The key ideas

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff... and It's All Small Stuff

Richard Carlson, 1997

We get angry at the driver who cut us off, and we lie awake over tomorrow's phone calls. Richard Carlson spent more than ten years helping people cope with stress, and he saw that almost everything that wears us out is small stuff we blow up ourselves. From a hundred short pieces of advice he built a book about how to stop living as if everything around you were on fire.

Who it is for

For anyone driven up the wall by traffic, queues, other people's remarks and an endless to-do list. And for everyone who wants to meet life more calmly but doesn't know where to start.

One of the most important questions you can ask yourself is: would I rather be right, or happy? Very often, the two are mutually exclusive.

The letter that named the book

One day a foreign publisher asked Richard Carlson to get an endorsement from the famous writer Wayne Dyer for the overseas edition of his book. Dyer had once praised one of Carlson's earlier books. Carlson sent the request, never heard back, and honestly told the publisher that Dyer's name would not be on the cover. Six months later he received the finished book, and there on the cover was Dyer's old endorsement, lifted from the other book.

Carlson was horrified. His literary agent demanded that the books be pulled from the shelves, and Carlson wrote Dyer a letter of apology. A few weeks later the answer came: "Richard, there are two rules for living in harmony. #1) Don't sweat the small stuff and #2) It's all small stuff. Let the quote run. Love, Wayne." No blame, no threats, no hurt feelings.

Carlson had spent more than ten years helping people cope with stress. He noticed that almost all of us react to trouble the same way: we blow small things up, cling to them, and live as if life were one long emergency. He built the book from a hundred short pieces of advice that, in his experience, helped his clients and readers most.

Ahead of you: a snowball of thoughts in the middle of the night, a game with time, a mother who waited three years for her son to call, and a ball you don't have to catch. You can try almost any piece of advice here today.

A snowball in the middle of the night

Carlson describes a scene many of us know. You wake up in the middle of the night and remember an important call you have to make tomorrow. Instead of being glad you remembered in time, you start going over everything else you have to do tomorrow, argue with your boss in your head, and finally think: "How much more of this? Whose life is this anyway?"

Carlson has an image for this: the thought snowball. One anxious thought pulls in the next, and the deeper you go into the details, the worse it gets. His advice is to catch the snowball while it's small. Tell yourself, "Here I go again," write the call down on a scrap of paper and go back to sleep. Carlson even suggests keeping a pen and paper by the bed.

There's a second habit that blows small things up. One of Carlson's clients, a mother of three, tormented herself because she couldn't get the house perfectly tidy before everyone left in the morning. She lived as if someone were holding a gun to her head and demanding that every plate be in its place. That pressure, Carlson points out, came from no one but herself.

This leads to one of the key lines of the book: life isn't an emergency. Carlson suggests saying it to yourself whenever it feels like everything is on fire. If something doesn't go according to plan, life will usually just go on.

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About the author

Richard Carlson was an American writer and stress consultant. "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" spent more than a hundred weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and started a whole series of his books.

All books by this author: Richard Carlson

Terms from the book

  • Literary agent
  • Ego
  • Dyer: Wayne Dyer, an American writer whose popular books are about living a calmer, happier life. His letter to Carlson gave this book its title.
  • Thought snowball: An image from the book, not a scientific term: one anxious thought pulls in the next, and the worry grows like a rolling snowball.
  • Time warp: Carlson's game: imagine a year has passed, look back from there at the trouble, and ask yourself whether it really matters. It's the author's own trick, not a psychological method.
  • Patience practice periods: A technique from the book: decide in advance that for the next five minutes, or half an hour, nothing will get to you, and slowly make that time longer.
  • Kris: Kristine Carlson, the author's wife. Carlson tells stories about her in several chapters of the book.
  • Shield: Benjamin Shield, an American writer and Carlson's best friend. He is the one who taught the author that you don't have to catch every ball thrown to you.
  • Buddhist teaching: A teaching that goes back to the Buddha, a sage of ancient India. One of its central ideas: everything in the world is impermanent, everything has a beginning and an end.

All terms

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