Sweat the small stuff.

When I publish this newsletter, replies come in fast and furious. And Jennifer and I love to read them. We get everything from "I feel like you're in my head," to "This wasn't one of my favorites." Responses come in all shapes, sizes, and tones.

And there’s always a handful that are not nice at all. Someone calling me a fraud, or yelling at me because I didn’t use my personal brand to support a political injustice near and dear to them, or someone just letting me know how much they hate my writing. All of that is to be expected when you write to 180,000+ people every week.

And when I get a reply where someone made a special effort to be extra mean, I've got seven years of practice letting it roll off my shoulders.

But it doesn't always.

Last week, a curt response slipped past my defense shield and got under my skin pretty badly. Not because it was a particularly clever barb. Because it questioned my authenticity and honesty, without offering any reasoning behind the attack.

And forty-five minutes later, there I was stewing about it when Jennifer yelled up that lunch was ready. I'd drafted five different replies, none of them right. And when I looked up at the clock, I realized this nonsense had stolen a good chunk of my most productive hours.

"What the f!@# am I doing?”

I literally yelled that out loud to myself. Then I shut my computer and went down to lunch.

For the rest of the day, that really gnawed at me. Not the email itself. The forty-five minutes of wasted time on something that didn't deserve it. The fact that I'd given part of the best hour of my morning to one guy with a chip on his shoulder, drafting a reply that wasn't going to change his mind anyway.

I thought I was past getting irritated and letting things like this control part of my day. But it turns out, I'm not. And after thinking about this for a while, I'm not sure anyone gets past this kind of thing.

Nobody’s too successful for this

A few years ago, I clapped back at Alex Hormozi’s wife online. She’d posted something I disagreed with, and I threw a jab that racked up thousands of engagements from people agreeing with me. If you’ve followed me online for any period of time, you know that going after people’s opinions isn’t really my thing. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t done that.

And, of course, an hour later, Alex replied angrily. The exact same way that I’d react if someone were taking shots at Jennifer online.

A few minutes later, I refreshed, and his comment was gone. He'd deleted it. And then he shot me a DM, and we talked it through. I said I was wrong for writing it, and he said he shouldn't have written his reply, and that was that.

Alex is worth nine figures, has millions of followers, and built his career around discipline and not caring what other people think. If he’s not past letting random negativity get under his skin, then who is? I know I’m not, and I'll bet you aren't either.

The lie nobody wants to admit is a lie

A big part of the self-help industry is built on the premise that we shouldn’t let this kind of stuff bring us down. That we should train ourselves to be impervious to what other people think about us.

Richard Carlson's "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" was a massive bestseller that promoted the idea. To be clear, the book itself is a lot more careful than its reputation. But the dumbed-down version that so many people parrot sounds a lot like this:

Do enough work, build the right habits, get successful enough, and the petty stuff stops mattering. You stop taking things personally. You’ll become the calm, unbothered sage on the other side of it all.

I think this is total BS. I’ve worked with (and been friends with) some incredibly successful people for the last 20 years of my life. And I’ve watched nearly all of them fire off responses they regret, send nasty 3 a.m. emails, and get derailed by insults that shouldn’t matter. And I’ve done it myself.

The idea of the “unbothered guru” is marketing. It’s not a real human state that most people will ever reach. And the people who tell you they don't care are usually either lying, numb, or selling you something.

Most often it's the third. Because "I figured out how to stop caring about what other people think" is a much better book pitch than "I still get bothered, I just recover faster now."

Let’s be realistic

If you’ve practiced the art of letting insults roll off your shoulders, but you still get bothered from time to time, you’re not broken or defective. You're just a human being with a pulse, doing work that you care about, around people whose opinions sometimes land a lot harder than you'd like.

That’s who I am, too.

The part of me that was drafting a bunch of replies to that mean email is the same part of me that cares enough to rewrite a sentence eight or nine times to get it right. When my stomach drops because someone takes a shot at me online? That’s the same part of me that cares enough to show up every week and do this work in the first place. Those feelings and that passion exist on the same wire. Cut one, and you cut both.

The skill you want to build here isn’t total apathy. It’s noticing the derailment faster. It’s recovering more quickly. It’s being able to breathe and meditate through the times when you’re feeling most irritated. I've gotten better at all of that. Stuff that used to ruin my day now barely makes it 30 minutes.

But this make-believe version of you who never gets bothered? I just don’t think that person exists. And if they do exist, you might not even like them very much. They'd be a less passionate worker and spouse, a less interested friend, and probably someone the people closest to you wouldn't even recognize.

How and why we care about the things we do is our essence.

So the next time someone tells you to rise above it, stop sweating the small stuff, or to let it all go, you have my permission to politely ignore them.

There's no shame in caring. It’s simply up to us to recognize it faster and reduce the amount of time it knocks us off our game.

So here's my question for you this week: What’s something that really heats you up, that you know, deep down, is a waste of your time?

Reply and tell us about it. We can't reply to everyone, but Jennifer and I love hearing from you, and we read every response. Even the mean ones.

That's all for this week.

See you next Saturday.