Dont Sweat The Small Stuff

• Catch yourself when you fall into your habit of insisting that things should be other than they are. Gently remind yourself that life is okay the way it is, right now. In the absence of your judgment, everything would be fine. As you begin to eliminate your need for perfection in all areas of your life, you'll begin to discover the perfection in life itself.

• Sometimes you have to accept things as the way they are. You can't always 'win'.

• Fearful, frantic thinking takes an enormous amount of energy and drains the creativity and motivation from our lives. When you are fearful or frantic, you literally immobilize yourself from your greatest potential, not to mention enjoyment. Any success that you do have is despite your fear, not because of it. When you have what you want (inner peace), you are less distracted by your wants, needs, desires, and concerns. It's thus easier to concentrate, focus, achieve your goals, and to give back to others.

• Be aware of how quickly your negative and insecure thinking can spiral out of control. Have you ever noticed how uptight you feel when you're caught in your thinking? And, to top it off, the more absorbed you get in the details of whatever is upsetting you, the worse you feel. One thought leads to another, and yet another, until at some point you become incredibly agitated. The sooner you catch yourself in the act of building your mental snowball, the easier it is to stop. You stop your train of thought before it has a chance to get going.

• Nothing helps us build our perspective more than developing compassion for others. It involves the willingness to put yourself in someone else's shoes, to take the focus off yourself and to imagine what it's like to be in someone else's predicament.

• Practice deep breathing. Stop, sit quietly for a few minutes, clear your mind, and take several deep, slow, calming breaths. Inhale deeply on a slow count of four, hold it for a second or two, and then exhale on a slow count of four.

• Regardless of who you are or what you do, however, remember that nothing is more important than your sense of happiness and inner peace and that of your loved ones. If you're obsessed with getting everything done, you'll never have a sense of well-being! In reality, almost everything can wait. Very little in our work lives truly falls into the "emergency" category. If you stay focused on your work, it will all get done in due time. Don't waste any more precious moments of your life regretting the inevitable.

• When you hurry someone along, interrupt someone, or finish his or her sentence, you have to keep track not only of your own thoughts but of those of the person you are interrupting as well. This tendency (which, by the way, is extremely common in busy people), encourages both parties to speed up their speech and their thinking. This, in turn, makes both people nervous, irritable, and annoyed. It's downright exhausting. It's also the cause of many arguments, because if there's one thing almost everyone resents, it's someone who doesn't listen to what they are saying.

• While all acts of kindness are inherently wonderful, there is something even more magical about doing something thoughtful but mentioning it to no one, ever. You always feel good when you give to others. Rather than diluting the positive feelings by telling others about your own kindness, by keeping it to yourself you get to retain all the positive feelings.

• Although it's a difficult habit to break, it's not only enjoyable but actually peaceful to have the quiet confidence to be able to surrender your need for attention and instead share in the joy of someone else's glory

• Without question, many of us have mastered the neurotic art of spending much of our lives worrying about a variety of things--all at once. We allow past problems and future concerns to dominate our present moments, so much so that we end up anxious, frustrated, depressed, and hopeless. To combat fear, the best strategy is to learn to bring your attention back to the present.

• Your job is to try to determine what the people in your life are tying to teach you. You'll find that if you do this, you'll be far less annoyed, bothered, and frustrated by the actions and imperfections of other people. You can actually get yourself in the habit of approaching life in this manner and, if you do, you'll be glad you did.

• Being right, defending our positions takes an enormous amount of mental energy and often alienates us from the people in our lives. Needing to be right--or needing someone else to be wrong--encourages others to become defensive, and puts pressure on us to keep defending. Yet, many of us (me too, at times) spend a great deal of time and energy attempting to prove (or point out) that we are right--and/or others are wrong. A wonderful, heartfelt strategy for becoming more peaceful and loving is to practice allowing others the joy of being right--give them the glory. Stop correcting. As hard as it may be to change this habit, it's worth any effort and practice it takes. The people in your life will become less defensive and more loving.

• The more patient you are, the more accepting you will be of what is, rather than insisting that life to be exactly as you would like it to be. Without patience, life is extremely frustrating. You are easily annoyed, bothered, and irritated. Patience adds a dimension of ease and acceptance to your life. It's essential for inner peace. Becoming more patient involves opening your heart to the present moment, even if you don't like it. If you are stuck in a traffic jam, late for an appointment, opening to the moment would mean catching yourself building a mental snowball before your thinking got out of hand and gently reminding yourself to relax. It might also be a good time to breathe as well as an opportunity to remind yourself that, in the bigger scheme of things, being late is "small stuff."

• "Is this situation really as important as I'm making it out to be?" Once in a great while it may be--but a vast majority of the time, it simply isn't. Chances are a year from now you aren't going to care.

• 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. When we make this mistake we tend to spend a lot of time wallowing and/or complaining about what's wrong with life. We commiserate with others, discussing the injustices of life. 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.

• You may have thoughts about some unresolved problem or something you regret or perhaps someone that you hurt or someone who has hurt you. Allow these thoughts to come, linger a while, and then watch them disappear. See them for what they are-just more thoughts. They are not you. You are permanent, unchanging and always at peace. They are ripples on the pond and if you know anything about ripples, you should know that they come and they go. They move outwards until they are gone.

~Richard Carlson