Five years or five minutes?
I’ve recently been trying to follow the idea that if it’s not going to matter in five years, I shouldn’t spend more than five minutes worrying about it.
This is a hard one for me, because I can get worked up about things so easily and so quickly. But I realized that one of the things I would regret most as I got older was the time I wasted being angry about things that didn’t matter. Which means that every time I feel myself getting worked up I have to try and decide if it’s important enough to be angry about.
Let’s be honest, even when we’re angry, we know if it’s a big deal or if we’re just making it a big deal. It can be hard, trust me I know, to try and talk yourself out of being angry about something. But the reality is that there just isn’t enough time to make it worth being angry without a legitimate reason.
Here’s how it works.
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I feel myself getting angry/mad/irritated/annoyed about A/B/C
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I recognize what’s happening and try to be objective about whether or not A/B/C is something that will matter in five years (Mostly it’s not something that will matter in five years)
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Here’s the coolest part – after I take some deep breaths – I can pretty much just let it go! Because I just decided it wasn’t worth getting upset over! It wasn’t worth wasting my precious time on!
It’s not always easy to be rational when you’re in the process of getting worked up about things, but I’m finding that I feel much better when I can stop it before it really takes ahold of me.
Hoping this will help you when you feel like you’re losing it. How do you keep perspective?
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