Focus on the Elephants & Deal with the Gnats!

I have been fortunate in my life to have had men and women who served as Mentors along my journey. They worked in all areas of life, lived in different places and each brought a refreshing perspective to my world. Their advice and guidance have been a great resource and comfort to me over the years. Just the other day I quoted this Mentor comment to someone; I had to smile as I remembered when it was first spoken into my life.

I was in my twenties, facing some pretty hard career choices, and my Mentor was an older, Southern gentleman who had a way of illustrating his point with colloquialisms that stuck in my brain. After he said this phrase, he told me, “When you see an elephant coming your way – a whopping big problem or choice – you know what’s about to happen. You have to deal with it or be crushed. Elephants take time to handle. We can all see that. What will drive you crazy are the gnats. The problems that keep cropping up because you never dealt with them. So they get bigger, more annoying, and keep pestering you to the point of insanity. In life what will kill you everyday are the gnats! So deal with the gnats and be done.”

If you have ever had gnats swarming around your head, zinging by, annoying you with their little buzzing sound, you KNOW what he meant. The challenge exists as we often do not take our gnat problem seriously. It comes and goes, growing each time it visits. The swarm gets larger, more gnats arrive, they buzz and hum, zing and zag past our ears driving us mad…and then they are gone. Or so we think. They come again, and always at the worst time – like when you are all dressed up. UGH! You are ready to go somewhere special and the gnats make you want to wave your hands like a crazy person, say very bad words at a high volume, which only negates how professional or amazing you appear. UGH! It’s that problem you wanted to avoid, that comes back to haunt you at the most inopportune times. GNATS!!!

When I quoted this phrase, the person smiled because they knew what I meant. DEAL with those little problems NOW, because if you don’t they come back bigger, louder, and in a more annoying fashion at the worst times. Make the decisions, deal with your choices, and just kill the problem. If you choose not to, don’t be surprised or outraged when the gnats come back…you chose this, and now you are going to again be annoyed and bothered by your gnats!

Life is all about how we deal with the everyday things in life. Bills that crop up, people who say or do stupid things, choices we need to make and would rather avoid. Success is made up of a million little choices, the ones that build on each other to help us reach our own definition of success. Yes we have elephant sized choices too, those we can focus on more easily. It is when a hundred gnat sized problems all happen on a Tuesday that we question our ability to survive.

Deal with your gnats, and be done with it. Accept your decision and move on. And as we know, in life other swarms of gnats will eventually arrive. NOW, you are an expert gnat killer so you know what you have to do! Focus on those elephants and deal with the gnats!