Choose Your Battles Wisely

Do you spend a lot of your day defending yourself? Maybe you catch yourself arguing more than you want to, and every time someone disagrees with something you believe, you feel the need to push back. If any of that sounds familiar, there's a decent chance you've stopped choosing your battles and started fighting all of them at once. Plenty of people fall into this, so don't beat yourself up over it. I lived that way for years. Even now I take on more arguments than I'd like, but I've gotten better at saving my energy for the ones that actually mean something to me.

The starting point is simple: your life belongs to you, and that includes your beliefs. Nobody is required to agree with you, and you owe no one proof that you're right. For a long stretch I kept trying to convince people to see things my way, to sign off on everything I thought. That constant need for agreement was one of the things that fed a depression I've since worked my way out of.

When you stand your ground only on the things that truly count, day-to-day life gets lighter. Argue with everyone who isn't on your side, and you hand over hours you could have spent content with the decisions you've made. I learned this the hard way, and I'd like other people to reach it with less wreckage than I left behind.

Your beliefs aren't automatically going to be someone else's, and that's fine. The choices I make won't always be another person's first pick, and the reverse is just as true. One of the better parts of being alive is that opinions are allowed to differ. You wouldn't want anyone pressing their views onto you, so it's worth being careful not to do it to them. I've damaged more than a few relationships by pushing too hard for people to see things the way I did.

Time runs out. We all know, even if we forget it constantly, that life doesn't go on forever, and none of us gets told in advance which day is the last. Given that, spending big chunks of it locked in arguments makes little sense when there are things you'd rather be doing. Pick the handful of things worth standing up for and let the rest go.

Some people simply won't change their minds, and shifting them was never your responsibility anyway. Certain folks are more closed off than others; no amount of effort reshapes their thoughts or feelings. All you'll lose is energy and hours you don't get back. Sometimes the move is to step away and be okay with where things stand.

There's no end to the battles life throws at you, but you were never obligated to accept every one. Ease off the arguing and you're free to sit comfortably with your own choices. You don't have to prove yourself to anybody, which means you can stop carrying the worry of trying.

Before you wade into a disagreement, two questions help. Will it actually change your life whether this person agrees with you? Will you change your own mind if they don't? Most of the time the honest answer to both is no, and when it is, there's nothing worth blowing up over. You're steering your life in the direction you want it to go, and what carries weight there is what you think of your choices, not the verdict of everyone around you.

- Cara