Lifestyle

“Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.”
— Ann Landers

You are changing.  The universe around you is changing.  Just because something was right for you in the past doesn’t mean it still is.  This could be a relationship, a job, a home, a habit, etc.

It happens to you slowly as you grow.  You discover more about who you are and what you want out of life, and then you realize there are deliberate changes you need to make to keep up with the changes happening around you and within you.

The lifestyle you’ve been living no longer fits.  The specific people and routines you’ve known forever no longer align with your values.  So you cherish all the memories, but find yourself letting go and moving on.

If you’re currently dealing with this process you may feel a bit awkward, and that’s OK.  This feeling is normal.  I’ve been right there with you on more occasions than I can count.

Reasons to Let Go and Move On

1. Someone’s negativity is rubbing off on you. – You are the average of the people you spend the most time with.  In other words, who you spend your time with has a great impact on the person you are and the person you become.  If you are around cynical and negative people all the time, you will become cynical and negative.
2. You have grown apart from someone. – Sad but true, no matter what you do or how much you explain yourself, some people will gradually evolve away from your core values.  As time goes on they will prove over and over again that they are committed to misunderstanding you and clashing with your needs.
3. You are truly unhappy with your current circumstances. – It’s always better to be struggling at something you love than succeeding diligently at something you despise.  (Read Quitter.)
4. Your goals and needs have changed. – What was right for you then is not necessarily right for you now.  Sometimes the hardest part isn’t letting go but rather realizing that you have changed, and then learning to start over with your new truth.
5. Fear is holding you back. – Part of letting go and moving on is facing the fears and disappointments of the past that are binding your spirit.
6. You catch yourself living in the past. – If all you do is attempt to relive something that has already happened, you’re missing out.  The mental space you create by letting go of things that are already behind you gives you the ability to fill the space with something fresh and fun.
7. An old grudge is still hurting you. – Holding on to the weight of anger, resentment and hatred will not only hold you back, but also block your present blessings and opportunities.  You’ve just got to drop some things to move forward.
8. You aren’t learning anything new. – Living is learning.  All positive change is the end result of learning.  If you aren’t learning, you’re simply dying slowly.

One Small Example of Letting Go

We had been friends since grade school when I finally told one of my childhood friends, “Enough is enough!”  Although we had basically grown up together, we were now on different planets when it came to our goals and dreams.  He believed there was one right way to do things – go to college, get a degree, get a job, and dedicate every waking moment of your life to it.  I had other plans.

Although I did get my degree and a job after college, in our free time Angel and I started writing articles on the blog you’re reading now.  As the blog’s reach grew, my friend discredited our success.  Whenever I shared one of our small success stories, he would say something negative like, “Whatever.  It’s just a blog.  I have one too.”

When Angel quit her job to work on the blog full-time, my friend basically told me we’d fail.  “That’s ridiculous!  Angel had a good job,” he said.  “You’re just playing with fire in this economy if you ask me.”  To which I replied, “I’m not asking you.”

That was the beginning of the end of our story as friends.  Years later, our relationship is now a mere shadow of what it was and my life is honestly far brighter for it.  Letting my friend go wasn’t easy, but it was necessary for my own well-being and growth.

Ways to Let Go and Move On

Holding on is like believing that there’s only a past; letting go and moving on is knowing in your heart that there’s a bright future ahead.  Let’s take a look at eight ways to design the latter.

1. Accept the truth and be thankful. – To let go is to be thankful for the experiences that made you laugh, made you cry, and helped you learn and grow.  It’s the acceptance of everything you have, everything you once had, and the possibilities that lie ahead.  It’s all about finding the strength to embrace life’s changes, to trust your intuition, to learn as you go, to realize that every experience has value, and to continue taking positive steps forward.  (This process is something Angel and I discuss in the Adversity chapter of 1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.)
2. Distance yourself for a while. – Sometimes you need to take several steps back in order to gain clarity on a situation.  The best way to do this is to simply take a break and explore something else for a while.  Why?  So you can return to where you started and see things with a new set of eyes.  And the people there may see you differently too.  Returning where you started is entirely different than never leaving.
3. Focus only on what can be changed. – Realize that not everything in life is meant to be modified or perfectly understood.  Live, let go, learn what you can and don’t waste energy worrying about the things you can’t change.  Focus exclusively on what you can change, and if you can’t change something you don’t like, change the way you think about it.  Review your options and then re-frame what you don’t like into a starting point for achieving something better.
4. Claim ownership and control of your life. – No one else is responsible for you.  You are in full control of your life so long as you claim it and own it.  Through the grapevine, you may have learned that you should blame your parents, your teachers, your mentors, the education system, the government, etc., but never to blame yourself.  Right?  It’s never, ever your fault… WRONG!  Your life is your responsibility!  If you want to change, if you want to let go and move on with your life, you’re the only person who can make it happen.
5. Focus inward. – It’s important to make a difference in the world.  Yes, it’s important to help people, but you have to start with yourself.  If you’re looking outside yourself to find where you fit in or how you can create an impact, stop and look inside yourself instead.  Review who you already are, the lifestyle you’re currently living, and what makes you feel alive.  Then nurture these things and make positive adjustments until your current life can no longer contain them, forcing you to grow and move beyond your current circumstances.
6. Change the people around you. – Some people come into your life just to strengthen you, so you can move on without them.  They are supposed to be part of your memory, not your destiny.  The bottom line is that when you have to start compromising your happiness and your potential for the people around you, it’s time to change the people around you.  It’s time to join local meet-ups, attend conferences, network online, and find a more supportive tribe.
7. Take a chance. – When life sets you up with a challenge, there’s a reason for it; it’s meant to test your courage and willingness to make a change and take a chance on something new.  There’s no point in denying that things are different now, or being fearful of the next step.  The challenge will not wait even if you hesitate.  Life only moves in one direction – forward.  This challenge is your chance to let go of the old and make way for the new.  Your destiny awaits your decision.  (Read The Untethered Soul.)
8. Focus on today. – You can decide right now that negative experiences from your past will not predict your future.  Figure out what the next positive step is, no matter how small or difficult, and take it.  Ultimately, the only thing you can ever really do is to keep moving forward.  Take that leap without hesitation, without looking back.  Simply forget the past, look straight ahead and forge toward the future.

The floor is yours…

What are you holding on to that’s holding you back?  What’s the first step you need to take to let it go?  Share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment below.

Photo by: Hartwig HKD

In a culture that seeks quick results, we must learn the beauty of effort, patience, and perseverance.

Be strong, present, and steadfast.

Have you ever told yourself that you’re going to make something happen and then nothing happened?  That’s because you didn’t follow-through.  You didn’t have the right rituals in place – little things you do each day that build up and gradually condition your body and mind to make things happen.

Rituals define you.  All the results in your life come from your rituals.

If you’re out of shape and overweight, you have different rituals than someone who’s physically fit.  If you’re fit, you jump out of bed early every morning and sweat before preparing a healthy breakfast.  If you’re out of shape, you sleep in and eat whatever is fastest and easiest.

This may be a bit of a generalization, but it’s not far from the truth for the average able-bodied person.

In all walks of life, you don’t suddenly become successful.  You become successful over time from all the little things you do every day.

Failure occurs in the same way.  All your little daily failures (that you don’t learn and grow from) come together and cause you to fail…

• You fail to check the books.
• You fail to make the call.
• You fail to listen to your customers.
• You fail to innovate.
• You fail to push yourself to do what must be done.
• etc.

And then one day you wake up and your business has failed.  It was all the little things you did or didn’t do along the way, not just one catastrophic event.

So with this principle in mind, I want to share some weak points we’ve seen plaguing thousands of our coaching clients and course members over the past decade – little things people do every day that stop them from moving forward with their lives:

1. You change nothing and expect different results. – There’s a saying that the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  If you want to improve yourself, you have to try new things to see what works and what doesn’t.  If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.  Often the difference between a successful person and a person who struggles to implement positive changes is not one’s superior abilities, but the courage that one has to bet on one’s ideas, to take calculated risks, and to take steady steps forward.  In other words, some people sit and wait for the magic beans to arrive while the rest of us just get up and get to work.
2. You keep waiting and waiting and waiting for the right time. – You cannot wait for the perfect time; it will never come.  If you think this moment feels like the wrong time, think again.  It’s just uncertainty messing with your mind.  Most of the time you must dare to jump.  Today is the first day of a new beginning – the conception of a new life.  The next nine months are all yours.  You can do with them as you please.  Make them count.  Because a new person is born in nine months.  The only question is: Who do you want that person to be?  Right now is the right time to decide.
3. Your planning and focus are in disarray. – Do you plan your days?  Did you wake up today knowing what you wanted to accomplish?  If not, maybe it’s time you do.  Trust me, a year from now you will wish you had managed your time properly today.  What would you regret not accomplishing this year?  What would you regret doing an abysmal job at, simply because you waited until the last minute and then rushed around doing 50 things at once?  Create a plan to accomplish these things sanely, one at a time.  Planning doesn’t have to be long and tedious; it can just be a 60-second process.  Every night, think about three small things that you want to accomplish tomorrow and write them down.  When you wake up in the morning, review this list before you do anything else, and then take the first step.  If you find yourself being lured to do something that’s not on that short list of three things, bring yourself back and focus.
4. You refuse to accept necessary risks. – Living is about learning as you go.  Living is risky business.  Every decision, every interaction, every step, every time you get out of bed in the morning, you take a small risk.  To truly live is to know you’re getting up and taking that risk, and to trust yourself to take it.  To not get out of bed, clutching to illusions of safety, is to die slowly without ever having truly lived.  Think about it: If you ignore your instincts and let shallow feelings of uncertainty stop you, you will never know anything for sure, and in many ways this un-knowing will be worse than finding out your instincts were wrong.  Because if you were wrong, you could make adjustments and carry on with your life, without looking back and wondering what might have been.
5. You make the rejections of yesterday the focal point of today. – NOT believing that you CAN is the biggest trap of them all.  If you don’t know your own greatness is possible, you won’t bother attempting anything great.  All too often we let the rejections of our past dictate every move we make thereafter.  We literally do not know ourselves to be any better than what some opinionated person or narrow circumstance once told us was true.  Of course, this old rejection doesn’t mean we aren’t good enough; it means the other person or circumstance failed to align with what we have to offer.  It means we have more time to improve our thing – to build upon our ideas, to perfect our craft, and indulge deeper in to the work that moves us.  And that’s exactly what you need to do, starting now.  (Read Daring Greatly.)
6. You refuse to take responsibility. – Not every event in your life is your fault, but they are all your responsibility.  A combination of your decisions and external factors for which you had no control brought you to where you are in the world today.  Negatively blaming someone else, or some other past circumstance, will change nothing.  Positively taking full responsibility for your situation and your path forward can change everything.  Leave the unchangeable past behind you as you diligently give yourself to the present moment.  In this moment is every possibility you seek.  Take responsibility for it, and bring these possibilities to life.
7. You want things to be perfect. – Every one of us is a perfectionist about something.  Learn to sense when your desire to make something perfect is preventing you from getting it done.  Realize that the idea of perfection is not only unachievable, it can destroy your otherwise productive mindset.  It will keep you running in place, feeling insane for your entire life.  If you feel like you’re running in place right now, take a break and reflect.  Think about the difference between diligent effort and perfectionism.  Know when enough is enough.  Say it out loud if you must:  “Get lost perfectionism!  Without you I am brilliant!”
8. You avoid the truth. – Personal transformation and growth can be remarkably rewarding, but only when the process of change is based on honesty and truth.  When you’re not being authentic somewhere in your life or with someone in your life, any attempt at transformation eventually leads to anger and frustration.  The truth always creeps back up on you; it does not cease to exist when you ignore it.  Being fake about any aspect of your existence slowly digs a dark void in your soul.  Life will simply not work for you if you don’t show up as YOU.  The truth may not be easy to deal with, but it will always set you free in the end.
9. You close your mind to new ideas and perspectives. – Even as you grow wiser and wiser with age you must remind yourself that an understanding is never absolutely final.  What’s currently right could easily be wrong later.  Thus, the most destructive illusion is a settled point of view.  So remember that success in life does not depend on always being right.  To make real progress you must let go of the assumption that you already have all the answers.  You can listen to others, learn from them, and successfully work with them even though you may not agree with every opinion they have.  When people respectfully agree to disagree, everyone benefits from the diversity of perspective.  (Read A New Earth.)
10. You let a few negative people fill your mind with garbage. – Of course, there will inevitably be a few people in your life who will be critical of you regardless of what you do or how well you do it.  If you say you want to be a dancer, they will discredit your rhythm.  If you say you want to build a new business, they will give you a dozen reasons why it might not work.  They somehow assume you don’t have what it takes, but they are dead wrong.  It’s a lot easier to be negative than positive – a lot easier to be critical than correct.  When you’re embarking on a new venture, instead of listening to the few critics that will try to discredit you, spend time talking to one of the millions of people in this world who are willing to support your efforts and acknowledge your potential, respectfully.
11. You keep telling yourself the wrong story. – Forget what everyone else thinks of you; chances are, they aren’t thinking about you that often anyhow.  If you feel like they always are, understand that this perception of them watching you and critiquing your every move is a complete figment of your imagination.  It’s your own inner fears and insecurities that are creating this illusion.  It’s you judging yourself that’s the problem.  You judge yourself by telling yourself a story inside of your head.  Every moment of every day you’re telling yourself this story.  You are building your future around this story, so tell it right.  Create a positive narrative about your dreams and goals that include only the circumstances that matter.  What you think others are thinking about you is not part of this narrative, and neither are your negative self-judgments.
12. You are holding on to something that’s not real. – Let go of what was never really there.  Your intuition knows what I’m referring to – the pictures in your head that go against the present reality.  Remind yourself that not everything is meant to be, and you have to accept this.  You have to seriously sit down with yourself and come to grips with the fact that you were wrong about it all along.  It was just an illusion that never really was what you thought it was.  It’s one of the most difficult realizations to accept, to realize that you feel a sense of loss, even though you never really had what you thought you had in the first place.  The key is knowing this, learning from it, letting go and taking the next step.  (Angel and I discuss this in more detail in the “Adversity” chapter of 1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.)
13. You want and expect things to be easy. – Easy goals don’t exist.  A goal is a point of achievement that requires effort and sacrifice.  There are no esteemed ventures worth participating in that don’t require some level of effort and struggle.  Decades from now when you’re resting on your deathbed, you will not remember the days that were easy, you will cherish the moments when you rose above your difficulties and conquered goals of magnitude.  You will dream of the strength you found within yourself that allowed you to achieve what once seemed impossible.  So don’t do what’s easy, do what you’re capable of.  Astound yourself with your own greatness.
14. You have forgotten the importance of helping others, too. – It’s one of life’s great paradoxes; when you serve others you end up benefiting as much if not more than those you serve.  So if you feel stuck right now, shift your focus from your circumstances to the circumstances of those around you.  As Gandhi once said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”  Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me?” ask, “How can I help you?”  Find someone who could use an extra hand and make an offer they can’t refuse.  When your focus shifts from your own confusion and difficulties, to the confusion and difficulties of others, and you see yourself making a positive difference, it fills you with a sense of meaning and illuminates a clear path to a brighter future.
15. You aren’t taking small steps every day. – Every moment of your life builds upon the next.  This moment is the bridge between the reality of where you are and the vision of where you want to be.  Reality is approaching you every second.  And the great thing is, you’re able to alter it as it arrives.  You just have to decide what you want to do with it.  The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing simply because you can only do a little.  In fact, it is far more productive to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a giant leap only to stumble and fall and never get up again.  The path to every goal requires a hundred small steps – one after the other.  Figure out where you want to go, take a step, and keep on stepping.  Diligence and persistence will get you there.

Closing Exercise

Choose any area in your life that you want to improve, and then:

1. Write down the specific details about your current circumstances.  (What’s bothering you?  What’s wrong?  What do you want to change?)
2. Write down your answer to this question: What are the daily rituals that have contributed to your current circumstances?  (Be honest with yourself.  What are you doing that contributes to the situation you’re in?)
3. Write down the specific details about your ideal circumstances.  (What would make you happy?  What does your ideal situation look like?)
4. Write down your answer to this question:  What are the daily rituals that will get you from where you are to where you want to be?  (Think about it.  What small, daily steps will help you move forward?)

Your turn…

What has been stopping you from moving forward?  What rituals (or habits) do you want to change in your life?  Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

Photo by: Marc Benslahdine

What We Live For

Once upon a time a wise man asked a group of people who he cared about to convene.  A month later twenty of us are assembled on the front porch of a log cabin near the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  Most of us don’t know each other, as we are from different parts of the country and travel in different social circles.

As our two-day meeting begins, it becomes clear to me that we all share at least two things in common:  The first is that we want to make a difference in the world and be of service to others, and the second is that none of us have the foggiest idea what it is we are supposed to do here at this remote location.

Our gathering feels somewhat reminiscent of early colonist meetings before the Revolutionary War.  It wasn’t trained soldiers or official public leaders that got together then.  Rather, it was ordinary people – young and old, rich and poor, carpenter and farmer – who met because they believed in a vision more abstract and bigger than themselves.

They wanted freedom, whatever that meant… and democracy, however that worked.  And although they were willing to die for these ideals, the spirit of their early meetings was driven by the passion for living.  Because ultimately it’s not what we die for that motivates us, it’s what we live for.  They convened because they knew in their hearts what they lived for.

We Want To Create

I am convinced that the twenty people here have a conviction about life that – like the colonists – goes deeper than superficial, self-centered desires and wants.  We each believe – using words and expressions that are our own – that we are acting on behalf of an energy bigger than all of us, while also contained within each of us.

So here we sit, all twenty of us, holding a space and filling it with energy, speaking quickly and slowly with voices of curiosity.  We’re occupying this space because our journeys took us here, even though we’re uncertain what it is we’re here to do.

And we continue to sit and breathe and think and converse, until the wise man walks out of the log cabin and onto the porch.  He asks each of us to tell the group what brought us here.

Yes, the wise man was the inspiration for all of us, so we name him.  Yes, we want to learn, connect and be present, so we name that.  Yes, we felt moved by our intuition and curiosity, so we continue to acknowledge the obvious.  But what else?  Abstractions are inspiring for only as long as we can use them to create something.  But what is it that we want to create?

The 800 Pound Gorilla

As we sit and move through the first day together, it is clear that none of us are sure about how to address the massive, hungry, obnoxious, smelly, sly and very much alive 800 pound gorilla standing in the center of the porch.

The wise man continues to inquire, in various ways, about our collective motivation beyond casual conversation, about our unified purpose beyond friendship, about what might be the driving force behind coming here this weekend.  But he doesn’t receive a single answer.  Nobody feels ready to acknowledge the truth behind the question.

Until finally, it is the end of the night and the wise man asks us to sleep on it – to look to our thoughts and dreams in an effort to determine why we’re here, and then perhaps let the group know in the morning.

I return to my cabin bedroom, which overlooks the patio where the 800 pound gorilla stands.  And instead of holding the question, I let it go.  Because it’s easier for me to take responsibility for an answer than it is to acknowledge that I don’t know the answer.  And lately I’ve been learning there’s a lot I don’t know.

As I let the question go, my mind feels free and wanders off to sleep, peacefully.

The Opening We Need

I wake up just before sunrise and prop myself up in bed with my laptop to write, as I often do at home.  I think that I might write about love and the importance of honesty.  But instead, I find myself unexpectedly holding the 800 pound gorilla… in my heart.

And although my mind wants to think about anything but this gorilla, who is still standing on the front porch, but now also in my heart, my heart knows better and forces me to write.  Even as my mind desperately struggles to make the gorilla disappear – to distract me with fleeting thoughts about other things I could be doing – my heart remains focused.

Because my heart tells me there is something beautiful about the way the gorilla holds herself.  And that she is asking for her beauty to be acknowledged, reflected and represented justly.  And finally, as words pour onto the screen, our role here at the cabin becomes clear to me:  We are here to acknowledge, reflect and represent what is beautiful and true in this world.

We came together to visit an 800 pound gorilla.  And although each of us sees her, we are afraid to tell each other that we see her.  Because we are unsure of ourselves, and because we don’t feel totally comfortable.  But it is the moment we let go of these binding fears that we give ourselves the opening we need to truly know the gorilla.

For her beauty.  For her grace.  For her truth.

And it is this knowing that creates an opening for all our hearts and minds to convene.  For energy to radiate.  For revolutions to transpire.  For what we once perceived as separate to be known as one.  And it is in this state of unity that our collective answers surface, allowing us to be incalculably bigger than ourselves.

PS:  If you enjoyed this short story, I recommend reading the The Alchemist.

Photo by: Martin Chen

When life pushes you over, stand up and push back even harder.  Where there is a fork in the road and choices to make, make the ones your future self will thank you for.

Today, start…

1. Choosing YOU. – Wearing a mask wears you out.  Faking it is fatiguing.  The most exhausting activity is pretending to be who you know you aren’t.  No matter how loud their opinions are, they do not choose who YOU are.  Choose YOU even if nobody else is choosing you.
2. Appreciating what you have. – Sometimes, when you make the most out of what you have, it turns out being a lot more than you ever imagined.  A beautiful day begins with a beautiful mindset.  When you wake up, take a second to think about what a privilege it is to simply be alive and healthy.  The moment you start acting like life is a blessing, I assure you that it will start to feel like one.  Time spent living is time worth appreciating.  Read The Power of Now.
3. Believing in yourself and your dreams. – The most difficult phase of life is not when no one understands you; it’s when you don’t understand yourself.  Believe in YOU.  Listen to your soul.  Trust your instincts.  Acknowledge your own strengths.  Dream it and dare it.  Do what you are afraid of, and capable of.  Follow your vision.  Know that anything is possible.  Know you CAN.
4. Being positive. – You can’t live a positive life with a negative attitude.  Heaven on Earth is a choice we must make, not a place we must find.  Let every day be a dream you can touch.  Let every day be a love you can feel.  Let every day be a reason to live.  Life is too short to be anything but positive.
5. Taking action. – The happiest and most successful people are usually those who have broken the chains of procrastination, who find satisfaction in doing the job at hand.  They’re full of eagerness, passion, and productivity.  You can be too.  Remember, success in real estate is about location, location, location.  Success in life is about action, action, action.  Read Getting Things Done.
6. Letting go. – The only thing that makes it a big part of your life is that you keep thinking about it.  The biggest step in changing the world around you is to change the world within you.  Don’t cry over the past, it’s gone.  Don’t stress about the future, it hasn’t arrived.  Just live in the present, concentrate on the things you can control, and take one small step at a time.
7. Picking yourself back up. – Where you are in life is temporary; where you end up in life is permanent; how you get from here to there is entirely up to you.  So don’t give up.  Sometimes when things go wrong it’s because they would have turned out worse if they had gone right.
8. Ignoring negative people. – You are not a rug; some people may try to walk all over you, but you don’t have to lie there and take it.  There are seven billion people in the world; don’t waste your time by letting one of them ruin your happiness.  You are good enough, smart enough, beautiful enough, and strong enough.  Somewhere someone is looking for exactly what you have to offer.
9. Staying in touch with close friends and family. – Having somewhere to go is what we call ‘home.’  Having someone to love, who loves us in return, is what we call ‘family.’  Having both is a blessing.  There comes a time in life when you’ll have to leave everything behind for awhile and start something new, but never forget the people who stood by your side, especially your close friends and family who never gave up on you.
10. Making time for fun. – Fun is way underrated.  With all of life’s responsibilities, fun will sometimes seem like an indulgence.  It shouldn’t be.  It should be a requirement.  It’s a happy talent to know how to let loose and play.  People who make it a point play around and have fun are twenty times more likely to feel happy in the long run.
11. Spreading love and kindness. – The amazing thing about life is that you choose what you allow into it and out of it – you choose how things affect you, and how you affect the world.  The happiness surrounding you is greatly affected by the choices you make every day.  So choose to spread love and kindness to a least one person a day.  Imagine the amount of happiness you would create in a lifetime if you did.  Read The Happiness Project.
12. Being the change you want to see in the world. – Don’t tell others how to live; LIVE and let them watch you.  Practice what you preach or don’t preach at all.  Walk the talk.  The people who look up to you will likely emulate your actions and strive to become who you are; so BE who you want them to be.

Photo by: Katie Weilbacher

Giving up doesn’t always mean you’re weak; sometimes it simply means you are strong enough and smart enough to let go.

Last week Angel and I received a new thank you email from a reader named Kevin.  He said our blog and book helped him and his wife Laura maintain a positive, intentional mindset as they struggled and grew through one of the most difficult periods of their lives.  Certain sections of his email made my jaw drop:

“After injuring my back, losing my job because of it, being evicted from our apartment, moving in with Laura’s parents, nursing my five-year-old through a nearly fatal bout of strep throat, I was sitting on the front porch feeling sorry for myself when my old college buddy called me crying and said, ‘Mel-Mel-Mellisa, my baby girl, just died in a car wreck.’  And suddenly I felt like the lucky one.”

Kevin then went on to say, “It was the shock of my friend’s tragic loss combined with the near simultaneous discovery of your blog and book that changed my entire outlook from negative to positive.  I suddenly realized there were people who needed me to get back up, and infinite reasons and ways to do my very best with what I had.  So I started giving up all the negative things I was thinking and doing that had been holding me back; and then I took a bold step forward, and another, and another.  And I’m happy to say you were right!”

If you can relate to Kevin’s situation in any way, and you’re ready to move forward, today is the day to start giving up the things that have been holding you back and draining your happiness.

Truth be told, it happens to all of us as we grow.  We discover more about who we are and the way life really is, and then we realize there are changes we need to make.  The lifestyle we’ve been living no longer fits.  The environments and relationships we’ve known forever no longer exist, or no longer serve our best interests.  So we cherish all the great memories, but find ourselves at a crossroads, giving up the old to make way for a new beginning.

And it’s not easy.  It’s painful to give up what’s familiar.  Angel and I have struggled through this process many times.  In the past decade we’ve had to deal with several major, unexpected life changes/challenges, including:

1. The loss of our home after a breadwinning employment layoff.
2. Breaking ties with a close friend who repeatedly betrayed us.
3. Closing down our first family business when the profits didn’t follow the work.
4. Reconfiguring our lives after losing two loved ones to death.

These experiences were brutal.  Each of them, unsurprisingly, knocked us down and off course for a period of time.  But once we accepted these harsh realities, by giving up our expired ideals and letting go of the way things used to be, we pressed forward, stronger, and with a greater understanding and respect for life.

Which is why I want to remind you that TODAY is the first day of the rest of your life.  The road ahead is wide open.  You CAN be happy again!

But first, you have to give up…

1. Choosing to do nothing. – You don’t get to choose how you are going to die, or when.  You can only decide how you are going to live, right now.  Every day is a new chance to choose.  Choose to change your perspective.  Choose to flip the switch in your mind from negative to positive.  Choose to turn on the light and stop fretting about with insecurity and doubt.  Choose to do work that you are proud of.  Choose to see the best in others, and to show your best to others.  Choose to truly LIVE your life, right now.
2. The excuses you keep reciting to yourself. – Sooner or later you will come to realize that it’s not what you lose along the way that counts; it’s what you do with what you still have.  When you let go, forgive, and move on, you in no way change the past, you change the future.  (Read The Power of Now.)
3. Avoiding the reality of the present. – You can’t change what you refuse to confront.  You can’t find peace by avoiding it.  Deal with problems before they deal with your happiness.  Don’t let a hard lesson harden your heart.  Remember, life’s best lessons are usually learned at the worst times and from the worst mistakes.  When you lose something, don’t think of it as a loss; accept it as a gift that will get you on the path you were meant to travel all along.  Thank your past for all the lessons, and move on.  Say it: “Dear past, thank you for the lessons and wisdom.  Dear future, I’m ready for you!”
4. Over-thinking and worrying about everything. – When your fears have you looking too deep into things, it creates problems, it doesn’t fix them.  If you think and you think and you think, you will think yourself right out of happiness a thousand times over, and never once into it.  Worrying doesn’t take away tomorrow’s troubles, it takes away today’s peace and potential.  Stop over-thinking everything.  Life is too short.
5. Who you once were in the past. – Find the balance that allows you to be who you truly are.  Your worst battle is between what you know and what you feel.  One of the hardest decisions you will ever have to make is when to stay put and try harder or when to just take your memories and move on.  Sometimes you have to step outside of the person you’ve been, and remember the person you were meant to be, the person you are capable of being, and the person you truly are.
6. Resistance to necessary growing pains. – Remember, we can’t become what we need to be by remaining exactly what we are.  Life is change, but growth is optional.  Choose wisely.  When we lose ourselves in the things we love, we find ourselves there too.  So if you are passionate about something, pursue it.  Stretch yourself.  You will know you’re on the right track in life when you become completely uninterested in looking back, and eager to take the next step.  (Angel and I discuss this in detail in the “Adversity” chapter of 1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.)
7. Doubting your own faith and courage. – You can be comfortable or courageous, but you cannot be both.  By taking a leap of faith, you find out who you are truly capable of becoming.  Faith sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible; it’s about believing when it’s beyond the power of reason to believe.  And courage is being scared to death, and then taking the next step anyway.  May you always find the faith and courage to do what you are afraid to do.
8. Thinking you don’t have what it takes. – Nobody is going to blindside you and hit you as hard as life will.  Sometimes life will beat you to the ground, and keep you there if you let it.  But it’s not about how hard life can hit you; it’s about how hard you can be hit while continuing to move forward.  That’s what true strength is.  And that’s what winning the game of life is all about.
9. Overlooking everything that’s wonderful. – Do your best and surrender the rest.  When you stay stuck in regret of the life you think you should have had, you end up missing the beauty of what you do have.  You will have a hard time ever being happy if you aren’t thankful for the good things in your life right now.
10. Pessimism and negative self-talk. – Talking about our problems is our greatest addiction.  Break this negative habit.  Talk about your joys, your loves, and your dreams instead.  What you see in life often depends entirely on what you’re looking for.  In the end, it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.  It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.  It’s not what you see, it’s how you look at it.  It’s not how your life is, it’s how you live it.
11. Excessive pride. – Get out of your own way.  Stop judging everyone and everything.  Pride is one of the greatest enemies to your happiness and growth.  Open your mind before you open your mouth.  Don’t hate what you don’t know.  The mind is like a parachute; it doesn’t work when it’s closed.  Or as C.S. Lewis so profoundly put it, “A proud person is always looking down on things and other people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something beautiful that is above you.”
12. Not giving the people around you a chance. – Life is a tapestry of people weaving in and out of your life, people come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.  Everyone has something to offer and share with you.  Imagine treating every person you encounter, no matter how fleeting, as an intriguing story waiting to be told. But the story can only be told if someone asks to hear it.  Will you ask?  That person you see standing before you, no matter who they are, young or old, rich or poor, angry or kind, is like a blockbuster movie ready to enthrall you. But, first you have to buy a ticket.
13. Comparing yourself to everyone else. – Sometimes the reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes circumstances with everyone else’s public highlight reel.  Give it up.  Don’t compare your Chapter 1 to someone else’s Chapter 15.  Follow your own path, write your own life story, and never give up on yourself.  Remember this:  Happiness formula = Do YOUR best and feel good about it. | Unhappiness formula = Compare yourself to everyone else.  (Read The Happiness Trap.)
14. Letting the judgments of others control your life. – People know your name, not your story.  They’ve heard what you’ve done, but not what you’ve been through.  So take their opinions of you with a grain of salt.  In the end, it’s not what others think, it’s what you think about yourself that counts.  Sometimes you have to do exactly what’s best for you and your life, not what’s best for everyone else.
15. Procrastinating and senselessly wasting time. – Remember, you are the customer of a bank called Time.  Every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds.  Every night it writes off, as a loss, whatever remainder you have failed to invest to good purpose.  It carries over no balance.  It allows no overdraft.  Each day it opens a new account for you with the same deposit of 86,400 seconds.  Each night it burns the remains of the day.  If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours.  There is no going back.  There is no drawing against the tomorrow.  You must live in the present on today’s deposits only.  Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness, and success.  You’re making withdrawals right this second; make them count.

Your turn…

As you know, when you stop doing the wrong things, you give the right things a chance to start.  So what’s one habit or thought pattern that has been making you unhappy?  What can you do today to give it up?  Leave a comment below and let us know.

Photo by: Zach Klein