19 Jun 30 Things You Need To Let Go To Find Happiness
by Quincy Seale
What do you need to be happy? All too often, we list the things we want: a bigger house, a cooler car, a trip around the world, money for retirement, a new friend or lover.
While striving for more is one of the things that makes us great, it’s never wise to make your happiness dependent on it. All too often, it’s hard to bring the things we want into our lives.
But one thing you do have the power to do is let go of things you don’t want or need. Whether out of habit or because of peer pressure or family pressure, we often cling to poisonous thoughts, feelings, and individuals.
Our unrealistic expectations set us up for failure, and our addiction to toxic people and activities brings us down. And then we wonder why it’s so hard to be happy.
Letting go isn’t easy, but you can do it. And once you let go of even just one toxic thing in your life, you will instantly get a boost toward greater happiness! Here are 30 things to drop now and forever for a better life.
1. A grudge
Psychologists and priests around the globe regularly advise their patients and congregants to forgive their enemies. Sometimes that advice is hard to understand, however, and it’s easy to lose sight of why it is sound advice. After all, some people don’t deserve our forgiveness, do they?
But then again, it’s not really about them, it’s about you. You deserve to be able to move on, and the only way to do that is to let go of the resentment festering inside you. You don’t need to condone the person’s actions or let them back into your life to let go of the pain.
You deserve a bright future, not one weighed down by the tragedies of your past. Some people will never give you closure, so you must give it to yourself.
2. The misconception that worldly success and greatness are the same thing
Most of us have been raised to believe that success is the ultimate goal to strive for—success here having the meaning of wealth and fame. But it is important to remember that worldly success and greatness are not the same thing, and that there are other kinds of success.
Strive to be great at your work, whatever it is, and pursue your passion without caring what other people think. Anything can be an art so long as you apply yourself 100% and with full integrity. Sometimes that means turning down a payday or a chance to get your name in the papers.
Ultimately, though, worldly success built on selling out is a hollow victory, one that will eat away at you for the rest of your life. True greatness on the other hand is a form of success no one can ever take away from you, built on authenticity and self-actualization.
Worldly success may bring you happiness, but the crowd is fickle, and they can take it away. Spiritual success on the other hand is eternal and unbreakable, and the happiness it gives you is forever.
3. Your pride
Pride is a good thing in certain contexts. Taken to extremes, however, it can be a destructive force that can ruin you professionally and personally. If your pride gets in the way, you may refuse to see your mistakes, and that means you will never learn.
This can stop you from improving at your work, or from seeing the other side in a fight with a partner, friend, or colleague. Pride can destroy relationships. So let it go before it does any more to erode your happiness.
4. The need to be certain
The need to be right is a destructive force, and so is the need to be certain, whether of your own actions or the whims of the fates. Life is unpredictable, and ultimately that is not a bad thing.
If you knew everything there was to know, life would be pretty empty and boring, wouldn’t it? Whether you love or hate uncertainty, though, you have to learn to live with it.
The need for certainty can lead to anxiety, depression, and other psychological disorders, and can lead you into making some really bad decisions.
5. The need to be in control
Closely related to the need to be certain is the need to be in control. In fact, isn’t that ultimately what the need for certainty is about? When you are certain—so long as you are not certain of utter disaster—you have more control over a situation.
Pretty often, that is really what we are hoping to find out when we are looking for certainty. We are hoping to find out for certain that we are in control of our destinies.
This need isn’t helped by a culture that perpetuates the myth of the “self-made person.” Here’s the truth: there is no such thing. None of us live in a vacuum, and all of us rely at times on other people or on circumstances going our way.
Nobody in the world makes it without luck on their side. You are not in control of 100% of what happens to you. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can learn to create a healthier mindset in harmony with this fluid reality.
6. The belief that you could get rich one day
Growing up, who doesn’t dream about becoming a billionaire? Whether you envisioned winning the lottery, publishing the next bestseller, or becoming a corporate CEO, you probably thought one day you’d be rolling in riches.
As you get older, though, the doubts start to set in, nagging away at you. And eventually one day you might realize just how unlikely the get-rich dream really is, especially in our recession economy.
The harsh reality is this: most of us are not going to get rich. And that is true even with hard work, and even with genius. Just because you have something great to offer doesn’t mean the world will value it. That quiet, desperate hope that you will someday become a billionaire can stop you from appreciating what you have right now.
Right now, we are on the verge of the greatest retirement crisis imaginable. The vast majority of today’s workers will not be able to afford to retire. Those who are forced to by their circumstances will be dependent on charity to survive.
If you can actually afford to live like a human being for the rest of your life—even if that living is modest—count yourself very, very fortunate. You do not need to be rich to be happy.
7. Insecurity
Insecurity is a recipe for ongoing unhappiness. Insecurity can come from your own self-judgment, or from the judgments of others. Either way, it makes no sense to go through life under the yoke of that judgment.
If you are being the best version of yourself possible, living the life that is true and right for you, no one has a right to cast judgment on you. That includes your own doubts.
Remember, you picked them up somewhere along the line, and they are unfair to you and to others. The people who love you now love you for who you really are. You do neither yourself nor them any favors by constantly second-guessing their affection and respect.
8. Possessiveness
Jealousy usually stems from insecurity. If you can let go of insecurity, you can often let go of jealousy, because you no longer spend all your time worrying about what you are going to lose.
Possessiveness is an emotion closely related to jealousy. Sometimes it causes it, and other times it results from it. It’s one emotion which will bring nothing but harm to those you love, and also to yourself.
Remind yourself when you are feeling possessive that a relationship is not something you own, but something you share with another person. You will feel much happier when you leave that ugly emotion behind you.
You may even discover once you let go of possessiveness, jealousy, and insecurity, that you never had anything to worry about.
9. Judgment
Do you spend a lot of time looking at the way other people live their lives and criticizing them? There’s nothing wrong with thinking critically about what people do if it helps you make better decisions in your own life.
Beyond that point, though, it rarely serves any purpose except to make you angry or confused. If dwelling on other peoples’ choices is no longer helping you to live your own life in a better way, it is time to let go of it.
Plus, how many times have you assumed you understood something only to realize later you had no idea what you were looking at? Letting go of your judgmental thoughts can help you to open your mind and learn.
Sometimes if you do that, you can understand different perspectives and lifestyles. They might even contribute something to your own life.
10. Past misfortunes
It is far too easy to lie away staring at the ceiling each night mulling over the terrible things that have happened to you. Saying, “Just get over it and move on” isn’t always easily done, especially if you have real traumas in your past.
Sometimes you cannot control when those traumas will surface and plague you. But what you can decide to do is stop consciously feeding into the cycle. Take time to process the events of your past in an intelligent, cathartic fashion, but do not dwell simply to dwell.
Remember that you cannot turn a page in a book until you stop reading that page. Letting go of the past is necessary to have a future. You cannot live in the past or get back the time you lost, but you can try not to lose more time…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE
#happiness #happy #psychology #positivepsychology