What “Sweating the Small Stuff” is Telling You
Most of us have heard the expression “don’t sweat the small stuff”.
“Small stuff” can be defined as anything that, in the bigger scheme of life, is probably inconsequential. Things such as socks on the floor, traffic, your WIFI going down or forgetting to switch the laundry to the dryer.
On their own, these things are admittedly insignificant but when the “small stuff” begins to pile onto your day, it can slowly erode your feelings of joy, purpose and even your confidence.
Socks and towels on the floor are probably just kids being kids but when you have asked and pleaded for them to be taken care of, you can start to feel unheard and taken advantage of.
When traffic is infringing on your already limited time, you might feel overwhelmed.
When your WIFI is unreliable and it is a vital tool for your work, you can feel completely helpless because you have no control over the situation and need to wait for someone else to fix it.
When you forget to switch the laundry over and you don’t have clean clothes, or worse, must wash everything again, you can begin to feel like you just can’t get it together.
So, while these are all first world and largely insignificant problems, the messages that you can receive from the small stuff are not so inconsequential.
Small stuff can then become a case of “death by a thousand paper cuts”. The constant small, painful reminders of your inability to be heard, your helplessness, feelings of overwhelm or incompetence.
Added to these feelings is the over arching feeling that you should really be feeling thankful, rather than complaining about these slight annoyances, which adds to the feelings of guilt and that your feelings are not ultimately important.
These are all unhealthy, dangerous and false messages that can begin to fester and grow if their roots are not identified, acknowledged and released.
The interesting thing about our reaction to small stuff is that it has the unique ability to bring to the surface beliefs or fears that are already hovering around in our subconscious.
If you didn’t already have the root message that you are incompetent floating around in your subconscious, forgetting to change over the laundry would be something that you could easily shrug off.
If your life was not already on overdrive, a little bit of traffic wouldn’t send you into full on feelings of overwhelm.
If you didn’t already feel unheard in other areas of your life, socks on the floor would not have the same meaning to you.
So “not sweating the small stuff” is not the proper response because all that does is continue to stuff your feelings further into your subconscious.
When you find yourself sweating the small stuff, you need to stop and ask yourself what the root feeling is. Why does this seemingly insignificant thing cause such a negative response in you? Once you figure that out, you can begin to take steps to uncover the root issue, the underlying belief or inherited emotion that is causing you to “overreact”. From there you can work at bringing truth to the false belief which will help you to release the root emotion.
When you find yourself sweating the small stuff, remember the following truth statements and line up your current beliefs against them to bring light to the areas that need acknowledgement and release.
I work to heal the wounds of my past so that they no longer influence my present
I am powerful, competent and unhurried
I feel heard and understood
I am reminded daily of my infinite worth
My worth comes from my divine identity, not from what I can and cannot accomplish.
Being able to sit back and obverse your reaction to small stuff and then trace the source of the reaction back to its roots will help you to quickly identify areas that need your attention and allow you to heal and move forward more fully into your divine purpose. I believe in you!
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