Try Not to "Weatherproof" Your Life!

   

    I've been taking little doses of inspiration by way of a book titled: "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff: And it's All Small Stuff" by Richard Carlson, Ph. D. The excerpt that I read this week that stood out to me was to try not to weatherproof our lives. Just like we weatherproof our houses in the wintertime by looking for cracks, leaks and imperfections we too often do this with our relationships and our own lives, and I am no stranger to this. 

       What causes us to weatherproof our lives? It is our tendency to find what needs to be fixed or repaired and making a point to let others know what is wrong in their lives by shedding light on every crack and flaw. I have the keen knack of always finding a critique with my performance on something. Whether it's a performance in a musical piece I am creating or how well I conducted myself when confronted with a certain situation in life, I have found myself to be overtly critical of the outcome. It wound up making me feel like all the pieces didn't fit or focusing on what I didn't like about the experience and overall walking away with a more negative outlook rather than a positive one. 

     Now an occasional comment or constructive criticism isn't always bad, but once you get focused in on finely scrutinizing something it begins to be easy to get carried away. Then it makes you start to feel bad because you are only finding what you don't like and end up thinking nothing is good enough the way it is. What the excerpt says to do is when you start overly criticizing everything for its weakness, or weatherproofing it, you need to make a habit to stop the thinking before it leaves your lips. 

     When people start to notice how critical you are about everything, it alienates you from them and ends up making you feel bad. When we start seeing that weatherproofing is a bad idea, we can make a habit to stop the bad habit from creeping back into our minds. I have started to notice that the less time I spend weatherproofing my life and my family and friend's lives, the more I notice just how awesome my life really is, and how grateful I am to have journeyed this far and learned so much from so many. 

Reference:

Carlson, R. (1997). Don't sweat the small stuff-- and it's all small stuff: Simple ways to keep the little things from taking over your life. Hyperion.