by “Taking It Off” Expert Christine Hassler
The other day I had a bit of an accident in the kitchen. After roasting some veggies, I put the Pyrex pan in the sink to wash it. The moment the water hit the pan, it shattered into what seemed like a million pieces. Once I recovered from my initial startle, I put on some rubber gloves and began picking out the broken glass. However, as soon as I touched a piece it would continue to break into smaller and smaller pieces until almost the entire pan had gone down into my garbage disposal. Now I am not a plumber, but I was pretty sure this was not a good situation.
Why am I sharing this story with you? Well first to remind you of a physics lesson that large and fast temperature changes create stress in solids. Or in other words, cold water plus hot glass equals a big mess. But the primary reason I’m UPdating you with my kitchen escapade is because the old cliché “Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill” became particularly relevant.
As I realized there was a ton of glass in my disposal that I could not fish out despite my best efforts (I even stuck my dust buster down there!), I began being really harsh on myself. Asking myself how I could be so dumb, getting angry at myself for creating a mess, judging myself as careless and so on. Since it was Memorial Day, I could not get a hold of a plumber so then I went into negative future fantasy about how much the repair was going to cost, how long it was going to take to get fixed and how much damage I had done. Eventually I coached myself to a place of acceptance and self-forgiveness but only after spending a large chuck of the day shattering my own peace of mind as I worried about this mistake.
Consider how often something happens in your life that you blow out of proportion in your mind. Perhaps it’s a innocent mistake you made or perhaps a mistake someone else made that is disturbing your peace. Or maybe there is some unknown in your future that you are worrying or obsessing negatively about. We often make big deals out of things that we do not really even know are big deals yet.
So if you are making any mountains out of a molehills, I encourage you to stop the unnecessary dramatization. Life gives us plenty of mountains to climb, there is no need to create ones that are not there.
Oh and by the way, I found a super nice plumber that came to my house the next day and cleaned out my disposal for twenty bucks. Yup, just twenty bucks. A happy ending and a good example of a molehill that did not have to turn into a mountain.
