15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy
Here is a list of 15 things which, if you give up on them, will make your life a lot easier and much, much happier. We hold on to so many things that cause us a great deal of pain, stress and suffering – and instead of letting them all go, instead of allowing ourselves to be stress free and happy – we cling on to them. Not anymore. Starting today we will give up on all those things that no longer serve us, and we will embrace change. Ready? Here we go:
1. Give up your need to always be right
There are so many of us who can’t stand the idea of being wrong – wanting to always be right – even at the risk of ending great relationships or causing a great deal of stress and pain, for us and for others. It’s just not worth it. Whenever you feel the ‘urgent’ need to jump into a fight over who is right and who is wrong, ask yourself this question: “Would I rather be right, or would I rather be kind?” Wayne Dyer. What difference will that make? Is your ego really that big?
2. Give up your need for control
Be willing to give up your need to always control everything that happens to you and around you – situations, events, people, etc. Whether they are loved ones, coworkers, or just strangers you meet on the street – just allow them to be. Allow everything and everyone to be just as they are and you will see how much better will that make you feel.
“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond winning.” Lao Tzu
3. Give up on blame
Give up on your need to blame others for what you have or don’t have, for what you feel or don’t feel. Stop giving your powers away and start taking responsibility for your life.
4. Give up your self-defeating self-talk
Oh my. How many people are hurting themselves because of their negative, polluted and repetitive self-defeating mindset? Don’t believe everything that your mind is telling you – especially if it’s negative and self-defeating. You are better than that.
“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.” Eckhart Tolle
5. Give up your limiting beliefs
about what you can or cannot do, about what is possible or impossible. From now on, you are no longer going to allow your limiting beliefs to keep you stuck in the wrong place. Spread your wings and fly!
“A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the mind” Elly Roselle
6. Give up complaining
Give up your constant need to complain about those many, many, maaany things – people, situations, events that make you unhappy, sad and depressed. Nobody can make you unhappy, no situation can make you sad or miserable unless you allow it to. It’s not the situation that triggers those feelings in you, but how you choose to look at it. Never underestimate the power of positive thinking.
7. Give up the luxury of criticism
Give up your need to criticize things, events or people that are different than you. We are all different, yet we are all the same. We all want to be happy, we all want to love and be loved and we all want to be understood. We all want something, and something is wished by us all.
8. Give up your need to impress others
Stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not just to make others like you. It doesn’t work this way. The moment you stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not, the moment you take off all your masks, the moment you accept and embrace the real you, you will find people will be drawn to you, effortlessly.
9. Give up your resistance to change
Change is good. Change will help you move from A to B. Change will help you make improvements in your life and also the lives of those around you. Follow your bliss, embrace change – don’t resist it.
“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls” Joseph Campbell10. Give up labels
Stop labeling those things, people or events that you don’t understand as being weird or different and try opening your mind, little by little. Minds only work when open. “The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.” Wayne Dyer
11. Give up on your fears
Fear is just an illusion, it doesn’t exist – you created it. It’s all in your mind. Correct the inside and the outside will fall into place.
“The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt12. Give up your excuses
Send them packing and tell them they’re fired. You no longer need them. A lot of times we limit ourselves because of the many excuses we use. Instead of growing and working on improving ourselves and our lives, we get stuck, lying to ourselves, using all kind of excuses – excuses that 99.9% of the time are not even real.
13. Give up the past
I know, I know. It’s hard. Especially when the past looks so much better than the present and the future looks so frightening, but you have to take into consideration the fact that the present moment is all you have and all you will ever have. The past you are now longing for – the past that you are now dreaming about – was ignored by you when it was present. Stop deluding yourself. Be present in everything you do and enjoy life. After all life is a journey not a destination. Have a clear vision for the future, prepare yourself, but always be present in the now.
14. Give up attachment
This is a concept that, for most of us is so hard to grasp and I have to tell you that it was for me too, (it still is) but it’s not something impossible. You get better and better at with time and practice. The moment you detach yourself from all things, (and that doesn’t mean you give up your love for them – because love and attachment have nothing to do with one another, attachment comes from a place of fear, while love… well, real love is pure, kind, and self less, where there is love there can’t be fear, and because of that, attachment and love cannot coexist) you become so peaceful, so tolerant, so kind, and so serene. You will get to a place where you will be able to understand all things without even trying. A state beyond words.
15. Give up living your life to other people’s expectations
Way too many people are living a life that is not theirs to live. They live their lives according to what others think is best for them, they live their lives according to what their parents think is best for them, to what their friends, their enemies and their teachers, their government and the media think is best for them. They ignore their inner voice, that inner calling. They are so busy with pleasing everybody, with living up to other people’s expectations, that they lose control over their lives. They forget what makes them happy, what they want, what they need….and eventually they forget about themselves. You have one life – this one right now – you must live it, own it, and especially don’t let other people’s opinions distract you from your path.
Print article This entry was posted by danaadmin on May 30, 2011 at 4:22 pm, and is filed under Happiness, Life Coaching, Personal growth. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
I have been practicing all of these things for most of my life. At various times in my life different ones of these had a presense in my life – even to this day I use these things. I have stopped complaning, accepted responsibility for my own actions, have no real need to be in control, working on the self defeating one…that one is a little tough for me – always had low self esteam so feeling positive towards myself has been a real challenge.
Once I reached the point where I needed to be ME and I stopped living to please others (by following their control) I broke the chains that held me bound – I found a freedon that I have never experianced before that day, then all of thos folks started respecting me for being me.
My fears…the ones that are in my head – I like the way that was put…is the one I am working on right now. I have been in care giving mode to my mother for a long time now and I am…have been known to second guess myself and even doubt that I am doing enough for her. Some days I can “fire” those negitive emotions and feel good about my efforts and decisions, other days I have to fight a little harder to not let those thought defeat me. I am now winning that battle more and more often!
It was great to see the list all together – it helped me to realize that I have maintained more control over my life that I once believed. It even lets me believe that when it is momma’s time to depart this life, that I will be truly able to manage myself as well as the other members of my family. It will be the most difficult thing to go through, but YES I WILL MAKE IT THROUGH!This all sounds great except for 2 words, “Give up.” Sounds like surrendering, and what you appear to mean, and said in post #155, is, “let go,” or release, all of these 15 things. You might even add a 16th thing, Expectations, not what the rest of the world expects of you, but what you expect of them. Our expectations that the world is fair, or that other people are going to act a certain way because of something we do are probably the single most self defeating behavior we have.
Thanks,
Papa Soji
about 4 weeks ago
about 4 weeks ago
about 4 weeks agoGreat article… But as for #4, giving up limiting beliefs…. Why not just give up our attachment to all beliefs? In the realm of infinite possibility – all beliefs are valid. So why just get rid of what we ‘perceive’ is limiting, just lose all of them and leave ourselves open for everything.
“A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the mind” Elly Roselle
about 4 weeks agoThanks for the helpful content. It is also my belief that mesothelioma has an extremely long latency period of time, which means that warning signs of the disease might not exactly emerge right until 30 to 50 years after the preliminary exposure to mesothelioma. Pleural mesothelioma, that is certainly the most common kind and is affecting the area within the lungs, will cause shortness of breath, upper body pains, as well as a persistent coughing, which may produce coughing up bloodstream.
Feelings arise spontaneously and shaming someone for their feelings or making them “wrong” because of them is NOT useful. It’s another ‘blame the victim’ idea.
Sometimes the best way to deal with feelings is to sit with them, feel them thoroughly and let them pass- not push them away or push them down. To make someone’s feelings illegitimate is to make them illegitimate. Now you have placed judgment on top of shame.
Asking people to deny their feelings or distract themselves gives the message “you’re not doing it right” or “you’re not right.” Now you have resistance on top of pain. Pushing feelings down to the unconscious is unhealthy. Conscious anger can be dealth with; unconscious anger breeds something esle altogether. We see a great deal of submerged anger at work in the world.
We need to allow for human wounding, treat it with empathy and find compassion within ourselves to respond to it by embracing the wounded one with that compassion.
about 1 month agoI have to agree with the post by Lucius (13). My life experience includes the fact that for the first 12-15 months of my life I was a baby exposed to mild abuse and severe neglect. My birth mother did not put her cigerettes out on me but she did have the tendency to leave me alone for Long periods of time (days at a stretch). Noone touched me, fed me or comforted me when I cried. There are very basic chemical reactions that have to happen in the brain of an infant in order to create the neuological pathways to frontal lobes of the brain in order to feel life (or even have the potential to feel life) the way most people do. I imagine that most people can feel better about being alive by following your tips because their mind has the wiring in order to make those changes. I read a fascinating article in national geographic about the brain which explained that ALL concepts of Love and God are created in the frontal lobe of the brain. (June 1995-volume 187, no 6) When that wiring was never put into place, there is little that drugs, therapy, mantras, spitiuality or ‘put on a happy face’ mindsets that can make it better. I understand this article was written primarily for people with brains that were allowed to develop normally. In my life experience (I’m 48) I have never had a human being tell me they loved me and have never said it to anyone who wanted to hear it from me. Objectively looking back at my life I cannot say I’ve ever felt a single moment of happiness, joy or peace of mind. Reading articles like this for me is like hearing about people talk about the difficulty of managing their weight but they are telling a starving ethiopian about it. I’m living an existance that has never had the possibility of hope (food in my metaphor) due to circumstances not of my doing. I’ve had people tell me I’m playing the victim and that I should just take responsibility for my life yet my brain does not have the wiring for me to be ‘able to repond’. For some of us, this living experience never had the possibilty to feel like a good thing. Some of us were lost causes from the start. I read these articles like an Ethiopian watching a burger king commercial. What you have is simply not available to everyone.
This is a great article. For the person highlighting depression I think it’s worth noting and considering depression as more of a psycho social illness than a chemical one. Not so much clinical depression in native tribes or animals for tht matter. I suffered from wht was deemed depression but alarm bells rang when taking chemical medicines that numbed my emotions and a medical profession who admit to not understanding how these drugs work. I think depression has a root in diet , lifestyle, social expectations and unhealthy thought patterns that manifest over time. With that in mind, this article reads very well and is not something to see negatively. Essentially these are points to consider in a pursuit for a more happy life. They follow suit with many eastern philosophies and create a sense of peace and ease to let go of unconstructive behaviours, which in many cases could be the causes of many forms if depression or ilness if we look at more natural or holistic healing methods.I see nothing to be negative about with this article, regardless of your mental and physical health. If we all embody these ideas we would see great change.
This list is helpful and I try to improve the “ones I BELIEVE” relate to me. I ‘learned’ much from all the comments which all had valid points related to the INDIVIDUAL expressing THEIR point of view. For all those skeptics and negative posts, I see this list as a ‘starting’ point for people who WANT to change their lives and are searching for ways to go about it. If you are happy or content being the way you are I don’t understand why you would even enter sites as this one. Life and each one of us are ever-changing or evolving. We all have a RIGHT to strive for who we want to be. No one says it’s easy it just ‘IS’.
i saw this at the ymca when i was working out. i was so moved by this advice… i really was. and like sarah (the third commenter) i needed to find myself after a horrible break up when i realized i was trying to be the type of girlfriend i didn’t want to be to please someone else. i learned and moved on and it’s been good…
but i’m still trying to find my own happiness, happiness with just myself, content with myself and my single-dom. i think once i conquere my single insecurities, i hope to be ready for a real, meaningful relationship…
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15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy
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