I came across the most amazing video last night. Last year, time lapse photographer Terje Sorgjerd captured the milky way from Spain’s highest mountain (El Teide) and turned it into an incredible piece of art. You can watch the video below. It’s definitely worth 3 minutes of your life. I promise.

As I watched the video in awe it made me feel really small in comparison to this vast expanse of nature – Terje even managed to capture the milky way through a sandstorm at one point (30 seconds in).

The sheer magnificence of these landscapes demonstrated one thing to me:

the power of ‘thinking big’

And I pondered how ridiculous many of the problems I face on a day-to-day basis really are when put into context. It’s so easy to get sucked into a problem and let it completely take over your hour, day or even week. When in reality when you pull yourself out of the problem and look at it from a ‘big picture’ perspective, it’s often not that important.

It’s funny how problems we have yesterday are so quickly forgotten about tomorrow.

The other thing this video struck home for me was ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’. In the grand scheme of your life, is it worth getting angry, sad or anxious over things that don’t really matter?

Consciously we know that all of this makes sense – but when we’re ‘in a problem’ we often can’t see past the problem to pull ourselves out of it.  And this is where over-analysis usually kicks in.

If only we could remember to ‘think big’ next time we were obsessing over something insignificant and unimportant…it might just dissolve our problems.

Simple Life Strategy: how thinking big will dissolve your problems

Here are my top tips for thinking big:

1. Awareness is always the first step. Notice next time you’re obsessing over a problem
2. Context – Put the problem into the context of your whole life!
3. Think big – Imagine yourself in 5 years time and ask yourself ‘will this still be a problem then?’
4. Assess. If the answer is no, and you’ve identified that the problem is not that important, choose to let it go
5. Consider genuine ‘big problems’ around the world such as war-torn countries, famines and homelessness – how does your problem stack up against these issues?
6. Be grateful for what you have – by focusing on the positives in your life you can get some perspective and pull yourself out of the problem
7. Perception. Remember – at the end of the day it’s your perception of the problem that will result in over-analysis – choose to view the problem differently and watch it dissolve!

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