My new computer died. Only 6 months old, and it needs a full refurb over a hardware issue. Luckily, I'd held onto my old workhorse, so I've got a functioning machine while the other one's in the shop. It was frustrating in the moment — then I got home and turned on the news.
Dr. Barton Goldsmith
With everything going on in the world, I wasn't about to let a dead computer make me crazy. That didn't stop me from waking up half-obsessed with getting my data back, worried I'd lost documents and photos I hadn't backed up.
Each call to tech support started to feel like a waste of time, until I noticed I was actually learning things about the machine I'd never known. So I decided to treat it as a lesson instead of a loss. The files would turn up eventually, and in the meantime, I could still talk to the world.
The obsession broke when I posted online: "It was just a computer crash, not a car crash, and no one died or was injured — not even the guy at tech support." In times like these, the real skill is deciding what's worth letting twist you up and what isn't.
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Things break. As long as it isn't your heart, you have what you need to get it fixed without exploding, inwardly or outwardly. A lot of people take their frustration out on whoever picks up the phone — the customer service rep, the salesperson. It doesn't get you anywhere faster. Explain what happened calmly, and most people will actually help you.
Most things can be repaired. I'd bet we spend more energy worrying about losing our phone for an afternoon than about the actual state of our families and our lives. That's not an argument for not caring — it's an argument for choosing where to spend the worry. Let go of what's out of your control. I know that's easier said than done. It still lowers your stress load.
The one thing that can't break is you. It's easy to get tangled up imagining every way something could go wrong and forget to look for the fix. I have a friend — genuinely wealthy — who rents instead of owning, because homeownership would mean worrying constantly about what might break next. For him, that trade-off is worth it, dollars aside.
I want a low-stress life, lived as fully as possible. Keeping things in perspective is what makes that possible on a journey that's mostly wonderful anyway.
Dr. Barton Goldsmith, an award-winning Los Angeles-based psychotherapist, writer and keynote speaker, can be reached via e-mail at Barton@BartonGoldsmith.com.
