Don't Sweat the Small Stuff for Women Journal: Inspirations for Doing What Matters Most & Finding Time for You Book

Reading Level: Adult. Over a decade ago Richard Carlson wrote the original Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: And It’s All Small Stuff. This title was a huge bestseller, and spawned not only a number of spin-offs by Carlson, but at least one parody too. And now we have a version for teens. I found this in the library while I was looking for some other titles. I hadn’t planned on including it, but I took it home and read through it, and knew this needed to be in my collection.

The book is small and simply presented, with no charts, quizzes, or pictures. The book is divided into 100 short (no more than three pages) chapters. It offers down-to-earth advice, much of which seem like common sense (like Chapter 33, “Get Ready Early”), yet are often things that we take for granted, or just don’t think much about. Carlson presents the chapter title, explains it, and often includes a story from his own life or from a teenager that relates to the chapter. His basic philosophy is that people expend too much energy getting upset or frustrated by the little things in life that don’t go their way. In this version of his series, he focuses on the issues that are affecting teenagers, such as peer pressure, their future, and drama.

This book is as easy to read as the idea behind most of the chapters, and it can be read in any order. It’s a book that a teen could pick up, read for five minutes, put it back down, and still have gained something from it. It helps the reader to think about things in their life in a new way, and it gives them ideas on how to make useful changes. There is no backmatter in this title; at the end of Chapter 100, “Continue Your Journey”, Carlson (2000) merely states “Treasure the gift of life.” I am a fan of Carlson’s original title, and credit that book with greatly improving my driving skills, for one. I still think about some of the ideas from time to time, and reading through the teen edition made me yearn to have had such a book when I was a teenager.