Writer Looks Beyond ‘Small Stuff’

At the busy crossroads of the old and new years, Richard Carlson urges us to be less bothered by the hullabaloo.

“Life, although it seems like it, is not an emergency,” he said the other day. Carlson, a 36-year-old psychologist, may be the leading self-help instructor on the scene today, having distilled his prescriptions for a calmer and more meaningful life into two simple and extraordinarily successful books this year.

“Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff … and it’s all small stuff,” subtitled “Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things from Taking Over Your Life,” advises readers: “Learn to Live in the Present Moment,” “Become a Better Listener” and “Ask Yourself the Question, ‘Will This Matter a Year from Now?”’

The book has spent most of 1997 at or near the top of the national best-seller lists.

In Carlson’s hardcover follow-up, “Don’t Worry, Make Money,” subtitled “Spiritual and Practical Ways to Create Abundance and More Fun in Your Life,” he argues, for example, that expressing gratitude to others not only is the right thing to do at all times, but it “guarantees that more help is just around the corner.” He underscores more than once the wisdom of pausing when faced with a business challenge, to quit overanalyzing and “know the secret of silence” so that solutions can arise amid the calm.

Published in October, the second book led the New York Times’ list of advice best sellers for a time.

“I’m tickled, touched and grateful by the response because I’ve been saying some of these same things for 15 years, and now for the first time people really seem to be listening,” Carlson said in a recent phone interview from his home near San Francisco. “But what I make of it is that I think people are really tired of being annoyed.

“I was asked recently to describe Americans in two words or less, and I said, ‘easily bothered.’ We’re bothered even though part of us realizes how lucky we are and what extraordinary opportunities we have.”

For an encore, Carlson is writing a book tentatively titled “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff With Your Family.” Yet he recognizes that his singular success, and the increase in invitations to give speeches and write more, conspire to undo the simplicity in his own life. “My goal is to take on less and less and stick to spending time with my family,” he said. “The measure of my own success is the degree to which I walk my own talk.”