We all have bad habits and things that we do which, if dropped, would make our lives much more easy. Here is a list of 8 things which you can give up to simplify your life and make things much happier!
Self Hate
Our minds play a major role in how are lives and daily events run. Much like a magnet, we tend to attract whatever we are looking for. If we think about negative things, we attract negative things. If we think about positive things, we attract them as well. Self hate is a negative belief that brings negative things into our lives. If you think to yourself “I am not good enough”, a very common belief for many, then your mind will search for ways to prove you right. Some very common expressions that will bring negativity into your life are:
- I feel worthless
- I feel unneeded
- I just want to be alone
- I’ll never be good enough
- Nobody understands me
- I’m invisible
- I’m unloved
- I don’t fit in
- I don’t belong
- I won’t ever be a part of something great
As Robert Szentes says in his book, “Unlimited Possibilities“, many of these beliefs actually stem from an experience we had earlier in life (even down to our childhood). If you can identify what happened in the past that made you think that way, many times you will be able to come to terms with the experience and give up the destructive negative belief.
Another possible way to turn the negative belief around is to use the “But Method”, in which you say aloud your belief, and introduce a “…BUT…” statement followed by a positive motivator. For instance:
“I am feeling worthless” → “I feel worthless, BUT if I go for a run it will clear my head!”
“I feel unneeded” → “I feel unneeded, BUT if I go meet new people I will be needed!”
“I want to be alone” → “I want to be alone, BUT I know that I am not a lonely person!”
“I am not good enough” → “I am not good enough, BUT if I work on myself I will be!”
“Nobody understands me” → “Nobody understands me, BUT I can make them!”
“I’m invisible” → “I’m invisible, BUT if I grab their attention, they will have to see me!”
“I’m unloved” → “I’m think unloved, BUT there’s only one way to find out!”
“I don’t fit in” → “I don’t fit in, BUT that’s because I’m with the wrong people!”
“I don’t belong” → “I don’t belong, BUT that’s because I’m meant for something greater!”
“I’m not part of something great” → “I’m not a part of something great, BUT that’s because I haven’t found that thing yet!”
The key is to always end your statement with something that pushes you to change. If you always give yourself some goal to work on, not only will those negative beliefs go away, but you will begin to develop more as a person and eventually you will see that those negative beliefs were your own way of creating change in your life.
Negative Talk
Have you ever said to yourself “I’ll never be like my dad!” and then found yourself doing the same things as him, effectively becoming more like him? That is because our minds do not process words like “never” well. As a kid, you were probably told the expression “Don’t think of a pink elephant” and your mind automatically thought of one. That is because our minds, in order to keep us away from that thing we don’t want to associate with, have to get a clear image of what that specifically is. If you tell yourself you DON’T want to be like someone, your mind conjures up images of how they walk, how they talk, their mannerisms, and even how they think (or at least your own perception of how they think). In the end, you will begin using those mental images to shape your own life.
But what if you came up with a saying like “I don’t want to fail” or “I don’t want to be in a dead end job anymore”. Well, as you can imagine, your mind begins spinning about thinking up all the ways you can fail or how you can end up having to be stuck in that dead end job. Your body reacts to those images, and you end up worse for the ware.
Next time you are sitting down and begin to think of all the things you DON’T want in your life, ask yourself this:
What are the things I am feeding my mind?
What are the things I am consciously feeling and thinking all the time, and where is my life now?
What are my personal habits and patterns?
If you discover the answers to these questions, write them down somewhere because they are the reason for your current circumstances. Our bodies are like machines, and much like machines, we can rewire them to do what we want them to do. We just have to know what to tell them because in the end, our minds are like obedient children. They want to make us happy at all times, but they can’t distinguish between good and bad. So give your mind a clear image of what it is that you want, and you will begin to attract exactly that.
Criticizing Others
Have you ever wondered why it feels so bad to spend time putting someone down? It can be behind their back or to their face (though the latter will always feel much worse), but you can feel it. That negative thought begins to make you feel poisoned. It’s the reason why many of us feel sorry and want to (and hopefully do) end up apologizing. But why is this? We’re just speaking the truth, right? If someone is fat, you can say that they are fat behind their back. If someone is stupid, you might say that to them. We’ve all done it, so why does it feel so bad?
If you’ve ever taken a physics class, then you’ve heard about Newton’s 3 laws of motion. Specifically, you’ve heard of Newton’s third law which states “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. In class, they teach you that this applies to motion. If you push on something, it will resist and essentially push back on you. But the amazing thing is that this doesn’t just apply to movement and forces.
If you say something negative about another person, you internalize those beliefs. You imagine yourself in that situation and your mind send a pain signal to your body. However small that signal is, it is there and it does influence you. It pushes you back with the same amount of force you applied, and you begin to feel exactly like what you are criticizing.
So, if criticizing other people hurts us, why do we do it? Human kind is one which tries to stay away from pain generally, and yet here people go throwing insult after insult at people seemingly unaware of any negative repercussions. Why? The answer actually has to do with human psychology on a more fundamental level. People lash out at others because it is their bodies way of defending itself from that type of influence. For example, if you saw an overweight man running by the side of the road, what would you say? In the positive sense, he is running to lose the weight. He is making an active change in his life and he is willing to go out when others can see him because he isn’t afraid to show the world that he is ready, willing, and able to make a life long change. Now, a person with a positive mindset would be able to see this, internalize this, and be happy for the man. That positive person might actually be willing to shout out a few encouraging words to the man or give a thumbs up in support. These types of people harbor no ill will towards the man because they understand his struggle, either through their own experiences or through the teachings of others.
On the other hand, a negative person with a negative mindset might see the man running and immediately jump to the conclusion that he is trying to be better than everyone else. Or perhaps that he is never going to be able to overcome the barriers that are present in front of him. This type of person sees the man as a threat to their way of life. They see themselves as the man sweating and in pain on the side of the road because of a lifestyle which we all know will put us in an early grave. But instead of supporting the man, the negative person tries to dissuade him by criticizing, in an attempt to stop him and feel better about their own life choices.
If you want to become a more positive person and truly make changes in your own life, try to put yourself in another person’s shoes before you lash out. Often times, you will come to the conclusion that the person you are about to harm is actually in the right, and you can be too if you simply switch the way you see things.
Always trying to please others
Before we start this, you should take a moment to realize something: It is not bad to try to please others. In fact, pleasing others and working towards a common goal can be beneficial in many different ways. However, just like with all things in life, there is a limit to how much is healthy and where it begins to become toxic to your health. Seeing a smile, getting a handshake or hug, and getting words of praise are all things we enjoy. Not a single person in the world would dislike the phrase “You did a good job, nice work!” from someone they looked up to. Messages or actions such as this are encouragement to keep up good work. A reward for a job well done. And it is human nature to seek out rewards and shy away from negative influence. The opposite of a job well done usually results in words which make us very sad to say the least. Several words which come to mind almost immediately are: failure, worthless, useless, poor, and disgrace.
Now, if reading those didn’t send some sort of pain signal through your head, no matter how slight, you may want to refer back to the previous three points. Words like that cause us to feel pain. Our mind internalizes the negativity associated with each one and releases chemicals into our brain that make us feel sad, anxious, apprehensive, and possibly even depressed. So we shy away from them.
The thing is though that the people who praise us aren’t always correct, and sometimes words of praise can make us go against what we believe is right. By going about life trying to please others, you end up tossing your own ideas of what pleases you out the window. It can become poisonous to self esteem and destroy us.
Having your own beliefs, actions, and ways of doing things is what makes you unique. You can’t always act upon those beliefs and ideas, but that doesn’t mean that you have to bow down to every person who asks something of you just because you are afraid of what might happen or what they may say. So next time someone asks you to do something, and you really don’t want to, tell them no. Because the only person who can live your life and make you feel in charge is you, and though words of praise feel nice, eventually you will realize that you can be the person making yourself feel nice through your own actions an words.
Fearing Failure
As I’ve said before in previous questions, the idea of failure is a very mixed viewpoint. We know that failure is not inherently bad, but we treat it as such because our society preaches perfection (which you will see explained later in this post). Failure can actually be an amazing motivational tool, as well as a great teacher. People fear failure because they believe in their hearts that once they fail at something they will forever be remembered as “The only one who couldn’t do it”. But take a second to think about something: Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Isaac Newton, Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, Oprah Winfrey, Walt Disney,…the list goes on and on. All of these people failed at one point in their lives, and not to a small degree either. Some of these people lost their businesses, lost their inventions, or got taken advantage of and lost out. They all failed, and yet we know their names. We know them because these are the people who didn’t follow the conventional ideology of failure. They didn’t give up when they failed. They took failure as a chance to improve themselves, and took the necessary steps to change and make their lives better.
Next time you are afraid of failing, realize that failure has the potential to bring about success. It can teach us many things which we would not have found out otherwise. Always try your best, but never fear or regret failure. Because without it, we would not be where we are today.
Procrastination
Procrastination is a massive problem for every single person who has ever had to work on a deadline. The idea seems pretty simple: Push off what you know you have to do, enjoy your time now, and worry about everything else later. The problem comes, however, when you are staring a massive assignment right in the eyes, 2 hours before the deadline, with no work started and no idea how to start. Every student has been down that road, and has sworn never to go back. Often times, however, we find ourselves doing this over and over again. But why?
The answer lies in the way we are geared to think. Human kind likes the idea of instant gratification. We like getting what we want as quickly as possible, and dislike having to feel negativity so much that we push it off. In essence, it’s how credit cards work. You get what you want now and pay off the price over time. We all want instant gratification with delayed pay. Unfortunately, pay always comes with interest and until you pay it off, it will always accumulate.
So how can you avoid procrastination effectively? As most every person will tell you, the easiest way to avoid procrastination is to do a little bit of the project at a time. By doing this, you will be able to finish anything you need to and still be able to enjoy the things you would rather be doing. For those who have a bit more discipline, however, there is another method called “Batching”. Similar to batch processing, the idea is to finish larger chunks of the project off quickly, usually taking about 30-45 minutes of straight work, and collecting everything into one finished project at the end. Batching is a very useful method if you can work quickly, stay attentive for half an hour, and want to finish a project well before it is due.
The key with procrastination, regardless of whether you are the type of person who waits until the last moment or the type who does a project little by little, is that eventually the work has to be done. It all depends on how you want to spend your time.
Not Having Enough Time
“I can’t do this because there isn’t enough hours in the day”, is a very common expression that everyone has either thought, heard, or said at some point. The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough time though, but that we don’t spend our time wisely. Everyone gets 24 hours in a day, which is 1,440 minutes or 86,400 seconds if you like bigger numbers. So how is it that we can’t drop the 10 minutes to call a friend? Or the 30 minutes it takes to go for a jog and do a quick workout? Well, its probably because we dropped the time by watching 3 hour-long episodes of game of thrones. Maybe you watched one too many YouTube videos. Or possibly you just spent too many hours plugged in to the game console. Regardless of what it is that you do to eat up your time, one of the easiest and most beneficial ways of “getting more time” is to drop away some of the things which are eating it up.
In my case, it was video games which were eating up all my time. I saw myself playing them for hours on end, not getting any work done, then wondering why I wasn’t getting anywhere in life. So I decided to put down the game controllers and laptops, and pick up a few books. I gained enough time to read the books which educated and motivated me to creating this website and adding content the way I do.
If you can’t find anything that you can drop from your days however (maybe you work long shifts at your job), there are a few alternatives which can give you that little extra time you are searching for. A few of the methods include:
- Keeping track of your activities on a spreadsheet: This helps you figure out how you’re spending your time and if you’re doing the things you need to.
- Make a checklist of what needs to be done in the day: Just going through the motions of finishing and checking off each box will end up making your day much less stressful.
- Use a timer to keep you on track: Methods such as the pomodoro technique can keep you attentive and ready for anything that comes your way in the day.
- Block yourself with apps like “StayFocusd“: Apps which block all your bad habit websites for a set amount of time force you to do things efficiently.
- Develop the superhuman sleep schedule: sleep 4 hours, take 20 minute naps during day. Be careful though, because this can do some serious damage over time.
Just remember that everyone has the potential to use their time wisely. You just have to be willing to set your mind to it and stay focused.
Trying to be perfect
The quest for perfection is one which we all seek. We all want to be the best at everything we do, but the problem is that there always seems to be someone ahead of us. The thing, however, is that there is no such thing as perfect. Every single thing has imperfections. Even things which are manufactured by machines in a completely controlled environment have things which make them unique. And that is exactly what each and every person is like. We all have different ways of creating things, different ways of thinking, and different ideas of how “Perfect” can be achieved. One person’s idea of perfection may not measure up to another. So how do we ever achieve perfection? The answer is that we don’t.
perfection is a concept, just like time and money. Unlike those two things though, perfection has no material component. It is an idea which was based on the idea of safety. If you are perfect, there is no possible way for you (or whatever you created) to be a failure. It is an idea to keep us out of harms way, help us avoid judgment and get others to praise us. But it’s just that: an idea.
Nobody can be perfect, however, we can always try. And the one person you can always be perfect to is yourself. Because when it comes down to it, you’re the only one who can truly say whether or not you tried your hardest at something. And if you tried your hardest and achieved results, then that is in fact a form of perfection. You are yourself, and you should always be able to say you are proud of yourself in both perfections and uniqueness.
Life Parameters 