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PRACTICE NOT SWEATING
THE REALLY SMALL STUFF

We live in a very stressful world. Therefore, probably there are many reasons why we’re seeing so many drastic acts of violence and examples of unhappiness and frustration involving teens. I won’t pretend to have all the answers. I suspect, however, that a contributing factor to the problems we’re seeing is that very few of us learn, at an early enough age, to not sweat the small stuff. If you think about it, there are some pretty important implications stemming from this.

What do you suppose would happen, for example, to someone who never learned to let things go? What if every single little thing, every small hassle, and every little nuisance was blown way out of proportion and treated like a giant emergency? What if your role models taught you to freak out over the slightest glitch in your plans or the tiniest mistake made? Logically, if you can’t handle even the smallest things with some degree of patience, perspective, and the ability to keep your cool, then, as the stakes get bigger, so will your reactions. In other words, someone who can’t handle a situation like a little static on the television screen—or a misplaced toy—certainly isn’t going to be able to handle bigger things later on, like being dropped by a girlfriend or boyfriend, criticism by peers, or getting a poor grade on an important test.

And while few of us freak out to this degree over every small thing, most of us do, to one degree or another, lack the necessary perspective, patience, and “cool” required to live a happy life with a minimal amount of stress.

To get this perspective, the trick seems to be to start with the really small stuff and build on your success. To begin with, you can choose anything that you think of as slightly irritating yet small and relatively insignificant. You might, for example, try to practice being more patient with a sibling who walks into your room without knocking. Or, despite the temptation, stop talking to your friends about a weird quirk that one of your teachers has. Or maybe your mom makes you do something around the house that you don’t like to do, but is nevertheless necessary. Perhaps you could practice doing it without feeling or acting annoyed. Practicing something like these things or something entirely different is okay. What you’re trying to do is to have experiences where you are intentionally and consciously responding with less reactivity and less harshly to things you are used to getting uptight about. You’re practicing not sweating the small stuff.

What happens, if you practice this with different situations for a while, is that you’ll start to accept the fact that there will always be things about day-to-day living that are either less than ideal or slightly irritating. But you’ll begin to expend less negative energy on these things, and that will result in a less stressful life. You’ll have more energy for enjoyment, friendships, and achievements. Pretty soon, the things that used to bother you won’t bother you at all. In fact, you’ll start to put more and more situations into the category of “It’s not worth sweating over.”

Life’s little irritations will always be a drag to deal with until you learn to see them as less significant. Once you do, however, your stress will go down, your performance will be enhanced, and your life will be more fun again.