pick your battles
Happy Wednesday! On Monday, I wrote a post called “acknowledge your limits” and shared an embarrassing anecdote. If you didn’t get a chance to read it yet, click the link above to check it out!
Have you ever interacted with a person who takes himself too seriously? Someone who sees every minor thing as the end of the world or who refuses to acknowledge that something exists just because she hasn’t experienced or heard of it before? It’s important to approach tricky situations with a certain amount of humility because of Murphy’s Law - anything that can happen will happen.
If you take yourself too seriously in life, you’ll be miserable. This, however, doesn’t mean that you don’t have to take your work seriously. The things that are important to you are meant to be taken seriously: your career, your relationships, your philanthropic efforts, etc. Anything that ties into your core values is serious business. But, as is the case quite often in life, things go wrong.
I recently had an interaction where one person in a group refused to acknowledge the existence of a commonly-accepted term even though the other members of the group had all heard of it before. Do you ever encounter people who are willing to live and die by their views instead of listen and keep an open mind? These people tend to take everything too seriously. If you’re getting worked up about a small, pretty meaningless disagreement, what’s really going on under the surface in your life that’s causing you that much anguish?
Have you ever heard the phrase “don’t take life too seriously, you’ll never get out alive anyway?” So many people get caught up in this idea of “I’m right, you’re wrong” that they often forget what they disagreed about in the first place (and a lot of the time, it’s really stupid stuff).
Life is short. We’re only here for a limited time, so why spend yours in a constant state of defensiveness and disagreement? Do things that make you happy. Work hard at a career that fulfills you. Invest in your relationships. And do good for other people.
The small things matter, so make sure the small things you’re doing are good because good begets good. And realize that sometimes you’re going to be wrong (more often than not, most likely), so learn to let things go and pick your battles wisely. If every battle is a "10" for you, then what happens when something actually worth your "10 effort" happens? Pick and choose wisely, and keep an open mind.
Thank you so much for reading, and, as always, if you have any pressing questions or if you want to discuss something further with me, please subscribe below, follow me on Instagram or Twitter, or reach out to me on the “contact” page. I’m so grateful you're here and that I’ve been getting a lot of really challenging questions and even better feedback from a community all over the world. I couldn’t do this without you! So THANK YOU! I’m here for you, and I love hearing from you, too! You’re the best, and you have everything you need inside of you! Please believe it! Starve your ego, feed your soul - and follow your heart!!