Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and it's all small stuff

by Richard Carlson

Life itself becomes a classroom, and the curriculum is patience.

You can start with as little as five minutes and build up your capacity for patience, over time. Start by saying to yourself, “Okay, for the next five minutes I won’t allow myself to be bothered by anything. I’ll be patient.”

Your intention to be patient, especially if you know it’s only for a short while, immediately strengthe...

The simple act of gearing my mind toward patience allows me to remain in the present moment far more than I would if I were upset, thinking about all the times this has happened before and feeling like a martyr.

So many of us hold on to little resentments that may have stemmed from an argument, a misunderstanding, the way we were raised, or some other painful event.

As is usually the case when someone takes the chance and reaches out, everyone wins.

If you want to be a more peaceful person you must understand that being right is almost never more important than allowing yourself to be happy. The way to be happy is to let go, and reach out.

To play “time warp,” all you have to do is imagine that whatever circumstance you are dealing with isn’t happening right now but a year from now.

While this simple game won’t solve all your problems, it can give you an enormous amount of needed perspective.

Life isn’t fair. It’s a bummer, but it’s absolutely true. Ironically, recognizing this sobering fact can be a very liberating insight.

One of the mistakes many of us make is that we feel sorry for ourselves, or for others, thinking that life should be fair, or that someday it will be. It’s not and it won’t.

One of the nice things about surrendering to the fact that life isn’t fair is that it keeps us from feeling sorry for ourselves by encouraging us to do the very best we can with what we have. We know it’s not “life’s job” to make everything perfect, it’s our own challenge.

The fact that life isn’t fair doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do everything in our power to improve our own lives or the world as a whole. To the contrary, it suggests that we should.

The next time you find yourself thinking about the injustices of the world, try reminding yourself of this very basic fact. You may be surprised that it can nudge you out of self-pity and into helpful action.

“People are no longer human beings. We should be called human doings.”

He went on to explain that if you allow yourself to be bored, even for an hour—or less—and don’t fight it, the feelings of boredom will be replaced with feelings of peace. And after a little practice, you’ll learn to relax.

I’m not talking about hours of idle time or laziness, but simply learning the art of relaxing, of just “being,” rather than “doing,” for a few minutes each day.

There isn’t a specific technique other than to consciously do nothing. Just sit still, perhaps look out the window and notice your thoughts and feelings. At first you may get a little anxious, but each day it will get a little easier.

While eating dessert, we ponder what we should do afterward. After that evening, it’s “What should we do this weekend?” After we’ve been out, we walk into the house and immediately turn on the television, pick up the phone, open a book, or start cleaning. It’s almost as though we’re frightened at the thought of not having something to do, even for a minute. The beauty of doing nothing is that it teaches you to clear your mind and relax.

When you allow your mind to take a break, it comes back stronger, sharper, more focused and creative.

Our current level of stress will be exactly that of our tolerance to stress. You’ll notice that the people who say, “I can handle lots of stress” will always be under a great deal of it!

What you want to start doing is noticing your stress early, before it gets out of hand. When you feel your mind moving too quickly, it’s time to back off and regain your bearings.

You’ll find that when you catch yourself getting too stressed out—early, before it gets out of control—your stress will be like the proverbial snowball rolling down the hill. When it’s small, it’s manageable and easy to control. Once it gathers momentum, however, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to stop.

As you lower your tolerance to stress, you will find that you’ll have far less stress to handle, as well as creative ideas for handling the stress that is left over.

“I probably don’t have enough weeks left in my life to write everyone on my list.” This may or may not be true for you,

Even if you don’t have people in your life to whom you feel you can write, go ahead and write the letter to someone you don’t know instead—perhaps to an author who may not even be living, whose works you admire. Or to a great inventor or thinker from the past or present. Part of the value of the letter is to gear your thinking toward gratitude. Writing the letter, even if it isn’t sent, would do just that.

Write your first letter this week. I’ll bet you’ll be glad you did.

While it can be a little scary or painful, it’s a good idea to consider your own death and, in the process, your life. Doing so will remind you of the kind of person you want to be and the priorities that are most important to you.

I’ve had hundreds of clients over the years who have all but neglected their families as well as their own dreams because of their propensity to believe that life is an emergency.

We take our own goals so seriously that we forget to have fun along the way, and we forget to cut ourselves some slack. We take simple preferences and turn them into conditions for our own happiness.

The first step in becoming a more peaceful person is to have the humility to admit that, in most cases, you’re creating your own emergencies. Life will usually go on if things don’t go according to plan.

Using your back burner means allowing your mind to solve a problem while you are busy doing something else, here in the present moment.

In much the same way, we can solve many of life’s problems (serious and otherwise) if we feed the back burner of our mind with a list of problems, facts, and variables, and possible solutions. Just as when we make soup or a sauce, the thoughts and ideas we feed the back burner of our mind must be left alone to simmer properly.

put your problems on your back burner, you don’t want to turn the burner off. Instead, you want to gently hold the problem in your mind without actively analyzing it. This simple technique will help you solve many problems and will greatly reduce the stress and effort in your life.

me, gratitude and inner peace go hand in hand. The more genuinely grateful I feel for the gift of my life, the more peaceful I feel.

The point is to gear your attention toward gratitude, preferably first thing in the morning.

I learned a long time ago that it’s easy to allow my mind to slip into various forms of negativity. When I do, the first thing that leaves me is my sense of gratitude. I begin to take the people in my life for granted, and the love that I often feel is replaced with resentment and frustration.

It may seem like an awfully simple suggestion, but it really works! If you wake up in the morning with gratitude on your mind, it’s pretty difficult, in fact almost impossible, to feel anything but peace.

In other words, it’s unusual to find a person who walks around with her head down, frowning and looking away from people, who is secretly a peaceful, joyful person.

if you think of strangers as being a little more like you and treat them not only with kindness and respect but with smiles and eye contact as well, you’ll probably notice some pretty nice changes in yourself.

It has proven to be extremely successful for releasing feelings of irritation toward other people.

You can play with this technique and alter it in many ways. It almost always provides the user with some needed perspective and compassion. If our goal is to become more peaceful and loving, we certainly don’t want to harbor negativity toward others.

Essentially, “seek first to understand” implies that you become more interested in understanding others and less in having other people understand you. It means mastering the idea that if you want quality, fulfilling communication that is nourishing to you and others, understanding others must come first.

When you try to be understood before you understand, the effort you exert will be felt by you and the person or people you are trying to reach. Communication will break down, and you may end up with a battle of two egos.

Seeking first to understand isn’t about who’s right or wrong; it is a philosophy of effective communication.

Effective listening is more than simply avoiding the bad habit of interrupting others while they are speaking or finishing their sentences. It’s being content to listen to the entire thought of someone rather than waiting impatiently for your chance to respond.

It seemed that no one was really listening to one another; instead they were taking turns not listening to one another. I asked my wife if I still did the same thing. With a smile on her face she said, “Only sometimes.”

Slowing down your responses and becoming a better listener aids you in becoming a more peaceful person.

Everyone loves to talk to someone who truly listens to what they are saying.

life is filled with opportunities to choose between making a big deal out of something or simply letting it go, realizing it doesn’t really matter. If you choose your battles wisely, you’ll be far more effective in winning those that are truly important.