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

by Richard Carlson

The tiniest disagreement or glitch in your plans can be made into a big deal if your goal (conscious or unconscious) is to have everything work out in your favor. In my book, this is nothing more than a prescription for unhappiness and frustration.

The truth is, life is rarely exactly the way we want it to be, and other people often don’t act as we would like them to. Moment to moment, there are aspects of life that we like and others that we don’t. There are always going to be people who disagree with you, people who do things differently, and things that don’t work out. If you fight against this principle of life, you’ll spend most of your life fighting battles. A more peaceful way to live is to decide consciously which battles are worth fighting and which are better left alone.

If you don’t want to “sweat the small stuff,” it’s critical that you choose your battles wisely. If you do, there will come a day when you’ll rarely feel the need to do battle at all.

When you’re in a good mood, life looks great. You have perspective, common sense, and wisdom. In good moods, things don’t feel so hard, problems seem less formidable and easier to solve. When you’re in a good mood, relationships seem to flow and communication is easy. If you are criticized, you take it in stride.

catch: People don’t realize their moods are always on the run. They think instead that their lives have suddenly become worse in the past day, or even the last hour.

In low moods we lose our perspective and everything seems urgent. We completely forget that when we are in a good mood, everything seems so much better.

The truth is, life is almost never as bad as it seems when you’re in a low mood. Rather than staying stuck in a bad temper, convinced you are seeing life realistically, you can learn to question your judgment. Remind yourself, “Of course I’m feeling defensive [or angry, frustrated, stressed, depressed]; I’m in a bad mood. I always feel negative when I’m low.” When you’re in an ill mood, learn to pass it off as simply that: an unavoidable human condition that will pass with time, if you leave it alone. A low mood is not the time to analyze your life.

“Life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been a real life you would have been instructed where to go and what to do.” Whenever I think of this humorous bit of wisdom, it reminds me to not take my life so seriously.

Whether you’re being bombarded with problems, responsibilities, even insurmountable hurdles, when looked at as a test, you always have a chance to succeed, in the sense of rising above that which is challenging you. If, on the other hand, you see each new issue you face as a serious battle that must be won in order to survive, you’re probably in for a very rocky journey.

boss. See if you can redefine the issue you face from being a “problem” to being a test. Rather than struggling with your issue, see if there is something you can learn from it. Ask yourself, “Why is this issue in my life? What would it mean and what would be involved to rise above it? Could I possibly look at this issue any differently? Can I see it as a test of some kind?”

When you expect to be dished out your share of disapproval instead of struggling against this fact, you’ll develop a helpful perspective to assist your life journey. Rather than feeling rejected by disapproval, you can remind yourself, “Here it is again. That’s okay.” You can learn to be pleasantly surprised, even grateful when you receive the approval you’re hoping for.

The point is, giving is fun and it doesn’t have to be expensive.

Perhaps the greatest reason to practice random kindness is that it brings great contentment into your life.

If we all based our love on our children’s behavior, it would often be difficult to love them at all. If love were based purely on behavior, then perhaps none of us would ever have been loved as a teenager!

Wouldn’t we live in a more loving world if, when someone acted in a way that we didn’t approve of, we could see their actions in a similar light as our teenagers’ offbeat behavior?

When your spouse or close friend snaps at you, try to understand that, beneath this isolated act, your loved one really wants to love you, and to feel loved by you. Looking beyond behavior is easier than you might think. Try it today, and you’ll see and feel some nice results.

If we focus on behavior too much, it can seem like other people are making us miserable.

“Round up all the people who are making you miserable and bring them to me. I will treat them [as a counselor], and you’ll get better!”

It’s true that other people do weird things (who doesn’t?), but we are the ones getting upset, so we are the ones who need to change.

Seeing the innocence is a powerful tool for transformation that means when someone is acting in a way that we don’t like, the best strategy for dealing with that person is to distance ourselves from the behavior; to “look beyond it,” so that we can see the innocence in where the behavior is coming from. Very often, this slight shift in our thinking immediately puts us into a state of compassion.

Underneath even the most annoying behavior is a frustrated person who is crying out for compassion.

If you’re compassionate, it won’t be hard to see. When you see the innocence, the same things that have always frustrated you no longer do. And, when you’re not frustrated by the actions of others, it’s a lot easier to stay focused on the beauty of life.

Your heart, the compassionate part of you, knows that it’s impossible to feel better at the expense of someone else.

The next time you have the chance to correct someone, even if their facts are a little off, resist the temptation. Instead, ask yourself, “What do I really want out of this interaction?”

Each time you resist “being right,” and instead choose kindness, you’ll notice a peaceful feeling within.

happy and that it doesn’t matter whose idea it was. (Do you see why she’s so easy to love?)

In order to be a person filled with equanimity, you must choose kindness over being right, most of the time. The best place to start is with the next person you speak to.

“If you had an hour to live and could make only one phone call—who would you call, what would you say, and why are you waiting?”

Ideally, you can tell someone in person or over the phone. I wonder how many people have been on the receiving end of a phone call where the caller says, “I just called to tell you how much I love you!” You may be surprised that almost nothing in the world means so much to a person.

The less compelled you are to try to prove yourself to others, the easier it is to feel peaceful inside.

People are drawn to those with a quiet, inner confidence, people who don’t need to make themselves look good, be “right” all the time, or steal the glory. Most people love a person who doesn’t need to brag, a person who shares from his or her heart and not from his or her ego.

The way to develop genuine humility is to practice.

When in Doubt about Whose Turn It Is to Take Out the Trash, Go Ahead and Take It Out

Keeping track only discourages you by cluttering your mind with who’s doing what, who’s doing more, and so forth. If you want to know the truth about it, this is the epitome of “small stuff.”

It will bring you far more joy to your life to know that you have done your part and someone else in your family has one less thing to do,

The strongest argument against this strategy is the concern that you’ll be taken advantage of. This mistake is similar to believing it’s important that you’re right. Most of the time it’s not important that you’re right, and neither is it important if you take the trash out a few more times than your spouse or housemate. Making things like garbage less relevant in your life will undoubtedly free up more time and energy for truly important things.

even our lives, by doing the very same thing. Essentially, weatherproofing means that you are on the careful lookout for what needs to be fixed or repaired. It’s finding the cracks and flaws of life, and either trying to fix them, or at least point them out to others.

The point is, you’ve begun what inevitably turns into a way of life—looking for and thinking about what you don’t like about someone, or something that isn’t quite right.

Occasional harmless comments have an insidious tendency to become a way of looking at life.

When you are weatherproofing another human being, it says nothing about them—but it does define you as someone who needs to be critical.

Earlier in this book I introduced the idea of spending a moment, each day, thinking of someone to thank. Another excellent source of gratitude and inner peace is to spend a moment, every day, thinking of someone to love.

The love equivalent might read, “Thinking of someone to love each day keeps your resentment away!”

I started consciously choosing to think of people to love when I realized how often I could get caught up in thinking about the opposite—people who irritate me. My mind would focus on negative or strange be...

Every morning when I wake up, I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. Then I ask myself the question, “Who shall I send love to today?”

the idea is to gear my mind toward love. Once the person to whom I’m directing the love is clear, I simply wish them a day filled with love. I might say to myself something like, “I hope you have a wonderful day filled with loving kindness.”

I’ll conveniently redefine anthropology as “being interested, without judgment, in the way other people choose to live and behave.” This strategy is geared toward developing your compassion, as well as a way of becoming more patient. Beyond that, however, being interested in the way other people act is a way of replacing judgments with loving-kindness. When you are genuinely curious about the way someone reacts or the way they feel about something, it’s unlikely that you will also be annoyed.