A very important lesson I learned in 2021

There is so much more to life than tripping out about small things.

Don’t sweat the small stuff
By Mo Hussain, Contributor

Not to get too preachy, but if there’s one lesson that I learned throughout this past year is that it’s important to not sweat the small stuff. In my opinion, if you focus too much on miniature setbacks, you’ll never get the chance to be present for what’s ahead. I learned this while being an announcer for basketball and volleyball games.

Early on, there would be so many times where I mispronounced a player’s name, called the wrong play, screwed up with the microphone volume, etc. There was even this one time where I forgot to turn the background noise off, and the ref had to pause the game because of it.

Making these mistakes would do so much damage to me mentally. I would torture myself with thoughts of how bad of a job I thought I was doing. Little did I know at that time, that by not getting over my mistakes quickly, I was setting myself up for even more disaster.

Early on, whenever I would make a mistake announcing, I’d be more likely to repeat that same mistake if I kept tripping out about it. By the time I’d finish tripping out and analyzing the one mistake that I made, I’d have already missed out on plenty of other opportunities to redeem myself.

For example, let’s say I announced the wrong play that happened in a game. If I continue to think about the previous play while the game moves forward, I’m not going to be as present in the plays that come ahead.  What helped make my job flow smoother is to accept the little bumps in the road if they do come, but make sure I’m present enough to move forward.

I’m not saying it’s not important to learn from your mistakes. I think there’s a time and place for when someone screws up, they need to thoroughly re-assess and analyze their situation. But fixating on little minute things like the time you failed this one test, or the one time you thought you screwed up a class presentation, is holding you back. Trust me, it’s still a work in progress for me to keep this attitude up and it’s waaaay easier said than done. However, that lesson resonated with me a lot.

I know this is sounding like one of those cliche motivational ads that pop up on the internet, but I promise this isn’t a promo for some million-dollar “self-development” course. I just think that there is so much more to life than tripping out about small things.

There’s so much room to improve in so many areas, but I feel like tripping out about minute events holds a lot of people back.