The "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" workbook by Richard Carlson, Ph.D., provides a series of question-and-answer format exercises to help people cope with all the little things that happen in a day. The goal of the text is to help people strike a balance and determine what is really important and what can and should be accepted without causing stress.
Some Exercises You'll Find
The workbook contains 100 exercises designed to help a person create life priorities. Many of the titles alone can give an idea as to what the exercise hopes to accomplish. Some of the general behavioral exercises include "Make Peace With Imperfection," Develop Your Compassion," "Let Others Have the Glory," "Become More Patient" and "Seek First to Understand."
Other exercises are geared toward a more specific, physical goal, such as "Become an Early Riser," "Take Up Yoga" and "Do One Thing at a Time." There are philosophical exercises encouraging you to imagine yourself at your own funeral or that everyone is enlightened but you. Other exercises suggest writing a heartfelt letter, to resist the urge to criticize, to think of problems as teachers, to be flexible thinkers, to be happy where you are in life, to ignore negative thoughts and to make service an important part of life.
The Exercise Formats
Many of the exercises use a point system to tally up your stress levels or give weight to your lifestyle and actions. The exercises may set up a scenario, such as a person in the express line with too many items. Then a list of actions are provided, each with a different weight value. You select the action that best describes how you would react in that situation. The exercise questions you on numerous such daily occurrences to show you how much weight you put on these relatively unimportant events.
In another exercise, you may be given a series of questions in which you answer with pre-assigned values, thus weighting your answer. For instance, you may be asked if you straighten the pictures at someone else's house. If you do this most of the time, you would score a 10. If sometimes, you'd score a 5. And if you never do this, then you would score 0.
Some exercises are designed to provide you with insight into yourself. These exercises have a series of yes/no questions that are intended to get you thinking about those things that you answered with a yes. The questions may be focused on one area of your life, such as how work is integrated into your life.
Other exercises have you produce lists. For instance, it may have you list the things you have to do tomorrow. Or list every thought that comes to mind. The exercise is intended to make you aware of your thought processes and note how they may be causing a snowball effect of stress. The aim is to help you deal with this before it builds up. Lists may also be used to help you see things around you, such as the compassionate acts of others.
Besides yes/no questions there are true/false statements to evaluate. One such exercise is designed to help develop patience, especially in dealing with others. It points out behaviors such as interrupting, rushing others and finishing their sentences.
Another exercise has you write a short diary or journal entry in which you record things such as something nice you did for someone else without letting that person know about it.
In the exercise workbook, you'll find all sorts of exercises designed to show you things about yourself and help you make changes in your behavior and way of thinking. The exercises are straightforward and easy to use.
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