#MondayMotivation: Don't Sweat the Small Things

Greetings, dear Readers!

Today’s message came out of the left field, and took me a little by surprise. Usually, I spend a couple of days trying to find a message that I want to share with others. This week, I was too busy obsessing over a good motivational and/or funny video to upload to my Youtube Channel. Much like my #MondayMotivation posts here, I wanted it to have a good message for a Monday, and one that would motivate those who watched it.

I didn’t make up my mind about what to record my vlog about until halfway through Sunday night – yes, it was as late as it sounds. By the time I was done recording it, though, I realised that it had also given me something to write about today – and so I’m going to share both the video and the message with you:

Don't Sweat the Small Things

When it comes to Mondays, we have this habit of taking everything out of proportion - and I understand why. It’s the first day back at work or school, it’s the day that ruined your Sunday, it’s the first day back into the stressful every day grind… Basically, Monday is that day with the bad reputation that everyone wants to avoid, but can never get away from.

Because of that, we’ve made Mondays extremely negative. Everything becomes a big issue, or a sign that it’s going to be a bad week. Even the smallest things get blown up into massive problems, and suddenly the very negativity we expect to find on the day become a reality.

In my vlog, I decided to read a few FML’s – “Fuck My Life’s”. These are humorous little snippets of bad events that people from around the world share and, when I’d had a day job, those had been my Monday Go-To’s. There was nothing like reading about people who clearly had it worse than I. Here’s the important thing, though:

They had it worse, but they could laugh about it.

That’s our biggest problem. Instead of laughing about those small things, we end up blowing them into these massive problems instead. We forget that, on any other day, we’d be able to just blow them off and move on. But if someone can laugh about having a dead woman sleeping on him for thirty minutes, or getting their transportation stolen… why can’t I laugh about accidentally spilling coffee on my shirt?

We need to learn to laugh at ourselves more. We need to relearn how to just let the small things be small things – and, at some point, you might find that even the bigger problems might not seem so big anymore. Maybe it’d be because you have more positivity, or because you’re not obsessing over things you can’t change, or that aren’t really that big of a problem.

The challenge for this week:

It’s simple – don’t sweat the small things. Don’t let the phone cutting out ruin your week – just redial. Just change your shirt. Make a new cup of coffee. Enjoy the music as you hit traffic. Laugh about your search for those damned keys. There are worse things that can happen – so save your energy for those, and let the rest go. Life has enough bricks that it’s going to try tossing into your travel bag – don’t add in more yourself.

I have faith in you! And now, I will laugh all the way to the publish button, even though I overslept and this article is four hours late…

Until Next Week!