When Big Things Are Really Small

Sorry I haven't been able to write posts as often as I have wanted. Finals week hit me like a brick wall, however, all of my homework crunching and frantic studying all paid out. In addition, the class that I was creating a blog for, which ended up being my final for that class, I got a 100% on! Now I am home for Christmas break, so I should be able to have more time to write posts and keep the blog up-to-date.

The topic for today's post is "When Big Things Are Really Small" and that's because of two incidents that have happened over the course of Thanksgiving break to now. The first incident was the fact that I had to fly out of Orlando to go back to school from my grandparent's house. Now I know you're also thinking "That's easy and you fly all the time! What's one other airport?" Well the fact was that Orlando is a huge airport and probably not the largest I am sure, but way larger than any other airport I have flown out of and I have always flown out of Orlando with my parents and that was when I was a child and really didn't pay attention. I just simply followed my parents around. This was very intimidating, because I had to get on trams to get to the correct terminal for my gate. I tried to remain calm through the whole process, I followed the signs, and everything went perfectly. It wasn't intimidating at all. Once I went to the check-in for my bags for my designated plane, I went to that specific security check, which then led me to choose between two different trams. All I had to do was know my gate and I knew my tram. Then everything past that was as normal. Easy peasy.

The more recent example that I wanted to talk about was when I had to drive home from college on my own for the first time. That's around an eight hour drive and one that I had always done with my parents. Now, I have always wanted to be able to drive it on my own since I came to college, so I was happy that they were letting me. What kept me up at night were the "what ifs." Like what if I become bored? What if there is traffic and I'm hours and hours late? What if I get lost? What if I take the wrong turn? What if I crash? The fact was I didn't have the answer to any of these unless they actually happened. The great part was that once I started my trip, I turned on my music and started singing and blaring the music, set my cruise control, and one hour turned into four, which turned into seven. Then the last hour felt like it took five hours, because I realized that I was in PA and I wanted to be home so badly, but the point that I am trying to make is that the trip was really easy! I had points along the way that I remembered from my drives with my parents, so those helped me know that I was on the right track.

Sometimes the big things in our lives are actually quite small. An airport terminal. A eight hour driven trip. Our brains are very powerful tools, but sometimes instead of controlling our minds, our minds control us instead. Your brain is just an organ. You are the one that it makes up, so don't let it control you. Use it to your benefit! There are many things in this world that stress me out beforehand and once I actually do the thing I am stressed about, I realize that stressing over it was a waste of my time. Remember to always stay calm, take a good and deep breath. Sometimes there are things in the world that we are not going to be able to control. For some people, not having control can be stressful, but this is life. For me, I had no choice about flying out of Orlando. It was going to happen, I had the ticket, and there was no going back. I just had to take down that fear and barrel through it. I couldn't control that my parents basically told me that I was going to drive home, of course in the back of my head this was something that I wanted, but I was still a little stressed about it. I couldn't control the situation and the only thing that I could do was make the drive. I had to accept for a greater part of the day, I would be driving and that was just how it was going to be.

Of course there are situations that are not as simple as these, but I'm sure those more complicated situations can be broken down into smaller non-complicated situations that you can take piece by piece. For instance, my Federal Taxation final. That was a very complicated test to study for and there were subjects from the book that we needed to know that we didn't go over in class and I hadn't read the book. There were also long and complicated problems that I needed to know as well. This was very stressful, since I knew it had taken me all day the past day to study for my Intermediate Accounting 1 class and I only had the afternoon to study for my Federal Taxation exam. Our teacher had told us, "Take this elephant one piece of a time," and I think I will take that phrase with me everywhere I go. That's how I tackled studying for the exam. I took it subject by subject. Went over it and became familiar with it. Then when I went into the final, it didn't seem as scary.

Remember, there are many big things out there or things that seem to be big and can be major stresses in our lives, but know in the grand scheme of things these are probably all just small.

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself."

"And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?"