We waste untold amounts of time and energy on things of no consequence. We don’t see that in the present, as the situations always present themselves as urgent, critical, and dire.

Very few tasks are truly urgent and most things are fixable; those that are not are often outside our control. All of them take up real estate in your mind and emotions, however, wearing you down while yielding no benefit. They are energy wasters.

People give the mechanism of detaching from the illusion of crisis different names, centering, grounding, me time, but it works more or less the same way, by disconnecting you from the stress source.

Whether you do that through meditation, visualization, personal rituals, focusing on something that holds meaning to you, enjoying a relaxing hobby, praying, it doesn’t matter.

What all these activities have in common is they alter your state of mind. They take you to another reality, one which is quiet, pleasant and fully within your control.

Take some time to see the current situation from the perspective of a few years, months, weeks, days. Would it still matter then? You will be surprised to realize most of the problems that wear you down and keep you up at night will not be relevant even a few short months from now.

Look into your past, five, ten years, at all the problems you were struggling with then and assess how many of them even register as a memory now. This is what most of our daily grind looks like. Life is full of fake emergencies and problems that never happened.

In no way am I advocating the abrogation of one’s duties, which is the burden of every responsible adult, just know that most of the dire emergencies are not, and a lot of the worries you carry are about things that are outside your control.

I’ll illustrate the latter with an example we’re all familiar with: the plane is being delayed because of inclement weather, and every minute that passes brings you closer to missing your connection, a very important meeting, or the exciting event you were traveling for.

This is something you can’t control, and no amount of stress will help you wind back the clock to fit your plans into the shortened time frame.

Most of the things that stress us out regularly, dire news, antagonistic political views, hypothetical or far away disasters, conflicting health or parenting advice, other people’s opinions of us, have literally no connection to our lives, and while it may be useful to be educated about them, they don’t warrant the expenditure of psychic energy.

A quick exercise can eliminate most of these false crises. Ask yourself the following questions the second you feel the tension in your stomach, or the cortisol drip burning your veins:

Is this my problem?

Does it matter?

Will it matter a year from now?

Do I have to address it immediately, do I have to address it at all, and if yes, when?

Putting anything on a schedule relieves you of the pressure of having to carry the worry of an outstanding task. 

You would be surprised how freeing it is to set a time for an activity, commit to respect it, and put it out of your mind until then.

Determining whether a problem will be relevant some time from now helps you scale and reframe it.

Here is another example: a deadline. It is your responsibility, and it is relevant in the present, but it will not matter a year from now. If you have enough time, you can deliver it as planned, and you should probably start working on it immediately. If you don’t have enough time, you could try to push for a delay. If you have more time than the task requires, there is no reason to let it take up space in your brain: put it on a schedule and out of your mind.

In conclusion, what are the points worth remembering?

1. Most of the things that stress us out regularly have no connection to our lives, and don’t warrant the expenditure of psychic energy.
2. No matter how important the task or event you are late or unprepared for, you can’t wind time backwards. You can’t should have done something yesterday.
3. Detach from the illusion of crisis by disconnecting from the stress source.
4. Activities like meditation, visualization, prayer, personal rituals, focusing on something that holds meaning, engaging in hobbies, alter your state of mind and take you to a place you can control.
5. The second you feel stressed, ask yourself the following questions: is this my problem?
6. Does it matter? Will it matter a year from now?
7. Do I have to address it immediately, or at all, and if yes, when?
8. Assessing whether a problem will still matter a year from now helps you get a true sense of its scale.
9. Putting the task on a schedule puts it out of your mind.