Inner peace begins
the moment you take a deep breath and choose not to allow another person or
event to control your thoughts.
For the longest time
I had tunnel vision and expected life to be a certain way. I studied my
failures until I lost sight of my successes. I surrendered my dreams to feel a
sense of comfort. I crafted limiting beliefs and shielded myself from love and
happiness by refusing to put myself out there. And as I did all of this, I sat
back and wondered why life was so miserable.
Obviously, I was
very lost.
I began to turn
things around about a decade ago when my stubborn habits led me into a chaotic
argument with Angel. As we both stared at each other through tears, she said,
“Marc, you are the enemy—your enemy. It’s your choices. I can’t sympathize any
longer. You can choose differently if you want to, but you have to want to.
Please, want to!” And after some extensive soul-searching, lots of reading, a
little sabbatical and continuous support from a loving wife and a few close
friends, I learned to choose differently and eventually found myself again.
I tell you this
because I know you struggle with similar inner demons—occasionally we all do.
Sometimes our thoughts and routine choices are our biggest enemies. Which is
why I want to remind you to beware of…
1. Your expectation of constant contentment.
Nothing in life is constant. There is neither
absolute happiness nor absolute sadness. There are only the changes in our
moods that continuously oscillate between these two extremes.
At any given moment we are comparing how we
currently feel to how we felt at another time—comparing one level of our
contentment to another. In this way, those of us who have felt great sadness
are best able to feel heightened feelings of happiness after we emotionally
heal. In other words, happiness and sadness need each other. One reinforces the
other. Humans must know misery to identify times of elation.
The key is to focus on the good. May you live
each moment of your life consciously, and realize that all the happiness you
seek is present if you are prepared to notice it. If you are willing to
appreciate that this moment is far better than it could have been, you will
enjoy it more for what it truly is. (Angel and I discuss this in more detail in
the Happiness and Growth chapters of the NEW edition of 1,000 Little Things
Happy, Successful People Do Differently.)
2. Your obsession with examining personal failures.
Imagine being enrolled in five college classes in
which you achieved one A, two B’s and two C’s. Would you concentrate on the A
or the C’s? Would you berate yourself for falling short in the C classes? Or
would you capitalize on your obvious interest and aptitude in the subject
matter of the A class? I hope you realize the value of the latter.
Every morning when you wake up, think of three
things that are going well in your life at the moment. As you fall asleep every
night, fill your mind with an appreciation for all the small things that went
well during the day. Examine your successes.
Give the power of your thinking to the positive
influences in your life, and they will grow stronger and more influential every
day. Remind yourself often of what works well and why, and you’ll naturally
find ways to make lots of other things work well too. The most efficient way to
enjoy more success in life is not to obsess yourself with what hasn’t worked in
the past, but instead to extend and expand upon the success you already know.
3. Your urge to surrender to the draw of comfort.
The most common and destructive addiction in the
world is the draw of comfort. Why pursue growth when you already have 400
television channels and a recliner? Just pass the chip dip and lose yourself in
a trance. WRONG! That’s not living—that’s existing. Living is about learning
and growing through excitement and discomfort.
Life is filled with questions, many of which
don’t have an obvious or immediate answer. It’s your willingness to ask these
questions, and your courage to march confidently into the unknown in search of
the answers, that gives life it’s meaning.
In the end, you can spend your life feeling sorry
for yourself, cowering in the comfort of your routines, wondering why there are
so many problems out in the real world, or you can be thankful that you are
strong enough to endure them. It just depends on your mindset. The obvious
first step, though, is convincing yourself to step out of your comfort zone.
4. Your self-limiting beliefs.
You do not suffer from your beliefs. You suffer
from your disbeliefs. If you have no hope inside of you, it’s not because there
is no hope, it’s because you don’t believe there is.
Since the mind drives the body, it’s the way you
think that eventually makes the dreams you dream possible or impossible. Your
reality is simply a reflection of your thoughts and the way you routinely
contemplate what you know to be true. All too often you literally do not know
any better than good enough. Sometimes you have to try to do what you think you
can’t do, so you realize that you actually CAN.
It all starts on the inside. You control your
thoughts. The only person who can hold you down is YOU.
5. Your resistance to being vulnerable.
Love is vulnerability. Happiness is
vulnerability. The risk of being vulnerable is the price of opening yourself to
beauty and opportunity.
Being vulnerable is not about showing the parts
of you that are polished; it’s about revealing the unpolished parts you would
rather keep hidden from the world. It’s about looking out into the world with
an honest, open heart and saying, “This is me. Take me or leave me.”
It’s hard to consciously choose vulnerability.
Why? Because the stakes are high. If you reveal your authentic self, there is
the possibility that you will be misunderstood, judged, or even rejected. The
fear of these things is so powerful that you put on an armored mask to protect
yourself. But, of course, this only perpetuates the pain you are trying to
avoid.
The truth is nothing worthwhile in this world is
a safe bet. Since love and happiness are born out of your willingness to be
vulnerable—to be open to something wonderful that could be taken away from
you—when you hide from your vulnerability, you automatically hide from
everything in life worth attaining.
6. Your expectations of how things are supposed to
be.
There’s this fantasy in your head about how you
think things are supposed to be. This fantasy blinds you from reality and
prevents you from appreciating the genuine goodness that exists in your life.
The solution? Simple: Drop the needless
expectations. Appreciate what is. Hope for the best, but expect less.
You have to accept reality instead of fighting
it. Don’t let what you expected to happen blind you from all the good things
that are happening. When you stop expecting people and things to be perfectly
the way you had imagined, you can enjoy them for who and what they truly are.
Your turn…
Today, do your best to
leverage the reminders above. The overarching goal is to gradually change your
response to what you can’t control. To grow so strong on the inside that
nothing on the outside can affect your inner wellness without your conscious
permission
Credit:
Marcandangel.com
Post a Comment