Don’t sweat the small stuff – how big ideas get swamped!

I’m starting the year in peak mental and physical condition, it’s not a brag just the result of how I spent my holiday. I enjoyed the healthiest of holidays – every day included exercise, meditation, reading and eating well. I didn’t give work a moments thought, I shut down all technology, signed out of facebook and twitter and experienced the most relaxing and rejuvenating break I’ve had in years.
 
As the days passed and relaxation took hold I found myself thinking of the year ahead, not in a way that was stressful, on the contrary it was exhilarating. I had this expansive mindset where anything was possible – the ideas were awe-inspiring, the goals big and the excitement high. I loved how clearly I could see my vision.
 
And then I walked into the office on my first day back!
 
Emails to be answered, accounts to be paid, invoices to chase, technology to sort out, calls to be returned, orders to be placed, budgets to be sorted … you know the feeling.
 
Over a couple of days I found my heart-warming, enjoyable, energising and inspiring mindset being swamped by the small stuff. Instead of clear expansive thinking I descended into murky small thinking until I stopped … right there, right then.
 
Till that moment I was without a new year resolution, quite frankly I’d made enough of them on my last birthday (M.Y.O.L.C.), but in that moment I knew the one that would make the greatest difference. Don’t sweat the small stuff; in fact I created a mantra “I don’t sweat the small stuff”.
 
All the mundane, all the difficult and all the irritating stuff I’d rather not do but needs to be done! I just do it. I don’t think about it, I don’t sweat over it, I don’t let it absorb my thinking, I just do it or schedule it and move on.
 
The small stuff can absorb swathes of time and result in procrastination and it’s a habit I’m determined to break. Each day I practice stamping it out because I want to enjoy and act on the exhilarating plans that I started with at the beginning of the year and celebrate at the end when I’ve succeeded in delivering on them. So there’s no time to sweat the small stuff, in fact “I don’t sweat the small stuff”.
 
How about you?