Authored by Richard Carlson, his most noted book — Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff … and it’s all small stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things from Taking over Your Life — flew to the top of the best-selling charts when it was published in 1997 and it remained there for a couple of years. The author was a stress management psychotherapist and he repeatedly observed that people could rise to the occasion to handle a major crisis but would get overwhelmed by the everyday minutia of life. He wanted to put a stop to the madness and help people put their life in perspective.
The beauty of this book lies in its 100 chapters. Pick a topic from the table of contents and get inspiration to handle business (and personal) situations in bite-sized portions. Here are our 10 favorite chapters:
- Chapter 7: Don’t Interrupt Others or Finish Their Sentences
- Chapter 16: Ask Yourself the Question, “Will This Matter a Year from Now?”
- Chapter 17: Surrender to the Fact that Life Isn’t Fair
- Chapter 39: Practice Humility
- Chapter 51: Just for Fun, Agree with Criticism Directed Toward You (Then Watch It Go Away)
- Chapter 64: Practice Being in the “Eye of the Storm”
- Chapter 67: Practice Ignoring Your Negative Thoughts
- Chapter 70: Remember that You Become What You Practice Most
- Chapter 89: If Someone Throws You the Ball, You Don’t Have to Catch It
- Chapter 94: Keep Asking Yourself “What’s Really Important?”
In a fast-moving world, full of stresses and complicated situations, this book remains timely and is worthy of a trip to your bookshelf to re-read it or to Amazon.com to discover its relevance for the first time.
We’d love to hear about your favorite self-help business books.
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