If you find yourself sweating the small stuff, align yourself with what's most important to you in life

As humans, we naturally need something to worry about as it gives us a sense of importance. When we have nothing of significance to worry about, we tend to resort to worrying about small, mundane things that happen in our day-to-day lives that have little to no importance in the grand scheme of things: gossip, train delays, terrible weather, what others think of us, etc. In other words, we end up letting the world decide what we should worry about.

'The world will ask who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you' - Carl Jung

As mentioned above, humans always need something to worry about and so, aligning ourselves with what's most important to us in life (aka choosing what to worry about) counteracts this in a healthy and beneficial way.

This is because whilst you'll still technically be worrying about something, you would have shifted your attention to things that are in line with the life you want and therefore, worth worrying about.

Think of it like reordering your priorities. Imagine you're within a crowd and have a public speaking fear when all of a sudden, you see a man pull out a gun. Suddenly, alerting the crowd of the emerging gunman goes to the top of your priorities and therefore, above your initial fear of public speaking to the point where you no longer have a problem speaking out in that moment. Hence the power of reordering your priorities.

Likewise, when we get align ourselves with goals bigger than ourselves, we can be free from spending anymore time and energy on anything below it. For example, people's opinions of you wouldn't come into play when what's most important to you is your children's happiness and wellbeing. This is exactly why you might observe that some parents wouldn't think twice about making themselves look silly in public as long as it makes their child giggle with joy that no amount of money in the world could buy.

Now whilst the example involving the gunman was a very extreme one, I'm willing to bet we can think of a moment in the past week—maybe even today—where we found ourselves fretting about a situation in which we would probably be better off spending our time and energy on something better.

This brings me onto one of, if not the most, pivotal questions I've answered during my time of self reflection of 'What is most important to you in life?' Once I answered this, everything that wasn't on that list just seemed to suddenly get so small and insignificant.

Doing this exercise has been crucial during my journey as not only did it help me get in touch with what I value most in life, but I now have a point of reference that I can turn to whenever I find myself getting too caught up in things outside of my list and in need of realignment.

In answering this yourself, it's essential to take your time when curating your list to ensure you end up with one including things that are worth worrying about and fall in line exactly with the life you want and the kind of person you want to be.

For example, worrying about how honest you are being with yourself is a meaningful worry since overcoming it means you are improving as a person. Whereas, worrying about what others think of you would be a meaningless one since people are always going to have their own opinion of you which is ultimately out of your control regardless of how hard you work on yourself and your goals.

The above also brings up the crucial point that whatever you put on your list should be ones within your control, things that you can personally do something about, and aren't predominantly reliant on external factors.

I also strongly advise picking things that you can constantly work towards. For example 'Being the healthiest person I can be' is a goal that you can always get better at and work towards your whole life.

Try to avoid goals with set targets such as 'Make X amount of money'. Whilst they can, of course, be useful, they tend to be less than ideal in the long run as they may lead you down a path of either: constantly reviewing your list, or a constant feeling of 'now what?' once you've achieved that specific goal.

Another thing that helped me when curating my list was answering the question of 'What does it look like to achieve this?' besides each goal.

This is where you get to paint a clear picture of what achieving your goals look like. Having a clear picture of what success looks like in this way can help us to stay on track, especially during the inevitable moments where we find ourselves feeling lost and in need of realignment/reminding of our goals.

Try and keep your list to no more than 5 things so that you not only don't get overwhelmed, but are also able to give each one sufficient enough attention and prevent a 'Jack of all trades, master of none' situation.

As mentioned earlier, once you have your list, keep it on you. In the event that you find yourself caught up in stressing too much about something outside of your list, you can use it as reminder of what's important and where you need to be placing your focus. A mantra I like to use whenever I find myself in these situations is 'If it's not on the list, it's not worth stressing about'.

Finally, and with all that being said, this is not to say that applying the above advice to your life will make things such as train delays or gossip any less annoying, but it will help ensure that these things are no longer weighing heavy on your mind, dictating your happiness, or influencing your mood.

When you begin to focus on things bigger than yourself, you realise that anything below it is simply not worth your time.