Feel Free to Stop Caring About These Five Things

How much time to do you spend worrying about your health? Finances? Work? The well-being of your family?

Does it honestly do you any good?

If you're like most people, you probably spend more time being concerned, anxious or apprehensive than you should. That's time you could be spending much more productively.

You only have so many hours in a day. Get a little of your precious time back by filing these five things in your "couldn't-care-less" folder!

Attaining perfection. Perfection -- the perfect body, the perfect career, the perfect house, the perfect family -- is a myth. Perfection is a waste of time, it's a recipe for unnecessary stress and it's the enemy of good.

Get the picture? Instead of striving for an imaginary state of perfection, strive to be the absolute best that you can be. Stop looking for the "silver bullet" that will fix everything and instead focus on simply taking the next right step in your life.

How other people live. No one else in this world has exactly the same talents, resources, background, standards, priorities or goals as you. So why should you fret over how anyone else lives his life? Let yourself off the hook and stop judging yourself by what other people do and how they live -- especially how they look, what they own and how much money they have. Don't measure yourself against other people. Use your own yardstick and you'll be much happier.

Aging. The simple truth? Try as you might, you cannot stop "Father Time." No matter how much you worry about it, or how much money you spend trying to hide it, your body and mind are aging.

Rather than fighting the natural process of getting older, embrace it -- and make the best of it. Stop caring about your biological age and a few wrinkles or grey hairs. Channel that fruitless worry into healthier life habits like getting more sleep or exercising regularly. If you change your focus, you can start caring about something over which you have a lot more control -- namely, how you want to live the years you have left.

Always being right. Everyone loves to be right. It's human nature! But while being right certainly feels good, needing to win every argument, at all costs, can be destructive. If you have to be right, you're always focused on proving other people wrong. You may win an argument, but lose a relationship in the process.

Improve your life by not worrying about being right all the time. Care about listening, finding solutions to problems, cooperating with others, and cultivating relationships. Care about outcomes -- not who's right or wrong.

Everyone else's opinion of you. Bill Cosby once said, "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." For the most part, what other people think and say about you doesn't matter. So why spend your time and energy worrying about it?

Instead of trying to please, impress or fit in with everyone, focus on who matters most. Identify a few important people whom you trust, who you know well and who love you enough to tell you the truth (even when it hurts). Listen to them, value their opinions and stop worrying about what the rest of the world thinks.

At the end of the day, you are responsible for cultivating your own happiness. Take a step in the right direction by crossing these five worries off your list -- and spending that extra time pursuing something that truly gives you pleasure.