Stop Getting Your Knickers In A Twist

Have you ever been aware of how one minute you have been feeling fantastic, then all of a sudden, some little thing pushes you right over the edge? It’s amazing how quickly a person’s mood can go from great to negative.

It is quite bewildering what some people get their knickers in a twist about. They have enough important things to deal with that brings stress to their daily lives but they allow the littlest of things push them over the edge.

So often they just simply make mountains out of the smallest of molehills.  I love these sayings. They have no control, and just go with a knee jerk reaction to things which are really quite meaningless to the big picture of their life.

“Don’t Stress the Small Stuff–and it’s all small stuff.”  Richard Carlson

Silly little things happen, and suddenly a feeling of uneasiness like a strange stirring within yourself starts up, a feeling you just can’t ignore. These little things can just push you to lose all reason and sensibility. You explode!

Life constantly throws out small tests. Too often we fail these tests by letting the little stuff get us down. We are really good at making little things become big things. When we experience frequent trivial, but upsetting events we move our systems into a state of perpetual stress.

Day in and day out little trivial annoying things happen to us –you drop some papers, take a wrong turn, get a parking ticket, get cut up in traffic, get stuck in traffic, lose your keys or some papers, spill a coffee or lose your mobile phone connection, worse still your internet connection goes down, your sports team loses,  – and you have a melt-down. In our busy and over-scheduled lives, little events have become big events. And when already stressed, a truly large event now becomes completely unmanageable.

“Learning to stop sweating the small stuff involves deciding what things to engage in and what things to ignore. From a certain perspective, life can be described as a series of mistakes, one right after another with a little space in between.”  Richard Carlson

If something this small throws you off, overreacting to a trivial thing, how are you going to react to a real problem in life. We must learn to manage our emotional responses to all types of events – to know what is important and what is only trivial – to stay healthy and sane.

When we give time, energy, and undo attention to trivial things we lose sight of important things and just build up our levels of stress.

Here’s a better way to handle this type of situation:

Break your old habits. – The impulse to react, rather than respond, is very real. A reaction takes little if any conscious effort. Whereas creating an authentic response takes time and energy. You need to learn to think for yourself, rather than just repeat your previous actions

It is far better to respond rather than react.- Responding to an event means taking some time to think about it and then making an intelligent choice about what to do next. Reactions are unconscious, there’s little or no real thinking involved. It is so much healthier to respond than react. A response is conscious rather than just an unconscious knee-jerk repetition. A response shows thoughtfulness, it uses your intelligence to consider how best to respond.

Take the time to think. – choose your best course of action, decide coolly rather than react emotionally. Then you can respond appropriately by creating your response. Take 5 seconds and some deep breaths.

Ask  yourself these questions. –

• Is this just a distraction and I should laugh it off?
• Will this affect my life significantly?
• Is this truly serious and worth my full attention

It feels great to know that you are in charge of your feelings and responses instead of letting knee jerk reactions just happen to the tiniest of event.

“When you respond to life, that’s positive; when you react to life, that’s negative.” Zig Ziglar

You really don’t have to be a slave to the trivial things that happen in life. Only you can control how you react or respond. Remember, most trivial problem are like a snowflakes, they’re going to melt away in seconds. Are you going to let one tiny snowflake push you over the edge?

‘So what do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comments section,  I’d love to hear from you!‘

P.S. If you have a second, sharing this article with your twitter followers would be a huge help.

Score Your Way To Good Health - With Our Healthy Lifestyle Plan

Score your way to good health with our healthy lifestyle plan and it's unique 70 point weekly scorecard!

Click here to find out more