Bear in mind your time. You only have so much, as with space, money, know-how, skill, network, reputation, and all the rest. But here’s one of the big secrets: Time’s biggest conflict is pride.
How much time does your pride cost you? How many hours have you spent waiting for someone to finish a sentence so you could make your point?—and it didn’t matter! Maybe you worked too long to make the frosting just perfect, only to have it melt in the sun at the picnic. Counting tissues that all got thrown away anyway or even scheduling the wrong date for your flight—little things need to be kept littler than bigger things. Next time pride tries to take a bite out of your time, remember that you have bigger fish to fry.
And really, a flight on the wrong date shouldn’t be that big of a deal, even if you fly once a decade. Learn to explore, keep a prayer cloud around you to supply angels who help you with the unexpected—and get used to it. Keep a book with you or a cheap, tiny notebook computer so you can take your work with you while you wait. If you can psych yourself up to overlook bad timing with airline flights, you’ll be much better at letting microscopic priorities slip through the cracks when they should.
Rolling with the unexpected and not caring about the little things really go hand in hand. God sends chaos into our lives so we can practice “getting air” and fish-tailing in the snow. Safe, competent drivers are comfortably in control of the unexpected, so they neither hunger for the thrill nor fear it. They just don’t care, and neither should you.
When someone wants to niggle over a few miscounted coins, just accept the loss and move on. Your main priorities should be bigger. If the busy clerk short changes you, show love to everyone in line and forgive. Their day will be better and they won’t even know why; so will yours.
Quibbling gobbles up our time reserves. So, reserve your time. Learn to love taking losses that buy new time to discover hidden treasure.