Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Don't Let the Little Stuff Bother You

I remember hearing or reading somewhere:

"Rule #1 is...Don't sweat the small stuff  and Rule #2 is...It's ALL small stuff."

While I don't necessarily agree that it's ALL small stuff...I do agree that the vast majority of stuff is SMALL STUFF. 

Yesterday I left work with a headache, and by the time I got home the headache was even worse.  While work wasn't particularly busy yesterday, it was not a normal day at work by any stretch.  I walked in to work to find that we'd just started investigating the City's 4th homicide.  That does not mean the 4th homicide of the year..that means the fourth homicide EVER in the history of Dublin, Oh.  So for us, it was not your usual day work.  But fortunately we have things in place that help to spread the workload and things ran pretty smoothly.  But I ended up with a headache anyway.

I don't want to go in to specifics, but I'll just say that I'm sure the headache was a result of letting the small stuff get to me.  Letting actions that did not affect me bother me and letting other people's issues bother me. 

Now that I think back on it, it seems kind of silly.  There was a man my age (exactly my age as it turned out) who was dead..the victim of a shooting.  Throughout the day officers were trying to make sure that his family was notified of his death, working hard to gather the information that will hopefully result in the arrest of whoever did this, and I'm giving myself a headache of piddly crap.  What did I possibly have to complain about?  I woke up that morning, this poor night clerk at a gas station wasn't that fortunate.  I wasn't notified that my father, brother or spouse was killed, the family of this poor night clerk wasn't that fortunate. 

Yesterday was one of those days when I forgot to simply not allow negative people to get to me.  They got to me.  Sometimes the negativity was aimed at me.  Sometimes it was aimed at others in a successful attempt to pull me in.  I have to remind myself not to allow those attempts to be successful.  I have to remind myself what's important.  How others live their lives is not my concern until it affects me, and I do have some control over how much I allow it to affect me.

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