I can't believe I stressed over this so much

Lesson learned.

It amazes me how I let little things stress me out. Anyone else? I even have a rule for this. It came from an embarrassing story I’ll tell you in a second. Ok, here’s the rule.

Super profound, I know.

You’ll understand when you hear my embarrassing story.

You may not know this about me, but I constantly carry a little notebook and pen in my pants pocket. I made a video about it that got a few million views. Apparently, it resonated with people.

Anyway, I also carry a pen around with me. I love pens, but I’m stingy. I squeeze every last drop out of those pens.

At this particular moment, I was trying to write, but my pen was almost out of ink. But because it wasn’t totally out of ink, I put up with it.

And it annoyed me.

It didn’t write properly, but I felt bad for getting a new one I had a few feet away because, I mean, it still worked right?

I literally got up and started walking around my room before I realized how ridiculous I was being. Here I was, getting frustrated because my pen wasn’t writing well, but refusing to get a new one that literally cost less than $2. I was letting a problem that cost less than $2 and about 5 seconds get me stressed out.

I stopped pacing and said: “Life is short. Throw the pen away.”

Meaning, life is too short and awesome to let something so tiny annoy me.

I’d like to say at this point that I made that story up as an example… but I didn’t. True story.

Believe it or not, I think about this story a lot. There are so many times I’ve caught myself stressing out, getting annoyed or frustrated over a problem that would cost me less than $5, or 5 minutes.

Now I ask myself how much it would cost me to eliminate the stress something is causing me. Sometimes it’s with money, or a few minutes, or an honest look at the consequences. Sometimes it can’t be eliminated that easily, life is complicated and multilayered. But you’d be surprised how many things stress you out or cause you anxiety that have basically no consequence.

Take a look around where you are right now. Make a list of what is annoying you or stressing you out. Beside each thing write down what it would cost you in time or money to fix that problem. Right now. Besides that, write down what consequences fixing that problem would bring.

Now, take a look at that list.

Thoughts?

I bet there’s a lot on there that could be eliminated for little to no cost to you.

The 2-minute rule

There’s something called the 2-minute rule. It’s pretty similar. It basically says that if something takes you 2 minutes or less to do, do it right away. The idea is that over time you will slowly eliminate all the little tasks that are stacking up because you just do them. Suddenly you have fewer little tasks hovering over you. More headspace for important tasks.

Your life is too awesome and short to let something so small stress you out. Throw the pen away. Now, let someone else read that sentence.