10 Things to Stop Caring About If You Want to Be
Happier
Stop Caring About These Things:
1. What others think
Dance to your own beat. Act dumb.
Do whatever you have to but don’t take on board what others think. It’s your
life, your decisions and choices. Others love to judge, and why should you care
if they do? Only you define yourself, so let them be amused if it makes them
happy. When you care too much about that others will say, you live your life
for them and not yourself.
2. Past mistakes
We all make mistakes and mess up in
life. That’s just how life goes. Don’t be hard on yourself, though. Accept that
everyone gets it wrong sometimes; it’s part of the human condition. You really
are allowed to cut yourself some slack. Learn to forgive yourself more often.
3. Failure
The big “F” word that everyone
fears. It doesn’t have to be a scary concept, though. Ultimately, it depends on
your attitude to failure. If you see failure as not being perfect, you’re going
to be permanently miserable. A more realistic idea of failure is giving up. If
you haven’t given up, you haven’t failed. See failure as a learning curve, a trial
and error process. See failure as your friend – it’s no big deal unless you
allow it to be.
4. What you don’t have
The human default position tends to
err on the side of lack rather than abundance, which is not conducive to
feeling carefree. We focus on what we don’t have and end up feeling thoroughly
deprived. What’s the point of that? I often tell my clients to focus on the
positives of what they have and the negatives of what they don’t have. Why
would you want to torture yourself with all the things you don’t have? That
type of thinking will not serve you in any productive way at all. Make a list
of all the things in your life that you appreciate. There will always be others
with more and others with less. What you have is enough.
5. “What Ifs”
We can drive ourselves crazy
worrying about what might happen in the future. No one can predict the future
(psychics might dispute this), and there is no point in torturing yourself
unnecessarily about things that may never come to pass. Remind yourself that this
type of worry is wasted energy and distract yourself. Face worry head on – if
you can do something in the present moment, go for it. If not, distract
yourself and ‘shelve’ the worries.
6. “I’ll be happy when…” thoughts
When we believe that we will be
happy once something has happened, we effectively put our life on hold until
the event happens. Wishing your current life is away is a precious waste of
happy moments in life. Be in the moment more and care less about being happy in
the future. Decide to be happy now. Happiness is not a destination, it is a
manner of traveling.
7. Regrets
Regret is a part of life. The past
cannot be undone, so it pays to look at what you have done in life
philosophically. Did you learn something from it? If you learned never to do it
again or to try a different approach, then you’ve ended up with a positive
result. Accept what has gone before, make allowances for human error and move
on.
8. Rejection
Many of us are so afraid of
rejection that we stay in our comfort zones and never risk true intimacy. Wear
your heart on your sleeve and risk being vulnerable. The more you hide out of
fear, the greater the fear will grow. Show yourself that you can express your
feelings and live with the consequences. You will conquer fear of rejection in
this way and feel more carefree. Even if the outcome is not as expected, you
will soon realize that it wasn’t as bad as you anticipated and that you can
deal with it. Be a little more thick skinned, be brave and see life as an
adventure.
9. Society’s expectations
Be thin, be beautiful. Show off
your wealth and status and then you’ll be adored. What nonsense. When you like
and accept yourself as you are, you don’t need to prove yourself to anyone.
Don’t buy into the constant media images of perfection. Most of the images are
airbrushed and lead us to believe that we should all look as perfect. Try not
to take it to heart. We all like to see perfect images, but don’t lose sight of
the fact that most of it is digitally enhanced and not natural. Love yourself,
imperfections and all. Self acceptance is true freedom.
10. Being good enough
It’s easy to feel that we don’t
measure up somehow. We live in a competitive world. It’s okay and even healthy
to want to improve and grow as a person. It becomes unhealthy, though, when we
internalize negative ideas about how we aren’t good enough. Always challenge
this type of thinking. What is “good enough”? Where is the international rule
book that clarifies what “good enough” is? As long as you feel happy with who
you are, where you are and how far you have come, that is all that matters.
We all worry unnecessarily and
create inner misery for ourselves. Remember the above ten points, as they are
definitely items you can immediately remove from your worry list. Hopefully
you’ll feel a little lighter and a little more carefree too!
"When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life! " —Jean Shinoda Bolen pic.twitter.com/HRjXiIBxu2
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