Choose Your Battles Wisely

You Can’t Fight Them All: Choose Your Battles Wisely
Sue Riggs, WVU Extension Agent, Marshall County

“Any fool can criticize, complain, condemn,
and most fools do. Picking your battles
is impressive and fighting them fairly
is essential.” —Dale Carnegie

Marta Driesslein, career strategist, says, “I share with
my clients that they should strategically choose the
battles that are worth the wounds. Most are not. The
battles that should be fought should never be about us
or posturing, or retribution for something, or someone
that wronged us. Unfortunately, most are.”

Criteria for choosing battles wisely

Each of us is given 24 hours a day and 168 hours a week.
We all need to learn how to use those hours effectively to
do the things that are important to us. We each have many
demands on our time. The way we use our time depends
on our priorities. We need to learn effective time
management strategies to learn how to discipline
and control ourselves.

“Choose your battles wisely” is a phrase often used in
teaching positive parenting skills, but it applies equally
well to living a satisfying life. Dr. Richard Carlson, author
of a series of best-selling books, has a chapter entitled
“Choose Your Battles Wisely” in his first book Don’t
Sweat the Small Stuff . . . and It’s All Small Stuff. He notes
that life is filled with opportunities to choose between
making a big deal out of something or simply letting it go,
realizing that it doesn’t matter. He further points out that
you’ll be far more effective in winning those battles that
are truly important if you choose your battles wisely.

When you fight or argue over every confrontation, people
will perceive you as a confrontational troublemaker. If you
challenge only those issues that are truly and personally
offensive to you, your opinions and disagreement will
bear more weight, and people will listen. You will also
be keeping track of what is truly relevant to you.

Carlson points out that life is rarely exactly the way we
want it to be, and often other people don’t act the way we
would like. Every day, we have aspects of life we like and
others we don’t. There will always be people who don’t
agree with you, people who do things differently. If you
always fight for your perfect world, you’ll spend most
of your life fighting battles.

Carlson relates that a peaceful way to live is to decide
consciously which battles are worth fighting and which
are better left alone. Ideally, each of us would like to live
a positive, tranquil, relatively stress-free life. To do this,
we need to let go of matters that are not worthy of arguing
over, those that are not our business, and those that we
cannot do anything about.

Reserve your battles for truly important issues. You may
want to fight for justice when someone has been harassed,
abused, or slandered. You may want to fight for an issue
that will make your community a better place to live.
You may want to fight for a new law that is more just.
Carlson points out that many of us may need to reevaluate
our priorities. It’s critical that we choose our battles
wisely, and then perhaps there will come a day when
we will rarely need to battle at all.

2004: 10M
Programs and activities offered by the West Virginia University Extension Service are available to all persons without regard to race, color,
sex, disability, religion, age, veteran status, political beliefs, sexual orientation, national origin, and marital or family status. Issued in
furtherance of Cooperative Extension work, Acts of May 8 and June 30, 1914, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Director, Cooperative Extension Service, West Virginia University.

Sharpen your decision-making skills

An article by Liraz Publishing Company offers some
good tips on making decisions. The article points out
that “just as people are different, so are their styles of
decision-making. Each person is a result of all the
decisions made in their life to date.” Recognizing this,
the article offers the following suggestions to enhance
one’s decision-making batting average.

• Only make decisions that are yours to make.
• Realize that when you make a decision, you are not
making a choice between right and wrong; but you
are only choosing from the alternatives.
• Avoid snap decisions, especially those that cannot
be reversed.
• Make decisions based on what is right, not who is right.
• Consider those affected by your decision. If possible,
get them involved to get their commitment.
• Recognize that you cannot be 100 percent certain
that your decision is correct, because the actions to
implement that decision will take place in the future.
• Remember that to choose not to make a decision is
a decision not to take action.
• Understand that to be effective, a decision-maker must
have the luxury of having the right to be wrong.
• Trust yourself to make the best decision on a matter and
then to be able to field the consequences appropriately.
• Once you have made a decision to the best of your
ability, never look back. Be aware of how it is currently
affecting you and focus on your next move. Never regret
a decision. It was the right thing to do at that time.
Next, focus on what is right at this time.

Adopt a spirit of acceptance

Dr. Phil McGraw, author of the New York Times’s No.1
best-seller Life Strategies and host of the famous Dr. Phil
television program, says, “Some battles are none of your
business. Some battles you can never win so why try?
We all need to adopt a spirit of acceptance to get along.
Even though the decision may not be what you want,
your acceptance of that decision is a way to have peace.
You can pull someone toward your own ideals, but
eventually they will pull back to their own instincts.
Therefore, have a spirit of acceptance when people’s
ideals are different from yours.”

If you need to make a change in your life, Dr. Joy Browne,
a licensed clinical psychologist and host of her own daily
syndicated radio show based in New York City, has written
a book Getting Unstuck: 8 Simple Steps to Solving
Any Problem. She outlines some important areas for
consideration if you want to learn techniques to find
ways to enjoy life more.

Step 1: Focus on the present. Living in the past keeps
you fixated on what was done to you rather than on what
you can do. Put your energy into current problem-solving.
Step 2: Play it forward. You can’t tell the future, but you
can imagine the consequences of your actions. Thinking
things through makes it easier to make serious decisions.
Step 3: Be your neighbor or friend. Think about
what advice you would offer if a situation happened
to someone else. You may be able to think more clearly
when you consider advice for another person.
Step 4: Be specific. Communications is always a problem
in understanding. Let others know what you really expect.
In a kind way, don’t beat around the bush when you want
someone to understand how you feel.
Step 5: Do what works. Use your strengths. Employ
techniques that you know work for you. Use your
talents to make the best decision.
Step 6: Examine your assumptions. Be aware of
negative ones and change them. What we believe about
others determines how we treat them and how they react
to us.
Step 7: Live every day as if it were your last. This helps
you focus on what’s important.
Step 8: Think about what you would like inscribed on
your tombstone.

When choosing among courses of action,
ask yourself, “Will this make me worthy of my epitaph?”
Take time to carefully and wisely choose which battles
you will get involved in and which battles are best to let
go. Ask yourself, will this make a difference in the long run,
will this cause me undue stress, and is this really any of my
business? Choosing battles wisely requires being patient
and making wise choices. When relationships are full of
care and kindness, our conflicts will be careful and rare.

Resources
Browne, Joy. Getting Unstuck: 8 Simple Steps to Solving
Any Problem, 2002, Hay House, Inc., Calif.
Carlson, Richard, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff . . .
and It’s All Small Stuff, 1997, Hyperion Press, N.Y.
“Decision Making Tips,” Liraz Publishing Co. 2003.
Driesslein, Marta, career strategist (cmandate@bellsouth.net).
Hebenstreit, Karl. “Lessons Learned” (jobfairy.com/articles/
lessonslearned.htm).
McGraw, Phillip, C. Life Strategies, 2000, Hyperion
Press, N.Y.
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