstood. It means being okay with being misread, misquoted, and disliked. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, but, according to Jones, it simply means you are choosing integrity.

“People will choose to misunderstand you in this lifetime. It’s for you to be okay with,” Jones explains. “The only person who needs to know the truth about you is you. Everyone else can think what they want about you.”

5. Let go of the idea of needing to earn good things.

In her past life, Jones used to think that good things always happened to good people. But it was a blow to her belief system when she realized bad things happen to good people too. Thus, she adopted the mindset of needing to earn good things. But now, with more wisdom under her belt and a newly found unbothered energy, she’s learned that there does not have to be a struggle to get to something good. 

“You do deserve ease, effortless interactions and wins, good things happening to you on the fly, and the soft life, if that’s what you crave,” Jones explains. “The struggle does not prove your worth. No, you are worthy of nice things and good things happening to you.”