Am I Ever Going to Be Happy Again

Giving upward doesn't always mean you're weak; sometimes it simply means you are strong plenty and smart plenty to let go.

Terminal week Angel and I received a new thank you e-mail from a reader named Kevin.  He said our weblog and book helped him and his married woman 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 chore considering of it, being evicted from our flat, moving in with Laura'south parents, nursing my v-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 chosen me crying and said, 'Mel-Mel-Mellisa, my baby girl, simply died in a car wreck.'  And suddenly I felt similar the lucky 1."

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 inverse 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 practise my very all-time with what I had.  And 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 footstep forrad, and another, and another.  And I'chiliad happy to say y'all were correct!"

If you tin chronicle to Kevin's situation in any manner, and y'all're ready to motion frontward, today is the day to start giving up the things that have been holding you lot dorsum and draining your happiness.

Truth be told, information technology happens to all of us as nosotros grow.  Nosotros notice more nigh who we are and the way life really is, and and then we realize there are changes nosotros demand to brand.  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.  And so we cherish all the great memories, but notice ourselves at a crossroads, giving upwardly the old to brand way for a new beginning.

And it'due south not easy.  It'due south painful to give up what'due south 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 unit business when the profits didn't follow the work.
4. Reconfiguring our lives subsequently 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.  Merely one time we accepted these harsh realities, by giving up our expired ethics and letting go of the fashion things used to be, nosotros pressed frontward, stronger, and with a greater agreement 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 broad open.  You CAN be happy again!

But commencement, y'all have to surrender…

1. Choosing to practise nothing. – Yous don't get to choose how you are going to die, or when.  Y'all can but make up one's mind how yous are going to live, right now.  Every twenty-four hours is a new chance to choose.  Cull to change your perspective.  Choose to flip the switch in your mind from negative to positive.  Choose to plow on the light and stop fretting virtually with insecurity and incertitude.  Choose to do work that you are proud of.  Cull to see the all-time in others, and to evidence your best to others.  Cull to truly LIVE your life, correct now.
2. The excuses you keep reciting to yourself. – Sooner or later you will come to realize that it's not what you lose forth the way that counts; it's what y'all do with what y'all still have.  When you permit go, forgive, and movement on, you lot in no way alter the past, you change the hereafter. (Read The Power of Now.)
3. Fugitive the reality of the present. – You can't change what you refuse to face up.  Y'all can't notice peace past fugitive it.  Deal with issues before they deal with your happiness.  Don't let a hard lesson harden your centre.  Think, life'due south best lessons are normally learned at the worst times and from the worst mistakes.  When you lose something, don't call back of information technology as a loss; accept information technology as a gift that volition get you lot on the path you were meant to travel all forth.  Give thanks your past for all the lessons, and move on.  Say it: "Dear by, cheers for the lessons and wisdom.  Love future, I'm ready for you!"
4. Over-thinking and worrying about everything. – When your fears have yous looking too deep into things, it creates problems, information technology doesn't prepare them.  If you lot think and y'all recall and you call up, yous will recall yourself right out of happiness a m times over, and never once into it.  Worrying doesn't take away tomorrow's troubles, it takes away today'south peace and potential.  Stop over-thinking everything.  Life is also brusque.
5. Who you once were in the past. – Find the residue that allows you to be who you truly are.  Your worst boxing is between what you know and what you feel.  One of the hardest decisions you volition e'er have to make is when to stay put and try harder or when to only take your memories and move on.  Sometimes you have to stride outside of the person y'all've been, and recall the person you were meant to exist, the person you are capable of being, and the person you lot truly are.
6. Resistance to necessary growing pains. – Remember, nosotros can't go what we need to be past remaining exactly what we are.  Life is change, just growth is optional.  Choose wisely.  When we lose ourselves in the things we beloved, we detect ourselves in that location too.  And then if you lot are passionate about something, pursue it.  Stretch yourself.  You volition know you lot're on the correct rail in life when yous become completely uninterested in looking back, and eager to accept the side by side stride. (Affections and I hash out this in item in the "Arduousness" affiliate of 1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.)
7. Doubting your own faith and backbone. – You lot tin can be comfy or courageous, merely you cannot be both.  By taking a leap of faith, yous detect out who you are truly capable of becoming.  Religion sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible; it'due south about believing when it's beyond the ability of reason to believe.  And courage is being scared to death, and then taking the next stride anyway.  May y'all e'er find the faith and courage to do what y'all are agape to practice.
8. Thinking yous don't have what information technology takes. – Nobody is going to blindside you and hit you every bit hard as life will.  Sometimes life will crush yous to the footing, and go along y'all there if you permit information technology.  But it's not nigh how hard life can hit yous; it's well-nigh how hard you lot tin can be hitting while standing 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. – Practise your best and surrender the rest.  When y'all stay stuck in regret of the life you retrieve you should have had, y'all end up missing the beauty of what you do have.  You will accept a difficult time e'er beingness happy if you aren't thankful for the practiced things in your life right now.
10. Pessimism and negative self-talk. – Talking virtually our bug is our greatest addiction.  Break this negative habit.  Talk about your joys, your loves, and your dreams instead.  What you see in life ofttimes depends entirely on what you're looking for.  In the end, it'southward non what you say, information technology's how yous say it.  Information technology'due south not what yous do, information technology's how you do it.  It'due south not what y'all run across, it's how you look at it.  It's non how your life is, it'due south how you live it.
11. Excessive pride. – Leave of your own style.  Stop judging everyone and everything.  Pride is ane of the greatest enemies to your happiness and growth.  Open your heed before you open your mouth.  Don't detest what y'all don't know.  The mind is like a parachute; it doesn't work when it'south closed.  Or as C.South. Lewis and then greatly put information technology, "A proud person is always looking down on things and other people; and, of grade, every bit long every bit you are looking down, you cannot encounter something beautiful that is above you."
12. Non giving the people effectually you lot 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.  Anybody has something to offer and share with y'all.  Imagine treating every person you run into, no matter how fleeting, as an intriguing story waiting to exist told. But the story can only be told if someone asks to hear it.  Will you lot ask?  That person you see standing before y'all, no matter who they are, immature or former, rich or poor, aroused or kind, is like a blockbuster picture show ready to enthrall you lot. Only, 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 backside-the-scenes circumstances with everyone else's public highlight reel.  Give information technology up.  Don't compare your Chapter 1 to someone else'south Chapter 15.  Follow your ain path, write your own life story, and never give upwards on yourself.  Remember this:  Happiness formula = Do YOUR all-time and feel practiced 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 table salt.  In the end, it'south non what others think, it's what yous think about yourself that counts.  Sometimes you have to practice exactly what's best for you and your life, not what's best for anybody else.
15. Procrastinating and senselessly wasting fourth dimension. – Remember, you are the customer of a bank chosen Time.  Every morning information technology credits you with 86,400 seconds.  Every night it writes off, as a loss, whatever residual you have failed to invest to expert purpose.  It carries over no balance.  It allows no overdraft.  Each twenty-four hours it opens a new account for you with the aforementioned deposit of 86,400 seconds.  Each night it burns the remains of the day.  If you fail to use the day'due south 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 equally to get from it the utmost in health, happiness, and success.  You're making withdrawals right this second; make them count.

Your plough…

Equally you lot know, when yous stop doing the wrong things, you give the right things a hazard to start.  Then what'due south 1 habit or thought pattern that has been making you lot unhappy?  What can you practice today to requite information technology up?  Leave a comment beneath and let us know.

Photograph by: Zach Klein

barlowchfur1963.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.marcandangel.com/2014/02/16/15-things-you-must-give-up-to-be-happy-again/

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