Don't Sweat The Small Stuff | Book Review

“We overreact, blow things out of proportion, hold on too tightly,
and focus on the negative aspects of life." (p. 1)

Dr. Richard Carlson's one hundred brief and simple chapters seemingly fall into categories that naturally align with multiple Academy Leadership Excellence Course (LEC) workshops: Setting Leadership Priorities, The Leader's Compass, and Energize2Lead (E2L). An additional category, Gratitude, is worth establishing as empathy, meaningfulness and compassion have increasingly emerged as leadership themes in recent LECs.

Priorities

Stephen Covey's four quadrants inform us Quadrant II is where opportunity forms and that we should spend more time performing such activities, rather than reacting to Quadrant I events. Consider expanding Quadrant II holistically, including activities such as exercise. Carlson seem to think this way too. You might become an early riser, for example, and spend one hour that is reserved for reading, praying, reflecting, meditating, your exercise, or however you want to use the time (p. 244).

Likewise, everyday small successes may become both habits and eventually, larger successes. All we really have to do is focus on those little acts of kindness, things we can do right now (p. 201). It's also a lot more fun. We take our own goals so seriously that we forget to have fun along the way, and we forget to cut ourselves some slack (p. 62).

Leader's Compass | High Performance

Toward the end of our Leader's Compass workshop, we learn energy is the fundamental currency of high performance.

Consider a corporate culture or boss demanding we always be on, 24/7. In such an environment, one is likely toggling between the upper two quadrants.

Much of our anxiety and inner struggle stems from our busy, overactive minds always needing something to entertain them, something to focus on, and always wondering "What's next?" (p. 50). We could call this a Professionally Busy mindset.

Tony Schwartz, co-author of The Power of Full Engagement, recommends redirecting activities to the right two quadrants. Carlson enthusiastically recommends activities in the lower right quadrant. Whether it's ten minutes of meditation or yoga, spending a little time in nature, or locking the bathroom door and taking a ten-minute bath, quiet time to yourself is a vital part of life (p. 69). Imagine redirecting from the upper left to the lower right quadrants. The next time you're feeling bad, rather than fight it, try to relax (p. 140).

We all get angry or otherwise find ourselves in a highly negative state from time to time. When it comes to dealing with negative thoughts, you can analyze your thoughts, or you can learn to ignore them (p. 165). Remind yourself that it's your thinking that is negative, not your life (p. 228).

Personal Energy (E2L)

Recall the three dimensions of our E2L profile; preferred, expectations and instinctive. When our activities (or jobs) don’t align with our preferred colors, our stress level rises and if our expectations (colors) are not met, we're now in instinctive mode consuming vast amounts of energy.

What you want to start doing is noticing your stress early before it gets out of hand (p. 54). Frequently, our right-brain traits (or yellow and blue colors) fade away under stress. Fearful, frantic thinking takes an enormous amount of energy and drains the creativity and motivation from our lives (p. 11).

Our E2L workshops demonstrate that 75% of people are wired differently than us and learning more about our expectations profiles help us approach each other according to our differences. I encourage you to consider deeply and respect the fact that we are all very different (p. 114).

Gratitude

Carlson repeatedly advises different forms of gratitude, and we may think of gratitude as the intersection between priorities, a leadership philosophy and our strongest personal energy source. Compassion develops your sense of gratitude by taking your attention off all the little things that most of us have learned to take too seriously (p. 18). We should cultivate gratitude as a lifetime habit. The point is to gear your attention toward gratitude, preferably first thing in the morning (p. 66).

Consider the opposite: Continuous, negative evaluation. Carlson calls this weatherproofing. Essentially, weatherproofing means that you are on the careful lookout for what needs to be fixed or repaired (p. 105).

Summary

Carlson reveals his own values. Each act of kindness rewards you with positive feelings and reminds you of the important aspects of life -- service, kindness, and love (p. 90).

"I've yet to meet an absolute perfectionist whose life
was filled with inner peace." (p. 9)