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 of 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 Campbell
10. 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. Roosevelt
12. 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.

The Politics of Youth Sports

I remember the days when parents would drop their kids off for practices, heck maybe even a carload of kids and another parent would pick them all up,be it baseball, football, basketball etc. Now parents feel it necessary to go and watch the practices in order to coach their children from the sidelines.  Some even take their chairs to sit and watch while clapping and cheering for their child.  Gone are the days when kids compete on their own and earn their spots on a team without their parents finding it necessary to be their player agent. The true intent of team sports has been grossly twisted into something that requires kids to have the most expensive equipment, hang out with the 'right' crowd,  and a parent coaching the team so they get to play. Sadly, many children who have potential get discoutraged early on because a coach's child  gets preferential treatment or a select group of  players who may have developed sooner than their peers get labeled as the stellar players and others with dormant skillls waiting to be developed get overlooked and miss opportunities. It is so unfortunate becasue a few players do not make a team.  The extreme demand placed upon young athletes to compete and be better than everyone else is slowly undemining the concept of  a  team.  Coaches have lost sight of the reasponisbility to train, develop and coach ALL members of the team and not just a select few. Sometimes this focus on a handful of players is not intentional  and coaches are not even aware of the permanent damage they do, not only to the  athletes thet overlook but also to those they focus on.  This focus  and lack thereof  creates a feeling of importance and worse superiority  for the athletes who get the attention and kudos while making other  members of the team fell that they don't  even matter.
Early on when this happens often times  the athletes overlooked end up quitting or giving up. The athletes that get labeled as superstars at a young age begin to feel a sense of entitlement and later have difficulty if they lose their position or have to deal with defeat or disappointment.

Exercising Self restraint

In life we all have to learn to exercise self restraint, whether it be in our diet, in our spending, in our consuming alcohol, in our desire to acquire, in competing with the Joneses, in disciplining our children just to name a few. My vice is the thoughts and opinions that run through my head. More and more in my personal and professional life I find myself having to exercise a great deal of self control in my verbal expression of what's on my mind.  There are times when I have to calm the voices in my head and basically stifle them from being expressed aloud. Standing in the grocery line behind a what appears to be a mom of 4 kids representing the United nations, who is unkempt and still in her pajamas at one in the afternoon, observing all the junk food and soda she is 'checking out' while she man handles one of her disorderly children and drops the f- bomb several times at them. Her order totals well over $300 and she asks the cashier to get her a pack of Newport while she swipes her access card....need I SAY anymore....well you can THINK it but you can't SAY it out loud.  I exercise self restraint.  Watching a 40 year old, strapping, well built man hop out of his souped up truck that he parked in the handicapped spot in front of the liquor store......SELF RESTRAINT....Sitting in McDonalds Play areas with my young son and his friend for lunch while several tattooed and pierced teenagers dressed in goth with their pants below their butt cheeks have some kind of loud conversation where every other word is either dude or the f bomb.......SELF RESTRAINT. Sitting at my desk day after day listening to the same coworkers nearby complain endlessly about their life, their job and their wages SELF RESTRAINT .  Watching a good friend in a bad relationship keep going back for more and more in a self destructive pattern....SELF RESTRAINT...so often my mind races and thoughts emerge and time after time I EXERCISE SELF RESTRAINT. I get a lot of exercise in that department and you would think it gets easier with time - NOT......soon I may have to carry a roll of duct tape around with me so I can refrain from exercising my right to freedom of speech.  Is there a Mental health disorder for thinking the truth- a truth that others do not want to hear that is?????? I would think that I have become somewhat of a professional at this kind of self restraint by now but each time I succumb to it I feel a sense of betrayal to myself...my morals and values and my character.....by exercising this Self restraint I am lowering myself to the person level who has elicited these 'thoughts' in me....by accepting and tolerating this am I not contributing to the crumbling moral fiber of our society?  Am I not enabling these mindsets to proliferate and destroy the basic values upon which life depends upon? Is is a tough trade off this SELF RESTRAINT, keeping my thoughts to myself and standing by and watch the vicious cycle repeat itself...watch the moral majority become dying breed and  social justice a thing of the past all so that people can LIVE HOW THEY WANT AND DO WHAT THEY WANT WHEN THEY WANT with no sense of self restraint at all......

Work Ethic

A work ethic is developed long before our kids fill out thier first job application. It begins when they are taught to clean up their toys when they are a toddler, when they learn to wait their turn in preschool, and when they are taught that attendance in school is just as important as their academics. It is learned when you become part of a sports team or a girl scout troop and have to interact and cooperate with others. Parents don't realize it but they are often their child's greatest influence when it comes to their work ethic. It doesn't matter if you are born into wealth or poverty. It is important to teach our children that they should work hard for things whether it be grades, athletics, or material things they should do their best and take pride in their labor because that is true accomplishment. We don't realize it but if we moan and groan about our job, or boast about how much money we make our children are listening. They see how we value our job and what our work attitude is and somehow it creeps into the very fiber of their being. Today we have a tendency to want our children to have so much more than we did and often times we  'over compensate' in helping them to acquire abundance.  We not only help them with their homework - we DO IT FOR THEM, if they don't feel like doing something like pick up after themselves - WE DO IT FOR THEM, if they don't take the time to make sure they have all of their belongings, school books, sports equipment  and something is forgotten- we drop what we are doing and RUN IT TO THEM,  if they break, misplace, destroy or loose their cell phone, ipad, ipod - we just buy them a NEW one, if they don't feel like going to school - We call them off SICK and then let them play on xbox all  day, and what is even more sad is, when our child is disciplined in school - we blame someone else, we challenge the teacher or we make excuses. Obviously, we overcompensate out of love and with good intentions, but as the saying goes - the road to hell is paved with good intentions. What are we teaching our children today. What kind of work ethic are we instilling in our children. They are learning that they can have whatever they want regardless of the cost, at any price, whenever they want it without any consequence. It seems more and more that we are eliminating words from our vocabularly like NO, work for it, you're grounded, you did wrong......our children are not really experiencing life in the truest sense - which includes the good and the BAD. They don't learn to do without, they don't learn disappointment, they don't learn to face challenges, they don't learn that not everybody is a winner but that's okay, they don't learn that sometimes life isn't fair but you have to go on and endure. What an injustice. No wonder we have so many suicides and shootings amoung our youth today.  They don't know what to do if they don't get what they want and things don't go their way. Our  'over compensation' has sheltered them and ultimately prevented them from developing the coping skills and work ethic necessary to face adversity and difficulty, to prosper and grow and find their way independently.  I think its time for parents to think about how important that WORK ETHIC really is and how early on it begins to develop.

A Fav Quote one of many

Often people attempt to live ther lives backwards, they try to have more things, or more money , in order to do more of what they want so they will be happier.
The way it actually works is the reverse, you must first be who you really are,
then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.

Missing them more than they miss you

My 9 year old, Zachaeus went away with my sister and brother-in-law and their son this weekend to a cabin in Willsboro. He loves the outdoors fishing and hunting. He was gone since Thursday, 5 nights and 5 and a half days. The house was so quiet and still. I was so bored I actually cleaned just for something to do. He had a great time and I hardly think he even noticed he wasn't at home. I, on the other hand, felt so out-of-sorts. Up until the last year or so we have never been away from each other for more than one night. I was always the kind of mom who would rarely go out  or be away from my children other than going to work from 8 am to 4pm Mon-Fri and that was only out of necessity. I believe kids grow up so fast and you should savour every moment you can with them. There's plenty of time for coming and going when they grow up. As a parent you have to sacrafice your own self indulgences to put your children first and that is the committment you make from the very moment of conception. You do begin to realize though, as your child begins to spread his wings and become more independent , that there will come a day that you are no longer the center of their world as they are yours. This is beginning to emerge with my baby now. He wants to be with his friends and spend less time with mommy. He doesn't need to hold my hand when crossing the street or while in a shopping mall. He has graduated from a calling me mommy to mom and his signs of affection are limited to the privacy of home now. The 'I love you more..." challenges have dwindled and I find every opportunity to grasp for cuddle time and hugs and kisses whenever I can. As fascinating and rewarding as it is to watch my youngest son grow up it is equally bittersweet. Although I went through this all with my oldest son who is now 19, I somehow found consolation in knowing I still had my baby boy at home. Now I have to face this again  but this time there is no consolation, this is it, my boys will be grown up and I will have to fill the void that is created by this. It is so hard to truly describe how this feels. For the last 19 years my whole life was consumed and so full of my children. Everything I did was motivated by motherly love for them. My friends, my activities, my pleasure, my day to day existence revolved around them. Now I will have to rebuild my life to fill that purpose with a new direction. And though I would love nothing more than to always remain the center of their world, I cannot be selfish. I have to let them fly and be their own person and have their own life and know that even if I am not the center of their life, deep down inside me, they will always be the center of mine. And that is how I know that as each day passes and they grow up I am missing them more than they miss me.

Today is My very First Blog.

Today is Presidents Day, February 21, 2011 and I decided to finally enter the world of Blogging. Better late than never right. I only hope that I can combine my emotion passions and my skill for expressing them in written form in a manner that is tactful and considerate and not offensive to others but that is not likely.  I often tend to be very blunt and direct. Although since this is MY very own space if someone is offended then they need not follow right. Too bad you don't get your very own personal editor not only to correct grammar, punctuation and spelling, but also to warn you when lanuage sounds offensive or  harmful LOL!!!!! I will try to monitor myself.  This is like a jounal or personal diary of sorts except you have to try to remember that other people can read it. And so...I am off...to a new, challenging and exciting world of sharing my innermost thoughts and feelings........here goes......