Keeping your sanityby not sweating the small stuff

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” – Matthew 6:34

Most of what drives you mad won’t count the second you die. That means you live with the realization that you have a fixed number of days to live on planet Earth and you do your best every day and leave tomorrow in God’s hands. Failing to understand that means we take on more and more responsibilities, which produces more and more stress in our lives.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. If English is a second language and you are not familiar with this idiom, you may need an explanation. Sweat the small stuff means “worry about what isn’t important.” And what is important enough to worry about it?

It’s the small stuff that piles up, that stresses you out and drives you mad. Jesus talked so plainly about living for the day. He used the birds of the air and the grass of the field as illustrations of the fact that God takes care of His hearers. He said that not a single bird falls to the ground without God’s knowledge, and then confronted them, “Are you not worth much more than a sparrow?”

A man, who noticed that he spent a lot of time sweating the small stuff, took a notebook and kept track of what was worrying him. Here’s what he discovered. Forty percent of his worries concerned things that never happened. Thirty percent concerned things in the past that couldn’t be altered by worry. Ten percent were petty things – the small stuff  – that bothered him. Twelve percent of his worries were health-related and only eight percent were legitimate concerns.

He changed, and you can too. You are the only one in the world who can say, “Enough! I’ll trust God for this one!”

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Used with permission from Guidelines International Ministries. To learn more about Guidelines and the ministry, send an e-mail to [email protected]. You may also visit www.guidelines.org.