Pick and Choose Your Battles

Today’s Topic: Pass on some useful advice or information you learned and always remembered.

One thing that I have learned at a very young age is: Pick and choose your battles.

I am not even sure from whom I first heard this advice. It may have been my mom, as I remember her saying it to me one day when we were talking about my sister. My sister is VERY much her own person. You can’t tell her anything, she has to learn things on her own. I used to get frustrated when we were younger, but I learned with her that if you pick and choose what you try to help her out with…she is more likely to at least consider what you have to say instead of commenting on any little thing that she did. When you constantly nag someone, they tend to ignore everything you say. Besides, who wants to be annoying all the time?

I also learned to do this in my relationship with my husband. I think it is very important to not nag or argue over any little thing that comes up. I am not saying you should hold everything in and blow up on them one day or secretly resent them because of these things…..but rather just learn to let some things go. To really focus on things that are important.

Let me give an example.  My husband doesn’t always put his clothes in the laundry basket. In fact, sometimes they will sit on the floor from Monday after work until whenever I get around to doing the laundry that week. Each day, more and more clothes gather. It used to be that this would bother me, but really…does it even matter? Is it worth nagging him over? No. I don’t even really have to see them because I never go on that side of our bedroom. If he wants to leave his clothes over there for a week and have to walk around them, that’s fine. It only takes a minute of my time to just pick them up and throw them in the washing machine on laundry day. Why nag him about it? It is silly. In the big scheme of things, it means nothing.

Now if something is important to me, and it hurts my feelings or makes me hold some type of resentment towards someone, then yes….I may say something or stand up for what I believe or think. But at the end of the day, if it gets you no further or it holds no significance, then what was the point? There is no reason to sweat the little things.