The Don't Sweat the Small Stuff Workbook: Exercises, Questions, and Self-Tests to Help You Keep the Little Things from Taking Over Your Life - Softcover

Carlson, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786883510 ISBN 13: 9780786883516

Publisher: Hachette Books, 1998

Synopsis

For the millions who have read Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, this inspiring new workbook has been designed to help put the book's principles into practice. Includes exercises, questions, and self-tests designed to help readers put things into perspective and keep the little things from taking over their lives.

About this title

Review

Sure, Richard Carlson's bestselling Don't Sweat the Small Stuff... contains plenty of sensible advice, but it's not always easy to follow. Enter this intriguing workbook with its universal appeal: it's aimed at anyone interested in reducing stress and improving their relationships. Designed to help you put the many peace-promoting, "just let it go" principles of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff into active practice, it's bursting with fun quizzes, checklists, self-tests, questions, and activities. If this doesn't instruct and inspire you to make concrete personality and life improvements, there's nothing much that will!

In one exercise, "Lower Your Tolerance to Stress," Carlson suggests that we'd be better off if we didn't brag about how much stress we can handle. People who do brag about their stress tolerance, he says, are usually stressed out all the time. To help you reduce your tolerance, he lists 20 signs of stress (among them: allergies, anxiety, depression, frequent headaches, and restlessness) and asks you to put a check mark next to the ones you've experienced. The next time you feel any of these symptoms, he says, you should analyze and write down how you might change your behavior in order to alleviate or prevent these problems in the future. In another exercise, "Create 'Patience Practice Periods,'" he first asks you to analyze your level of patience (Do you drive above the speed limit? Grow furious when stuck in voice mail mazes? Feel like everyone else at the mall walks too slowly and gets in your way?). He then gives a series of hypothetical patience-killing situations--a long line at the grocery store, or slow, tricky traffic--and leaves space for you to write about how these situations would make you react.

Some exercises are true/false, some are of the never/sometimes/often/always variety, while others require thoughtful written responses. A few are by nature harder to handle than others ("Imagine Yourself at Your Own Funeral"), so the workbook therefore shouldn't be devoured in one sitting, but dipped into a bit at a time. This is a fine way to nurture the much-underrated concepts of empathy, forgiveness, tolerance, and kindness.

About the Author

Richard Carlson, Ph.D., was the author of the bestselling Don't Sweat the Small Stuff series. He passed away in 2006.

Kristine Carlson has a gift for creating lifelong relationships and is very dedicated to her family, friendships, and personal growth. She loves riding horses, running, and solitude. Richard and Kris were married for over 21 years. She lives in Northern California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hachette Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0786883510
• ISBN 13: 9780786883516
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240