By Melody Jou
So as the weather begins to change (finally), the clocks have been dialed back an hour, and the semester starts getting really crazy and hectic, I wanted to share an encouraging little book that I’ve come across with all you faithful CWS blog readers 🙂 This book is entitled “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…And it’s All Small Stuff”, by bestselling author and speaker Richard Carlson. In a lighthearted and candid manner, Carlson gives some serious perspective by sharing 100 simple ways to keep the little things from taking over our lives. Here to whet your appetite are two of my personal favorites.
- Be aware of the snowball effect of your thinking: I’m definitely the type of person who gets stressed out from thinking about everything that I need to do in a day. Carlson advises readers to always be aware of the negative and stressful thoughts in our head so that they don’t spiral out of control. The more time I spend thinking about how overwhelmed I am, it only exacerbates the problem by making me feel even more stressed than I already am! Instead of get caught up or absorbed in those thoughts, Carlson says that we should just nip these thoughts in the bud by saying, “Whew, there I go again!” and move right along.
- Be happy where you are: In the book, Carlson quotes Alfred D’Souza: “For a long time, it had seemed to me that life was about to begin- real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, and a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.” Many of us, myself included, may have the habit of postponing our happiness. We convince ourselves that, “Someday I’ll be happy.” We tell ourselves that we’ll be happy after all the homework is done, when we graduate from college, when we get our first job, when we get married and have kids, and on and on and on! All the while, life keeps moving forward. The truth is, there’s no better time to be happy than right now! And if not now, then when? Life will always be full of challenges. It’s better to accept the challenges and be happy anyways than unhappily caught up with the challenges of life.
Hope that you all were able to get some perspective from those tips!If you’d like more information about the author and his other works, I’d like to invite you to visit his website at www.dontsweat.com.
I find it really helpful for me to change my thinking and attitude when things in life get tough or stressful. And here to show you one example of how it’s done, check out this video of one little girl’s daily self-affirmations! Enjoy!
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