The wee beginnings of my paradigm shift towards ‘chalance’ formed as I watched Timothee Chalamet’s acceptance speech at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in late February of this year. Well actually, never being much of an award show person myself, I watched a clip of it the following morning on social media when it magically appeared on my feed. I guess the algorithm thought I was in need of some sort of pick-me-up, because really, the speech is quite inspiring, and you should give it a watch. My big takeaway, however, was more than a shot of motivation; it was the unapologetic ambition of Chalamet, the first hit on the veil of nonchalance that has settled over us in recent years.

Here’s the key part: “I know the classiest thing would be to downplay the effort that went into this role and how much this means to me, but the truth is this was five and a half years of my life…I know we’re in a subjective business, but the truth is I’m really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats, I’m inspired by the greats, I’m inspired by the greats here tonight. I’m as inspired by Daniel Day Lewis, Marlon Brando and Viola Davis as I am by Michael Jordan and Michael Phelps, and I want to be up there.”

Now, that speech may have rubbed some people the wrong way. Being someone who usually revels in modesty, I might as well have just scoffed, turned off my phone, and mildly disliked Chalamet for the rest of his acting career. Somehow, though, I didn’t see his speech that February night as unnecessarily arrogant or overly self-important—I saw it as one of the first real attempts by a celebrity to be ‘chalant’ (in quotes, because, contrary to popular belief, it isn’t a real word). I think of chalant as this: a conscious effort to own up to your goals, hard work and motivation, and, perhaps most importantly, an attempt to rebuke the idea of making it all look so easy. But why do we care so much about downplaying the effort required to accomplish something? In my mind, there are two reasons, and they both have distinct faults.

First off, assuming an air of disaffectedness just looks cooler. Think heroes walking away from a building without as much as a blink as the bomb detonates. To perform at the highest possible standard given the situation, and not make it look as if you’re even trying? Hard to beat. The Internet is chock full of nonchalant clips, believe me. But, maybe, those moments are ultimately unimportant when compared to the greatness of your goals. There are plenty of arguably more famous moments where people have reached incredible heights just by the force of their will. Steve Jobs, Kobe Bryant, even fictional characters like Harry Potter didn’t care about the ease with which they acted, they just acted. And, like all great success stories, they got it done. Sure, they had their moments of desperation and pain (certainly not nonchalant in the slightest), but they got it done. So while it’s nice to look unbothered while you do your thing, be careful about letting your nonchalance get in the way of your final output. Your results speak louder than the apparent ease with which you obtained them.

My second reason is a little more psychoanalysis-dependent—people take on an air of nonchalance to reduce performance expectations. If you pretend like you don’t care, nobody can say (or think) that you failed to live up to their expectations, because, in all honesty, they were never there. My rebuttal for this line of thinking is this: so what? So what if people know you didn’t get the grade on a test you wanted, despite studying hard for it? So what if people know you trained all offseason but didn’t make the starting lineup? Others can judge you for your failure to perform in the moment, but there is simply no denying the work you put into that task beforehand. And while you still can work hard and be nonchalant, that mentality only makes the eventual success more mundane. Because, at the end of the day, we will all do well on the test and make the starting lineup, in one form or another. And the eventual success upon hitting that milestone will feel so much better to you and to others if everyone knows how much work you put into it.

Of course, I’m not advocating for blatant displays of cockiness or over-ambition. Nobody likes that, least of all me. I just want to see more emotion up on stage, if we’re to continue with the Chalamet reference. I want people to be clear in their intentions, to acknowledge the work they’re putting into some facet of their life and to partake in due celebrations of their achievements. Most of all, I want people to stop trying to hide behind a veil of indifference, because whatever you’re trying to accomplish is just not that easy. You know it, I know it, we all know it. You’re an interesting person, and you do interesting things. Take some pride in that.