Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff.

It’s an unfortunate truth that life is full of stress.

Work, travel, shopping, neighbours, money, health,  even family can all cause you to stress out at one time or another.

And usually these problems all seem to come together, to the point where you feel overwhelmed, which, of course, makes you feel even more stressed.

Accepting that you can’t avoid stress completely is actually a good first step in limiting how much you allow stress to dominate your life.

And there are a number of ways that you can reduce stress and make it more manageable.

Don’t sweat the small stuff.

You should divide situations that cause you stress into three broad groups:

• Those things you can do something about.

• Those things which will likely resolve themselves in time on their own.

• Those things that you have no control over.

The last two are the small stuff. Granted they may not seem small, but as you can’t do anything about them you shouldn’t fret over them. You should concentrate on what you can change.

Worrying about things you can’t alter only makes you feel worse and gets nothing resolved.

And once you start to look at the situations you face, you may actually be surprised just how many fall into the first category. 

For example, you hate your commute to work. The buses are late, the trains crowded and traffic moves at a snail’s pace. You can’t do anything about the transportation situation where you live. Well you could write a stiff letter to someone which would probably just get ignored, or you could go into politics which could take years and would likely just add a whole new set of stressors to your life.

But you could just accept you’re going to be spending a long time travelling and prepare for it. Use your phone to listen to music, or catch up on your favourite TV series. Read a book, do a crossword, knit. The possibilities are endless.

(Related article: Your Best Stress-buster Is In Your Pocket.)

Sure, you might be annoyed, but as you begin to get into the habit of distracting yourself, you’ll find your commute gets a lot easier. You may even get to the stage where you actually look forward to it as it gives you a chance to have a bit of ‘me’ time.

Identify the causes

It can sometimes be difficult to really understand what is causing you to be stressful. It can often seem like there is so much going on that you can’t control.  

But identifying what exactly is causing the problem is essential.

One way to do this effectively is to make a list. Identify those aspects of your own behavior which might be contributing to your feelings of stress. Do you procrastinate? Are you making excuses for not completing a task? Do you keep mentally worrying over a situation, blowing it out of proportion? 

What you need to do is to identify those behaviours over which you do have control and those situations you can’t do anything about. By doing this you can adjust your behavior in ways that will help you cope with tasks and by accepting that some situations may be out of control, to learn to stop fixating on them.

Once you know what the problems are, it becomes much easier to tackle them by prioritizing those that need to be dealt with now and pushing back those you can deal with later or which you can’t do anything about.

Doing this will reduce your feelings of being overwhelmed and encourage you to stop avoiding potentially stressful situations or tasks and get them done on your terms.

As for those you can’t control.

By acknowledging this to yourself, it will help you to put them into perspective.

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