11 Benefits of Letting Go + Living A Carefree Life
I’m a traveler and a musician and I’m hopelessly casual. I struggle with seriousness and I’m laid-back in nearly every aspect of my life. But I’ve realized something — this is one of my superpowers.
So this post shares my favorite benefits of letting go and embodying a carefree life.
While I’m not perfect and I still experience stress, my default state is calm. I’m able to detach, step back and reset. Seeing the brighter side of life and walking in the shoes of a carefree persona and mood is a skillset, but one that anyone can learn.
But is it worth your time?
This article shares my why, so you can decide.
Now let’s do this!
Table of Contents Show
What Is A Carefree Life?
A carefree life, or a chill lifestyle, is one that is optimized for less stress, internal bliss and more fun.
It also means living aligned with your values, passions and purpose.
Because I’ve found that whenever I’m misaligned, my life becomes more hectic and more stressed. But when I do more things that make me feel alive, inspired and excited, everything gets lighter (even stressors).
Go figure.
Carefree living also doesn’t mean you never experience stress at all. But it does mean that stress doesn’t last.
Like a marble sitting in a shallow bowl that gets hit by external pressure, you always roll back to a center point. In this scenario, the bowl is your life, the marble is you and the center point is your carefree outlook and ethos.
So creating a bowl (a lifestyle context) that makes it easy to roll back to some carefree center point is crucial. You can learn more about how to do just that in the recommended read just below!
But let’s keep moving and look at the benefits of living this way.
Recommended: How to Be More Chill In Life
11 Kick-Ass Benefits of Letting Go
Okay, on to the good stuff.
These are my favorite benefits to adopting a chill, carefree lifestyle.
1. You Stress Less
I don’t need to tell you this, but mental health is incredibly important. So being able to manage stress is an awesome modern skill.
For me, a carefree lifestyle helps a lot. I stress less, let go of more and relax easier.
Carefreeness means I can more easily handle distractions, comparison culture, unfulfilling work and that feeling like I need to be doing more.
Most of this is self-imposed pressure. And a chill lifestyle (which doesn’t concern itself with such trivial matters) reminds of that.
So embrace the laid-back way, and enjoy less stress.
2. Setbacks + Obstacles Feel Lighter
A carefree lifestyle doesn’t lug around unnecessary baggage.
It’s like becoming a minimalist traveler — but in life. Carefreeness means you’re able to detach and let go of things. Obstacles, mistakes or failures don’t hang around as long.
You’re not tethered to setbacks because you don’t really care. Such missteps are seen as learning opportunities and a natural part of any growth journey.
A carefree life embodies a growth mindset and embraces obstacles with open arms.
Because the truth is, every great obstacle is a great opportunity to become greater yourself.
So sit back, chill and stumble with a smile.
3. Life Gets Quieter + Less Chaotic
Mental clarity and relaxation are awesome benefits to carefree living. Why this happens, there could be a few reasons.
Maybe it’s the minimalism or the ability to detach from objectively unimportant things. Or maybe it’s just the result of the brain rewiring itself with more laid-back synaptic connections.
Whatever the case, a carefree lifestyle tends to translate to less chaos and less noise in life. Or at least, you don’t notice the loudness as much.
As your priorities shift and you learn to care less and appreciate the nuances in life, things get quieter.
I notice colors differently, I appreciate the simple moments and I tend to only keep the most important things around in my life. Aka, the things (people and places) that align with my values, goals and lifestyle preferences.
So as you embrace this carefree way, expect less noise and welcome the extra space.
Recommended: How to Be More Minimalist
4. More Present Moment Awareness
When you care less, it’s easier to sit back and just observe. Becoming more present is a common side effect of laid-back living.
When you’re less attached to outcomes, judgements or worries, it’s so much easier to live in the present moment. This awareness snowballs into even more carefreeness, becoming a sort of feedback loop.
The trick is in getting the loop started.
For me, meditation helps a lot. Taking more time to pause and reflect in life is a sure path to carefree living.
So as you become more laid-back, you’ll likely notice that you also have more present moment awareness (and less judgement for what’s happening around you).
It’s good stuff, for sure.
Recommended: My Meditation Routine
5. You’re Happier + More Optimistic
A carefree personality leads to a happier, more optimistic life.
When you attach less to things, you can more easily be objective, stay patient and appreciate the things you have. Troubles don’t last as long and you tend to notice the positive in life (not just the negative).
So if you’re keen to enjoy this benefit of more carefree living, you can start with a few simple tricks:
Stop watching the news
Curate a better social media feed for yourself (by watching more optimistic content)
Carefreeness doesn’t mean you’ll be perpetually stoked. But it does mean bad days aren’t quite as bad and you’ll still have an underlying sense of optimism and calmness.
It’s not that problems go away. It’s just that your perception of them improves (and the problems themselves actually get better in time).
So stay the course! A carefree life is a happy life.
:]
Recommended: How to Be Happy-Go-Lucky
6. Greater Objectivity
When you care less, you’re less attached to any particular idea or belief. You’re also more flexible and willing to change.
A carefree life boosts your objectivity, which is (IMO) a great thing.
Dogma leads to stress, rigidity and stagnation (or decline). A chill mindset embraces new ideas as creative and curious things to explore. This is an awesome benefits to becoming more carefree.
The ability to see multiple sides of a story (without judgement), listen (openly) and practice perspective taking are modern soft skills.
But with great carefreeness comes great objectivity.
7. You’re More Creative
The less I care about quality, rules or productivity, the better I create.
While limitations can boost creativity, a carefree lifestyle is different and all-around a good thing. There’s less attachment to methodology, trends, metrics and the fear of failure or looking stupid or being vulnerable.
Carefreeness is also a great way to kickstart a creative flow state. When you’re not trying to be or do or create anything, often the best, most authentic stuff comes out.
Creativity is fickle as it is. But the ability to hop into a flow state, stay loose and detached and have fun is an awesome reward.
So enjoy this benefit — I know it’s one of my favorite perks.
Recommended: How to Be More Creative
8. It’s Healthier
A carefree life tends to mean less stress. And we can all agree that less stress also means a healthier life.
So, a carefree life equals a healthier life (*I’m obviously no health expert, so this is just my personal experience and perspective).
But according to the Mayo Clinic, stress can lead to all sorts of modern maladies, such as headaches, chest pain, tiredness, sleeping problems, a weakened immune system and muscle pain.
And over the long-term, well, things usually don’t get better.
One of the best things I did was recognizing the stress in my life and actively working to lessen it. One way I did that was to adopt a more carefree life. It’s an awesome benefit.
And again, I’m not an expert in stress management, so talking with a pro could help here too.
Still, there’s no harm in letting go and living more casually though.
9. You Become More Magnetic
When you live in a state of constant “want” and stress, your energy is in a constant state of lack and negativity.
This isn’t magnetic.
It’s like losing your car keys. When you’re in a rush, stressed out and you want nothing more than to find your keys, they’re nowhere to be found.
But as soon as you stop caring and stop looking, suddenly they appear.
Life is similar.
For me, stress often comes from wanting something I don’t have. But when I constantly desire something, I’m putting that thing on a pedestal because I don’t have it.
This creates a gap, a separation between myself and the thing I desire. Subconsciously, this perpetuates desire because my focus is always on the gap (i.e., not having the thing I want).
How can we become what we want if we don’t first embody the personality required to achieve that thing we want?
If you can get to a place of detachment and not caring so much, you get rid of the “needy” energy that’s creating a state of lack.
This is the benefit of carefreeness.
You can simply act, think and feel as if the thing has already happened. You don’t care about the outcome because you’re already living in the emotions of your desired outcome (which is really what we want here — not the thing, but the emotions and lifestyle associated with the thing).
Living carefree closes the gap and makes you more magnetic.
And from there, creating your dream life just gets easier.
10. Authenticity Gets Easier
Authenticity is all the rage. It’s brand-building, attractive and honest.
But it’s also surprisingly hard. I mean, it should be easier to just “be yourself.” But we live in a pretty noisy world, full of trends, comparison culture, products tellling us we’re not quite good enough, metrics driving our fulfillment…
And if you get over that first big hump of self awareness and actually knowing who you are authentically, then you’re tasked with actually showing up as that person (online, in person, for your work, in relationships, etc.).
So what’s a human to do? For me, one strategy is to live carefree.
This is an awesome benefit to living more chill in life. Carefreeness tends to mean you care less about what people think. So being authentic is simply easier.
When you don’t care, you don’t care about rubbing someone the wrong way, saying the wrong thing or taking off the mask and just being you.
It takes work, and I’m far from perfect. But I’ve been getting much better.
It’s liberating. And I credit carefree living.
Recommended: How to Be A More Authentic Creative
11. It’s More Fun
At the end of the day, being carefree is just more fun.
When you don’t care (about being judged, looking weird or making mistakes), you have more fun. And a chill attitude is one that doesn’t care.
So if you’re looking for a simple reason to simply care less, then let it be hedonism!
Jokes aside, it’s a great goal (to have more fun in life, that is).
So press on, and don’t worry so much. Optimize your life for more carefreeness and enjoy more fun.
Later ✌️
A carefree life is one that’s aligned with your values, passions and goals. It’s a form of internal bliss.
And there are a ton of benefits. But some of my perks include more creativity, easier authenticity, better heatlh, greater happiness, less stress and becoming more magnetic to the things I truly want in life.
No big deal, right?
So if you’re dabbling in carefree living, I hope this post inspires you. These are the benefits I experience.
But I hope you can enjoy even more!
Either way, stay chill out there.
Want More? Okay. Here’s More.
