Nothing Really Matters

One of my mentors, Darren Hardy, wrote an article on his blog about decreasing stress.  I love some of the things Darren talks about.  Some of which I would like to talk about as well, so I wanted to make sure he got credit, while additionally adding my own flavor to this topic.

One of the things you can do to decrease stress according to Darren is to just do the shit you’ve been putting off.   This is so important.  So many times, we just keep things in the “to do” column instead of just getting them moved over to the “done” column.   How many times have we talked about the same thing over and over and over again, instead of just getting it done like it needs to be! So just get the shit done. You know, the stuff you’ve been telling yourself you were going to do, and just move on, get it off your plate.  That alone will help decrease your stress.

Don’t take yourself so damn seriously, you’re not that important.  I love this one. I love the idea that we’re not as important as we want to be and the things that we think are important are only important in the moment. We make them more important than they are.  We tend to grow molehills into mountains in our minds.  Then when we look back, one year, five years, 10 years, 20 years and the things that seemed so important suddenly have very little relevance. I remember in my earlier years of being a father, everything my oldest son did, seemed so important. Every decision we made for him seemed so important.  Now he’s 29 years old. We’ve raised five children.  Looking back, I wish I hadn’t been so intense on thinking all the decisions we made were that important.   As it turns out, none of it is really that important.  At the end of the day, the earth keeps on turning, the rain keeps on falling.  Mother Nature has no time frame.   It’s us that causes stress by creating time frames in our minds and creating things that are important but are not really that important.  So, stop taking yourself so damn seriously, you’re not that important.

Goes along with #2: Stop trying to control everything, you freak.  We think we want to have control over everything in our lives.   One of the six human needs, according to Tony Robbins, is certainty.  Another one is uncertainly.  We try so hard sometimes to be certain about things that we try to control those things.  It’s a crazy concept that doesn’t even make sense. At the end of the day we can’t even control our own bladders. What makes us think we can control other people or events in our lives?  The less we try and think we have control, the less stress we will have in our lives.

Just do what you can, accept what you can’t, and move the hell on.  So many times in life we want to change what we can’t and not accept it.  You know what, I always say there are two things you shouldn’t worry about in life: 1) Never worry about things you can change, get to work and change them. 2) Never worry about things you can’t change.  So, the reality is, there’s really nothing left to worry about.

At the end of the day, nothing really matters.  This is a concept I learned from Napoleon Hill.  That when it’s all said and done, nothing really matters.  The things you think are the most important, some person living in Pakistan doesn’t even care about.  The things that seem most important to you, the person living in North Korea doesn’t care anything about.  And guess what, another person four galaxies away doesn’t even know earth exists. So as soon as you think you are really important, as soon as you think your problems are really important, just remember this is one tiny ball that we all live on, in one universe, in one galaxy, among millions and millions of galaxies in the universe, which is one of many millions of millions of universes. So nothing, at the end of the day, really matters. It will just keep going on and on. While that may seem somewhat depressing if you think about it, the other side of it is very liberating. Why do we worry so much about what others think, and why do we make things bigger than they have to be? At the end of the day, don’t let things that don’t ultimately matter interrupt your day and your life, get on with it… Get on with Living Every Minute.