Richard Carlson - Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff in Love: Simple Ways to Nurture and Strengthen Your Relationships

DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF IN LOVE

RICHARD CARLSON, Ph. D., AND KRISTINE CARLSON

Also by the author:

• DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF FOR TEENS
• DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF WITH YOUR FAMILY
• DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF AT WORK
• DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF ABOUT MONEY
• DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF... AND IT'S ALL SMALL STUFF
• SLOWING DOWN TO THE SPEED OF LIFE (With Joseph Bailey)
• HANDBOOK FOR THE HEART (With Benjamin Shield)
• HANDBOOK FOR THE SOUL (With Benjamin Shield)
• SHORTCUT THROUGH THERAPY
• YOU CAN FEEL GOOD AGAIN YOU CAN BE HAPPY NO MATTER WHAT

Hhyperion New York

We dedicate this book to our daughters, Jazzy and Kenna. The greatest gift we can give you is the love we have for each other.

First and foremost, we would like to send a special and heartfelt thanks to our parentsPat and Ted Anderson and Barbara and Don Carlsonfor being the special people they are. We love you all so very much. Thank you for teaching us, sharing your love and ideas with us, and for raising us to be happy people. Thanks also to Jazzy and Kenna for bringing so much joy and laughter to our lives. You are loved now and forever. We would also like to acknowledge our editor, Leslie Wells, for her magical skill with words and the entire staff at Hyperion for being so much fun to work with. As always, a special thanks to Patti Breitman for being a wonderful agent and, more importantly, a trusted and valued friend. Thanks also to Linda Michaels for sharing this book with people all over the world. And finally, a sincere thanks to you, our readers. We hope so much that your relationships will be strengthened and nourished by reading this book.

When you ask people questions like, "How is your relationship going," you will often hear replies like, "It's okay, I guess," or a variety of other equally unenthusiastic or unsure responses. For whatever reasons, many people seem to believe that it's normal and perfectly acceptable to settle for an "okay" relationship. Sometimes, even couples who report that they have a good relationship appear to be confused about what a "good" relationship really means. In other words, they might say they have a nice relationship, yet they seem to experience or express ongoing irritation and frustration with their partner, or with at least some aspects of their relationship. There may be ongoing conflict or bickering, a lack of harmony or satisfaction, resentment, a desire for their partner to be different, or simply a shortage of true joy and gratitude. We're going to ask you to consider that whatever shape your relationship is infrom troubled to absolutely wonderfulit can be even better, with very little effort. While no relationship is perfect, and every relationship is unique, we believe that any partnership, romantic or otherwise, can be improved by implementing some very simple strategies designed to lighten your spirits, open your heart, enhance your life, and broaden your perspective. That's what this book is all about. Human beings are remarkable creatures in the sense that when we have a specific vision or goal, we are often able to achieve that goal, or at the very least approach it. In terms of your relationships, this means that it's important that you have the highest vision possible. It suggests that you can have it all: You can be best friends, soulmates, and true partners, in every sense of the word. Individually and as a couple, you can become more loving, lighthearted, peaceful, generous, grateful, patient, accepting, and forgiving. You can also develop greater perspective, a better sense of humor, better listening skills, and perhaps most importantly, the ability to take yourself a little less seriously. It's possible for you to have more of all of these things and, for that matter, any other virtuous qualities that you deem important. And perhaps the best part of all is that when you or your partner falls short, you'll be easy on yourself, and on your relationshipyou won't "sweat it." All it takes is intention and a bit of practice. Despite our optimistic natures, we're not unrealistic. We're not suggesting that if you stop sweating the small stuff in love, you will be without problems or issues, or that you won't become crabby with one another, at least every once in a while. Nor are we suggesting that there won't be times when you'll experience doubt or even times when you think your partner is going to drive you crazy. We are suggesting, however, that whatever frustration you do experience will be lessened and that even your struggles and troubles can be approached with greater ease and perspective. In other words, even in the midst of a problem, you will have the confidence to know that you can rise above that problem and solve it, and while you're at it, get back to your loving connection. Writing this book together has been enormous fun and has been one of the highlights of our lives together. It's given us an opportunity to carefully reflect on what we believe to be the keys to a loving and nurturing connection. While neither of us necessarily considers ourselves to be an expert on relationships, we do feel that we have a darn good one. We've been married for fourteen years and have known one another for seventeen. A vast majority of the time we've been loving, kind, and respectful of one another, and we do consider ourselves to be the best of friends. While, on occasion, we can get on each other's nerves, we're happy to say that it's extremely rare. As we reflect on our own relationship, it's clear to us that while we both have many flaws, our greatest strength is that we don't sweat the small stuff very often. Most of the time we're able to take each other in stride and focus on strengths instead of weaknesses. More often than not, we let things go instead of holding them against each other. Both of us are more committed to being kind than to being right, and each of us has the ability to laugh at ourselves. We've found that when we're not too uptight, life gets a whole lot easier and we experience a great deal more love. Obviously, there are many enormous challenges in life and in all relationships. And, unfortunately, pain is a reality for every one of us during certain times in our lives. It's fascinating, however, to examine the way most people handle the truly "big stuff." You'll probably agree that, for the most part, people handle the serious parts of life with courage, dignity, and creativity. When a family has a sick child, for example, everyone comes together. There is sharing, support, prayers, strength, and acts of selfless love. Likewise, when a couple experiences a tragedya sickness or death in the family, bankruptcy, or some other painful or difficult eventthere is often a coming together, joint strength, sacrifice, creative ideas, and stamina. Luckily, however, most of life doesn't consist of the really big stuff. In other words, the good news is, we're not fired from a job every day, nor do we file for divorce or have to run to the emergency room every few hours. These things do happen and when they do, they can be devastating. However, this kind of event tends to be occasional and spread out. In a weird way, it's almost as though we're more equipped to deal with the big things than we are the smaller stuff. We know we must get through them, so we bring out the best in ourselves and in each other. The truth, of course, is that a vast majority of our lives is consumed with the day-to-day, moment-to-moment small stuffdealing with each other and our daily lives, minor hassles and frustrations, traffic, unreturned phone calls, more hassles, chaos, messes, disagreements, responsibilities, lost items, noise, and so forth. It's for this reason that we believe it's so important to learn to deal with the small stuffit's in our face, all the time. We've even found that as we've learned to deal with the small stuff with more equanimity, we've handled the bigger things that come along a bit better as well. Our hope is that the strategies in this book will help you deal with the small aggravations in your relationships with more ease and perspective. We think you'll find that as you let go of the distractions of the small stuff, you'll find new, effortless ways to nurture and love one another. A note about the way this was written: We collaborated on the entire book, but some of the strategies were written more from Richard's point of view, and some from Kris's. For simplicity's sake, those that were written from Kris's point of view are marked "(Kris)" after the strategy's title. Those from Richard's point of view, or from both our points of view, are unmarked. Our goal is not to have you model our relationship or to paint a picture of how you ought to be. Rather, our hope is that the ideas in this book will help you to create the relationships of your own dreams. So, as we begin our adventure together, our initial advice is this: Shoot for the stars. The higher your vision, the higher you'll climb. And what's more, you'll stop sweating the small stuffor at least most of it! As this begins to happen, you'll experience more enthusiasm and love than you might have imagined to be possible. Good luck and have fun. Richard and Kris Carlson