I have always struggled with the way I handle negative situations. I tend to let things upset me quite easily and have a hard time moving forward. For example, in college my condo flooded about 2 weeks before finals. I was beyond stressed and most definitely over reacted. Was it unfortunate, YES. Was there really anything I could do about it, NO.

Instead of just trying to move forward, prep for finals, and get the house under control, I let the situation get the best of me. This was pointless because my worry and stress wasn’t going to change the fact that we had water damage and no where else to live during repairs. I admired my roommates “make the best of it” attitude and tried to adapt the same (it just took several days).

Now I try my best not to let these unfortunate events completely derail me like they used to. It’s out of my control so there is no point in worrying and stressing excessively. I’m still not as calm about things as I would like to be but I am definitely making progress mostly with the help of my husband and mom telling me to chill out.

My most recent “near freak out” happened during our trip in Maine. We had an early flight and were half way to the airport which was about 45 minutes away from our hotel when Andrew suddenly says “Oh, crap” in a panicked voice. He had left his car/house keys in the bedroom at the hotel. Immediately I start to internally panic as we were already behind schedule (aka my ridiculous “get to the airport extra early” schedule) so in reality we were FINE. We had plenty of time, but all kinds of thoughts were running through my head like “what if we can’t get back into the hotel room”?, “what if we don’t make it through security on time?” “what if returning the rental car takes forever?”, etc. I was angry and flustered, but quickly realized that being frustrated wouldn’t fix anything. If we missed our flight we would find another, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

While I may have handled this situation better than I normally would I still have room for improvement. I was reminded of this last night when I was watching another blogger’s Insta Story (Meg Hall). They had just returned home from Maine also to find that their house smelled strongly of gas. They had to wait outside for an hour for the gas company to come look into the problem and as she was waiting she was sharing some fun finds from her trip. The whole time I was thinking “how are you so calm right now?? You are talking about children’s books and cute baby clothes you found while your house is filled with gas?!?” But then I realized, what else could she do, she called the gas company and it is now out of her hands. Why waste energy stressing about it? I greatly admired her attitude and know I need to adapt a calmer approach to the way I react to problems and mishaps.

While I try to set new goals at the beginning of every month this is a goal that I am going to prioritize. Letting things go, choosing not to stress, learning that I can’t control every situation. Is this something you need to work on as well? How do you manage to let these little things go and not stress over the things you can’t control?

Thanks for the inspiration Meg Hall!