10 simple ways tosave yourselffrom messing up your life 1. Stop takingso much notice ofhow you feel.How you feel ishow you feel. It’ll pass soon. What you’re thinking iswhat you’re thinking. It’ll go too. Tellyourself that whatever you feel, you feel; whatever you think, you think. Since you can’t stopyourself thinking, or preventemotions from arising in your mind, it makes no sense to beproud or ashamed of either. You didn’t cause them. Only youractionsare directly under your control. They’re theonly proper cause of pleasure or shame. 2. Let goofworrying.Itoften makes things worse. Themore you think aboutsomething bad, the more likelyit isto happen. When you’re hair-trigger primed to notice thefirst signof trouble, you’ll surely find something close enoughto convince yourself it’scome. 3. Ease up onthe internal lifecommentary. If you wantto behappy, stop tellingyourself you’re miserable. People are always telling themselves how they feel, what they’re thinking, whatothers feel about them, what thisor that eventreally means. Most of it’s imagination. Therest is equal parts lies and misunderstandings. You haveonly themost limitedunderstandingof what others feel about you. Usually they’re no better informed on thesubject; and they care about it far less thanyou do. Youhaveno way of knowing whatthisor that eventreally means. Whatever you tellyourself will be make-believe. 4. Takenonotice ofyour innercritic.Judging yourself is pointless. Judgingothers is half-witted. Whatever you achieve, someone else will always do better. However bad you are, others are worse. Since you can tellneither what’s best nor what’s worst, how can you place yourself correctly between them? Judgingothers is foolish sinceyou cannot know allthefacts, cannot create a reliable or objective scale, haveno means of knowing whether your criteria match anyone else’s, and cannot havemore thana limitedand extremely partial view of theother person. Whocares about your opinion anyway? 5. Giveup onfeelingguilty. Guiltchanges nothing. It maymake you feel you’re accepting responsibility, but it can’t produce anythingnew in your life. If you feel guilty about something you’ve done, either do something to put it right or accept you screwed up and try not to do soagain. Then letit go. If you’refeeling guilty aboutwhat someone else did, seea psychiatrist. That’s insane. 6. Stop being concernedwhat therest ofthe worldsays about you.Nasty people can’t make you mad. Nice people can’t make you happy. Events or people are simply events or people. Theycan’t make you anything. You haveto do thatfor yourself. Whatever emotions arise in you as aresult of external events, they’re powerless until you pickthem up anddecideto act on them. Besides, most people are far too busy thinking about themselves (and worry what you are are thinking andsaying aboutthem) to be concerned about you. 7. Stop keeping score.Numbers are just numbers. They don’t havemystical powers. Because something is expressed as a number, a ratio or any other numerical pattern doesn’t mean it’s true. Plenty of lovinglycalculatedbusiness indicators are irrelevant, gibberish, nonsensical, or just plainwrong. If you don’t understandit, or it’s tellingyou something bizarre, ignore it. There’s nothing scientific aboutrelyingon false data. Noranythinguseful about charting your lifeby numbers that were silly in thefirst place. 8. Don’t be concernedthat your lifeand career aren’t working outthe way you planned. Thecloser you stick to anyplan, thequicker you’ll go wrong. Theworld changes constantly. However carefully you analyzed the situation whenyou made the plan, if it’smore thana few days old, things will already be different. After a month, they’ll be very different. After a year, virtually nothing will bethesame as it was whenyou started. Planning isonly useful as a discipline to force people to think carefullyabout what they know and what they don’t. Once you start, throw the planaway and keep your eyes on reality. 9. Don’t let othersuse you to avoidbeing responsible fortheir own decisions.To hold yourself responsible for someone else’s success and happiness demeans them and proves you’ve losttheplot. It’stheir life. They haveto live it. Youcan’t do it for them; nor can you stopthem from messing it up if they’re determined to do so. Thejob of a supervisor is to helpand supervise. Only control-freaks and some others with a less serious mental disability failto understand this. 10. Don’t worry about about your personality. Youdon’t reallyhave one. Personality, like ego, is a conceptinventedby your mind. It doesn’t exist in thereal world. Personality is a word for the general impression thatyou give through your wordsand actions. If your personality isn’t likeable today, don’t worry. You can always changeit, solong as you allow yourself to do so. What fixes someone’s personality in oneplace isa determined effort on theirpart—usually through continually tellingthemselves they’re thisor that kind of person and acting on whatthey say. If you don’t liketheway you are, make yourself different. You’re the only person who’s standing in your way
Posted on: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 11:01:53 +0000
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