Freelance Columnist
Many household arguments and many personal heartaches could be avoided if people would ask themselves, “Is it that important?” before they react to a situation.
How many times have you confronted someone, argued with them, and ended up hurting your relationship with them about some issue, which later on you realized wasn’t worth the pain and damage it caused? You may have won the battle, but you likely lost the war. You end up no farther ahead by arguing and fighting on many issues. In fact, you almost always end up farther back.
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Why do we do such a foolish thing so often? Unfortunately, most of us are programmed by our beliefs and life experiences to respond to issues in an unhealthy way. That is, we act first, and think later. If we thought first, most of us would successfully avoid many mistakes in life, some of which can be quite serious.
The timing of this question, “Is it that important?” is crucial. Unless you condition yourself to ask it the very moment you become upset or get into conflict with someone else, the question won’t be of much use to you. If you don’t respond right away, by the time you get around to asking it, the question will have become “Was it that important?” And as we all know, human beings always have 20/20 hindsight. It’s the advance planning that most of us tend to be short of.
“Is it that important?” prompts the thinking part of your brain to take over for a moment shunting the emotional part to the sidelines. It allows you to look at a situation objectively, if only for a brief moment, and to make a rational rather than a reactive and emotional decision.
If the kids are making a lot of noise, ask yourself “Is it that important that they be quiet, especially right now?” If you stop and think, you’ll realize that you probably made a lot of noise yourself when you were a kid. And it may not be that important for them to be quiet just then. If the living room or the kids’ bedroom is a mess, ask yourself, “Is it that important?” Yes, good housekeeping might be important to you, but is it that important that you have to blow up or overreact to the situation?
Asking yourself that important question does two important things for you. First, it gives you a brief “mental” time-out from the situation. Secondly, it provides you with a different way of looking at a situation and some alternate choices.
Yes, some things are that important and are certainly worth standing up for. But they are much fewer in number than the things that really aren’t that important. Your key to success in life is in recognizing when it really isn’t that important.
