I've been reading No Mud, No Lotus recently (https://www.parallax.org/product/no-mud-no-lotus/) by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and this is very much the same advice.

This book has brought me immense joy, I'd recommend it to anyone.

It's fascinating how much Buddhism has gotten "right".

Can't read the article from phone.

From the article: Micro-stressors such as running late [...] represent the unavoidable pain that comes with being human.

Is running late really unavoidable? I think there are proven strategies to avoid it. (My wife and one of my sons on the other hand would agree that it is in fact unavoidable)

Edit: added missing word

I have insane admiration for and quite a serious amount of jealousy of people who are able to sail through life with with every setback sailing right past them, leaving no trace or mark.

I've noticed it more in people who had a comfortable upringing and no money worries. Oh dear, dinner is burnt? No worries just order takeout! Lost your passport a few days before a holiday - no sweat, just pay the fast track processing fee. Car broken down? Just jump in a taxi. Coffee ruined your top? Just buy another one. Etc. Money often means far fewer worries in life, and kids must definitely notice and feel that.

As you can probably guess, I grew up relatively poor. Every day/week something would be causing my parents stress, often related to money. No amount of grounding themselves or belly breathing would have alleviated the stress.

I know the article is about smaller things, many of which of money can't fix, but I do wonder if growing up in a low-stress environment (largely because of no money issues) instills something that enables you to not sweat the minor things in life

I am deaf but not completely deaf. Some sounds I can hear and a lot of the sounds that are loud enough to come to my attention are annoying. Often not the same sounds that annoy other people, too.

I'm reminded of a conversation with my friend who is fully Deaf from birth and a signer. Hearing people are a foreign culture for him. It's tricky to navigate the hearing world sometimes, when you don't know what what noises things make and how they are perceived. (Stacking metal or ceramic dishes is an almost silent experience for me, for example.)

He noted that the sounds hearing people complain about seem related to control. Thunder? Not a problem. Natural and nothing you can do about it. The beep of a truck backing up? That's due to a person. It could be controlled. Rain? Not a problem. Sprinkler system? That's ultimately due to a person. It could be controlled. Microwave beep? Could have been controlled; you're supposed to hit the stop button at 0:01. Dog barking? Annoying because again, supposed to be controlled. Wild birds cawing at the crack of dawn? Filtered out and ignored. (Mostly, some people do complain about those.)

Realizing you don't actually have control and that the other person might not actually have control is surprisingly relaxing, I've found. I suppose that's closely related to the "radical acceptance" of the article.

I don’t think anyone should tolerate what they find annoying, life is too short. If something or someone wants to keep you around, they should be less annoying to you.

I have seen some people turn themselves around with ACT-style therapy like this article introduces. Some can build up response patterns that turn minor daily annoyances into bigger problems that disrupt their mood for hours or even the rest of the day.

These behaviors of blowing things out of proportion or letting them get under your skin can be both learned and unlearned, in addition to developing organically. Therapy techniques like this are an intentional way to practice unlearning bad habits and replacing with undeniably better habits that you want to practice.

Raising and teaching young children is a learning experience for how some of these habits can develop and how to teach better responses to life's frustrations. Kids can get frustrated easily and their emotions run strong. Learning how to teach kids to control their emotions and respond appropriately to life is one of the core parenting challenges. I feel like I learned a lot about myself in the process of trying to figure out how to teach it to my kids and set a good example for them.

On this topic, I've also observed a few cases in teens and adults who seemingly learn bad habits about becoming overly annoyed by small things, primarily from social media influencers. There is an entire universe of social media influencers dedicated to grievance-based entertainment, where they produce content about things that make you angry or feel like the victim. I think it's supposed to be cathartic or helpful, but in the process of producing content they reach further and further for topics to turn into grievances.

The early trend of "emotional labor" being an invisible burden was the first time I saw this. The social media influencer version of emotional labor actually diverged from the literature definition and became an umbrella term meaning that your emotions were unpaid labor. If anyone did something that made you feel those emotions or you had to deal with someone else's emotions, you were supposed to feel burdened and victimized. There have been other trends like "mental load" that are variations of this idea that you have been made into the victim via other people or the world triggering your own emotional responses, which may have become exaggerated via these social influencers constantly bringing them front and center.

I’ve gotten a lot out of the writings of Albert Ellis whose work in the 50s and 60s became cognitive behavioral therapy. He would have said that it is irrational to demand that everyday inconveniences not exist, and by changing your thinking to accept and expect that unavoidable inconveniences happen, you will be less likely to allow these things to cause emotional distress.

He credits the ancient stoics and other philosophers for influencing his methods.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/rational-em... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5836900/

This article seems fine, but I would say that physical acts are really the core go-to for this. Things like running a marathon or Zen meditation.

There's nothing that helps you endure smaller unpleasant things more directly than just a regular practice of enduring them.