Choose Your Battles

James M Sandbrook

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Choose your battles means to be selective of the problems, arguments, and confrontations that you get involved in. Instead of fighting every problem, you save your time only for the things that matter. This means fighting the most important battles and letting go of the rest.

Why is it important to choose your battles?

Not everything is important. Some things simply don’t matter in the long run.

If you think about what matters 5, 10, even 20 years from now, it’s apparent that many of the things we worry about are small, and we should instead focus on the big important things.

Every battle takes up time. Every problem you wrap yourself in takes up time and energy.

Even if you win that battle, maybe your time could have been better spent elsewhere.

Victory isn’t all that matters sometimes — making the best use of your time is.

We all have limited time on earth. Ultimately, the reason why anything matters is that we have limited time on earth.

You and I will die someday.

When you look back at your life from your deathbed, what do you want to see?

A life where you worried about every little thing and argued with everyone who stood in your way?

Or a meaningful life well lived, where you spent your time only on the things that

mattered, such as with the people you love and things that help the world?

The point of choosing your battles is to be strategic in how you spend this limited resource called time.

What matters to you?

What are your most important goals?

Who are the most important people to you?

Fighting every battle means having no time for these things that matter.

By making the choice as to what battle you want to fight, you are already winning the big game called life.

Have an exit point.

All battles can be won if you have unlimited resources.

The reality though is that we don’t have unlimited resources.

We can’t spend forever working on a problem if it’s not progressing despite our best effort.

Have a cut-loss point that tells you, “Okay, that’s it.

Time to cut my losses and move on.”

This is the point where you exit the battle because you have incurred your maximum loss and you don’t want to invest any more time or energy into this.

There was once when my husband and I got ripped off of US$40 in Bali.

A cab driver dropped us off at our hotel lobby, made use of the fact that we were not familiar with the local currency, and lied to us about the bill (which was supposed to be US$40).

While this is not a lot of money in the States, this amount goes a long way in Bali. What’s more, it was our honeymoon and we were annoyed to deal with such a dishonest man during a celebratory event. Our hotel staff was helpful and tried to track down the driver, from reviewing the CCTV to calling a suspect back to our hotel, but to no avail. After an hour of back-and-forth, I told my husband to let this go since

(1) there was no way for us to locate the guy given that the CCTV footage was too blurry, and

(2) the driver was unlikely to step forward even if we did an open call through his cab company.

Moreover, the amount was US$40— as working adults, it was easier for us to earn this back than locate a crook in a foreign land.

So we let go of the incident and enjoyed the rest of our trip.

I was glad to do so as it was getting draining dealing with the issue.

Maybe we could have found the driver if we had requested for a zoom-in analysis of the CCTV footage,

but for the low chance of success, it was easier to move on and focus on bigger things.

Let go of unresolved problems.

If the problem remains unresolved despite your best effort, let it go. Success comes not from not winning every battle, but learning to let go when it’s time to do so. While tip #6 is about knowing when to exit when things don’t go your way, this tip #7 is about letting go. Just because you stop fighting a problem doesn’t mean that you have let go of it mentally.

Once my friend was having conflicts with her boss and co-workers. They kept talking behind her back, backstabbing her, and giving her issues. The environment was cliquish and she didn’t fit in.

While she felt deeply troubled and even cried in the office at one point, after that she focused on her career next steps instead. She worked on her resume and started looking for new jobs. Eventually, she found a job with better pay and work conditions. She has since been working there for two years and is enjoying her work and co-workers. On the other hand, if she focused on feeling unhappy and angry with her co-workers, she would never have found her new job.

How can you let go?

Acknowledge your feelings. So things didn’t go your way.

How do you feel? Sad? Angry? Disappointed? Write down your feelings.

Use my brain dumping exercise to release your emotions.

Understand why you are feeling this way. There’s a reason why you feel aggrieved.

Why do you feel this way?

What do you feel unjust about?

Dig into the root issue: maybe you feel disrespected, maybe the situation confronts one of your fears, or maybe it deals with something that matters a lot to you. Uncovering the root issue will help you to understand and let go.

Work on a new path forward. Since the conflict can’t be resolved to your satisfaction, what can you do to move forward? Identify new ways to move forward. With my friend, she couldn’t resolve the conflict with her boss and co-workers, and hence the next best step was to look for a new job — which worked out great for her. How can you stay on track in your life plan, despite the battle not turning out the way you want?

- C Chua.

James M Sandbrook

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