Every day is an oppourtunity to start again. A new beginning.
Sometimes however, in life, you have to stop before you can truly begin. So starting today, here are 6 things you should stop caring about:
1) Stop caring about everyone else’s opinion of you.
For the most part, what other people think and say about you doesn’t matter. And yet we spend so much energy worrying about it. As Bill Cosby said, “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
Choose a few people in your life whom you trust, who know you well, and who love you enough to tell you the truth (even if it hurts). Listen to them, and don’t bother too much about the rest.
2) Stop caring about your failures.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Failures teach us important lessons. In fact, the biggest mistake you can make is doing nothing because you’re too scared to make a mistake! Learn to fail forward.
3) Stop caring about the things you have no control over.
Some forces are out of your control. Accept this fact of life. Wasting your time, talent and emotional energy on things that are beyond your control is a recipe for frustration, misery and a lack of peace.
4) Stop caring about being right all the time.
Someone once asked me, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be married?”
Funny. But true. Sometimes we can “win” the argument and “lose” our relationships in the process. Sometimes being “right” is far less important than simply being there for someone or listening to them.
5) Stop caring about what others have.
It’s so natural for us to compare “up”. We look at that friend of ours with the mansion and the sexy car, or at the boss with the corner office. We fool ourselves by thinking we’ll be happy when we reach a certain level in life — a level we see others operating at. Unfortunately this simply isn’t true. It’s a moving target. A mirage.
Instead, appreciate where you are and what you have right now. Try comparing yourself to those who have less. Hopefully it opens our eyes to all the things we can be grateful for, and spurs us on to generosity.
6) Stop caring about the imaginary state of perfect.
So often perfection is the enemy of good.
Because we can’t find the “perfect plan” or the “ideal answer” to the problem, we simply give up and do nothing at all. Sometimes a bad plan is better than no plan at all.
Stop looking for the “silver bullet” or the “magic formula” that will solve all your woes, and focus rather on simply taking the next right step, even if that step is small.
