Here lies the secret for reducing stress and saving energy. It amazes me how many educated adults waste their time worrying about other people and their opinions. That is not to say you should charge through life without a care about anyone else. Not at all. Those closest to you, and those who play an important role in your life should be handled with care. What we are talking about is those who do not play an important role in your life.

In today’s world of social media and ‘keyboard rangers’, there are a lot of people who feel the need to express their unnecessary, and often unwanted, negative opinions. I often relate the story of a stranger on the site Nextdoor who placed negative comments on a post of mine for 2 days straight. Why? Simply because my title was in all capital letters to delineate the title from the body of the post. He felt I was personally yelling at him. For 48 hours straight, this man continued to post hateful things in the comments of my post about positivity. What did he think of the post itself? He never actually read it.

Sun Tzu, who work the great book, The Art of War, tells us the wise warrior avoids the battle. Does that mean we should live our lives as cowards? Certainly not. What Sun Tzu was telling us was that in every battle there will be losses on both sides. This holds true not only in war, but in business, our career, friendships and our personal relationships. Even if one ‘wins’ a battle, or argument, there will be some damage done. That could be in the form of some resentment from the other party, damage to our reputation, hurt feelings from words or deeds that can’t be undone and a million other things. The point is, there is no battle that does not have casualties. Which leads us to our final point on the subject.

The most important decision when fighting any battle, be that militarily or personally, is whether it is worth fighting in the first place. You might want to write that down somewhere. If we run around responding to every fool out there, we will not only become very tired, very quickly, but we will become a fool ourselves. For it is a fool who attends every argument they are invited to. Again, you might want to write that down. Take, for example, a young lady at my day job. She has some severe anger management issues and seems generally unhappy with her life. There are times she lashes out at me and even spreads lies and vicious gossip about me. If I were to get upset every time she did that, I would end up as unhappy and angry as she is. Like our first photo reminds us to ask, is why would I care if this generally unhappy and angry lady is unhappy and angry with me? I don’t. If I were to spend my energy on that, I would have less energy for the things that really matter. I would have less energy to check in with friends. I would be too exhausted to make it to the gym. There would be less energy to put towards loving my beautiful lady. For what? To sink to the level of someone else? I don’t think so.

How about your life? Do you spend energy fighting battles that really don’t matter in the big picture? Do you worry if everyone likes you? Are you overly upset when one person decides not to like you? Why do you care? Again, if it is someone you genuinely care for, that is a different matter entirely. However, if this is just a negative Nancy, do not let them bring your energy down. Another warning about letting everything upset you, if you do so long enough, there will be a greater price to pay. When you are in a negative emotional state for a long period of time, your immune system goes down. You develop physical ailments such as an upset stomach or ulcers. It also starts to affect your outlook and well-being. It may even turn you into Negative Norman. Ask yourself, “Is the battle I am about to fight even worth fighting?” It will save you a lot of stress and a lot of energy for things that are far more important.