Are you sweating the small stuff again? Do you find that traffic jams, long lines at the grocery store, delayed flights, broken household appliances, etc. are once again pushing your sanity to a tipping point? The good news is that you’re not alone and the even better news is that this does not mean there’s something wrong with you.

Falling back into old habits is, quite frankly, its own habit. Due to our neurological and psychological makeup, we are destined to revisit old patterns of thinking and behaving. Sweating the small stuff, aka worrying about unnecessary details, is one of the most ingrained, widely used, and most challenging habits we have.

For starters, the concept of trying to get a grip on worry has been around as long as we’ve been able to use our brains to imagine and remember—the two engines that drive the worry bus. Similar expressions throughout the years include, “Don’t make mountains out of molehills, don’t take things so seriously,” and the even more direct, “chill out!” What all of these have in common is that........

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