Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff ….

There’s a great book called “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” by Richard Carlson.

In the world according to Richard Carlson, “Life is too short to let minor inconveniences upset us.” “Be present: Living in the here and now prevents us from worrying about past mistakes or future uncertainties.” This is a great self-help book, about perspective, peace, and happiness.

We may encounter small obstacles throughout our day, and while on our journey’s in life, but he reminds us to “shift our perspective.” You also do a lot of this in CBT “Cognitive Behavioral Work” for mental health disorders. Where we learned the system “Catch it, Check it, Change it.” For those of us struggling with bipolar, it’s helpful to stay in the positive. To catch those negative thoughts and learn how to rephase things in the positive with a can do attitude, not give up and use all or nothing thinking. It helps to set goals in your thinking processes, to know your weaknesses.

“The central theme is that most of what we worry about is less important than we think.” [1] For example, I constantly worry about volunteer work, compared to what I’m doing on my blog, most of the topics are hard to mention, you will hear me every now and then get into what I think, and I’ve found that the most helpful way to process events, isn’t to dig deep into a assembled way of viewing a series of events on our own, that can drive you nuts, the options are limitless for the mistakes in thinking you can make, trying to figure out things like crime, or guilt, or incidents, but it’s also hard to take a backseat to watching the news, apart of you still wants to do something more to help others. So this is what this blog is for, to talk about things we can do, without all the jobs, and credentials, to be able to, at least we can think we’re helping, is better than not saying anything at all. Maybe its best to dive into our cares, but within reason, protected from harm. I think about this a lot, how do my thoughts wind up hurting me. I’m not ashamed to talk about self-harm, but isn’t that what it is, you think something is happening to you that is not, like a feeling or emotion or feeling bothered by something, mostly meds can fix this thankfully. For some of this stuff, is what psychiatrists are for, to get us feeling and thinking better.

Richard Carlson, reminds us: “Life is a process—just one thing after another. When you lose it, just start again.” [2] Starting again …. Just the thing we needed to hear, often times too hard on ourselves from the get go. Just like learning a new job, so does our thinking work in a way, where if we consistently practice strategies for thinking and processing better, eventually we will well on our way to living life seamlessly, without all the hiccups and freezing and overwhelm, doesn’t it feel good to learn a new job and get good at it, to the point that your tasks become more automatic, and get faster at what your doing. Try to see thinking as working in the same way, something you work on, that you get better at, that can eventually become automatic or learned habitual routines for coping, like people doing yoga, you’ll find your thing to do!

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