Archives for April 2015

40 Quotes that Will Quiet Your Mind

04.29.2015 by Angel Chernoff // 46 Comments

40 Quotes that Will Quiet Your Mind

Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart.

You know how you always turn down the volume on the radio when you need to think clearly about something complicated or confusing?

The same is true for your life in general. The noise you need to cut out to concentrate? That’s the noise in your head – the busy, worried thoughts screaming over your better judgment.

Turning down the radio refocuses your mind and offers you clarity when you need it most. You don’t really think about how or why this makes such a huge difference, you just know that it does.

Now it’s time to apply this same strategy to all the other noise in your life, starting with the noise in your head. And although it’s not quite as easy as spinning the radio’s volume dial, the good news is you can quiet your mind and train it to think more rationally simply by reminding yourself to do so every day. Some people call them affirmations, or mantras, or convictions, but in any case these daily reminders keep you on track by keeping peaceful, productive thoughts at the top of your mind, even when life gets noisy.

Here are 40 quotes gathered from our blog archive that can be used as reminders to help tweak your thoughts and quiet your anxious mind:

Everything is created twice, first in the mind and then in reality. So pay close attention to the thoughts you choose. They have a way of becoming real.
There is absolutely nothing about your present circumstances that prevents you from making progress, one step at a time.
Worry, and you get what you worry about. Work, and you get what you work for. It’s often just that simple. [Read more…]

5 Ways to Stop Worrying About What Everyone Thinks of You

04.26.2015 by Marc Chernoff // 41 Comments

5 Ways to Stop Worrying About What Everyone Thinks of You

You could spend the whole year worrying about what other people think of you, but it wouldn’t get you anywhere.

“What’s wrong with wanting others to like you?”

That’s what several of our course members asked me in response to one of my recent course member emails. And I’ve been asked similar questions over the years too. So today, I want to discuss why it’s not healthy to spend lots of time worrying about what everyone thinks of you, and how to stop yourself from doing so.

In a nutshell, tying your self-worth to everyone else’s opinions gives you a flawed sense of reality. But before we look at how to fix this, first we need to understand why we do this…

From wanting others to think we’re attractive, to checking the number of likes and comments on our Facebook and Instagram posts, most of us care about what others think. In fact, a big part of this is an innate desire that we are born with. It has been proven time and time again that babies’ emotions are often drawn directly from the behaviors of those around them.

As we grow up, we learn to separate our thoughts and emotions from everyone else’s, but many of us continue to seek – and in many cases beg for – positive social validation from others. This can cause serious trouble when it comes to self-esteem and happiness. In a recent survey we did with 3,000 of our course members and coaching clients, 67% of them admitted that their self-worth is strongly tied to what other people think of them.

As human beings, we naturally respond to everything we experience through the lens of our learned expectations – a set of deep-rooted beliefs about the way the world is and how things should be. And one of the most prevailing expectations we have involves external validation and how others ‘should’ respond to us.

Over a century ago, social psychologist Charles Cooley identified the phenomenon of the “looking-glass self,” which is when we believe “I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am – I am what I think that you think I am.” This kind of external validation has insecurity at its core, and relying on it for even a short time chips away at our sense of self-worth and self-confidence.

The biggest problem is we tend to forget that people judge us based on a pool of influences in their own life that have absolutely nothing to do with us. For example, a person might assume things about you based on a troubled past experience they had with someone else that looks kind of like you, or someone else who shares your same last name, etc. Therefore, basing your self-worth on what others think puts you in a perpetual state of vulnerability – you are literally at the mercy of their unreliable, bias perspectives. If they see you in the right light, and respond to you in a positive, affirming manner, then you feel good about yourself. And if not, you feel like you did something wrong.

Bottom line: When you’re doing everything for other people, and basing your happiness and self-worth on their opinions, you’ve lost your moral center.

The good news is we have the capacity to watch our thoughts and expectations, identify which ones serve us, and then change the ones that do not.

So, in order to stop worrying so much about what others think, it’s time to inject some fresh objectivity into your life, and develop a value system that doesn’t depend on others every step of the way. Here are five things you can start doing today:

1. Remind yourself that most people are NOT thinking about you anyway.

Ethel Barrett once said, “We would worry far less about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do.” Nothing could be closer to the truth.

Forget what everyone else [Read more…]

12 Toxic Beliefs You Need Out of Your Mind

04.22.2015 by Marc Chernoff // 26 Comments

12 Toxic Beliefs You Need Out of Your Mind

What we can or can’t do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our strengths or intelligence. It’s often a function of our beliefs about who we are.

“The drummer in our band, Nick, is legally deaf, and has been since he was born. But he can still hear low bass tones and feel the vibrations from the drums and other instruments. Honestly, he’s such an incredible drummer that most people don’t believe he’s deaf. Sometimes I can’t believe it myself.”

Those inspiring lines come right out of a live chat conversation I had this morning with Amber, one of our newest course members (she gave me permission to share this with you here). Amber is an ER nurse by profession, but moonlights as the lead singer in a renowned local jazz band in New Orleans on Friday and Saturday nights. And as you can tell, her drummer, Nick, is one of her greatest inspirations.

Later on in our chat session, Amber said, “You know, I hate to admit it, but I envy Nick. I really do! I mean, I know I could be almost as amazing as him, in so many walks of life, if I could just silence the voices in my head.”

“What voices,” I asked.

“You know, the voices constantly telling me that I’m not good enough, that I don’t have enough, that it’s too late for me, that the naysayers are always right and I’m always wrong, and so forth,” she said.

And as she got deeper into things, we ended up cutting our chat session short and jumping on the phone to flesh things out and get her thinking back on track.

But the truth is, she’s not the only one who feels this way. Over the past decade Angel and I have coached thousands of people from around the world, with vastly different lifestyles and socioeconomic backgrounds, and most of them suffer from the same exact toxic beliefs Amber does. So today, I want to build upon my recent article on self-limiting beliefs and share some of these with you – 12 of the most common toxic beliefs we see our coaching clients and course members struggle with, time and time again (see if you can identify with any of them):

“I’m not good enough.” – Embrace all of yourself. When you appreciate your flaws and faults, they lose their power over you. Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are. Don’t be one of them. What you experience in life starts with your perception. In almost every case, nothing is stopping you… nothing is holding you back but your own thoughts about yourself and “how life is.” Your perception creates your beliefs. Your beliefs create your behaviors. And your behaviors produce your experience. [Read more…]

2 Ways to Bounce Back from Life’s Inevitable Setbacks

04.15.2015 by Marc Chernoff // 41 Comments

7 Ways to Bounce Back from Life’s Inevitable Setbacks

It’s your choice… To be positive and free or to be imprisoned by your own negativity. To live in the past or to be hopeful about the present.

(Note: This post was expanded and updated here: 5 Lessons I Learned from Overcoming the Hardest Days of My Life)

1. Clear the unnecessary clutter and complications standing in your way.

As Einstein once said, “Out of clutter, find simplicity; from discord, find harmony; in the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.”

Sometimes we make life more complicated than it is. We attach our happiness to achievement and then look for it in all the wrong ways and in all the wrong places. Of course, you don’t have to live like this. If you feel like you are, it’s time to simplify things. It’s time to clear the air and get back to the basics.

Simplifying is not seeing how little you can get by with – that’s poverty – but how efficiently you can put first things first, and use your time accordingly to pursue the things that make a difference and mean the most to you. Less truly is more. Instead of adding, improve your life by subtracting. Get rid of unnecessary clutter, negative influences and toxic relationships. There’s a big difference between what you want and what you need, between what’s excessive and what’s essential. (Angel and I discuss this process in the Simplicity chapter of 1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.)

2. Reach out and help people.

Our setbacks are often mostly about us, wallowing in our own self-pity. This doesn’t sound great, but we all do it almost every day to a small extent without noticing it. When you catch yourself doing this, know that the best antidote is to get outside yourself, stop being self-centered, and re-focus on the people around you. Try to find a way to help someone else. It will inevitably, infallibly, make you feel better.

When we realize that helping others is the key to realizing our own happiness, it saves us a lot of trouble.

Truth be told, the closest thing to being cared for is to care for others. We are all in this together and we should treat each other as such. Use your voice for kindness, your ears for compassion, and your hands for charity, always. No exercise is better for your heart and mind than reaching down and helping others up. Happiness and success in life doesn’t come through selfishness, but through selflessness. The best way to feel alive on down days is to get up and do something positive for the folks around you.

And remember, you don’t need a reason to help someone. Just do it. The reason will come to you.

Your turn…

What helps you persevere and bounce back from life’s setbacks? How do you motivate yourself through difficult situations on a daily basis? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts and insights?

Photo by: Daniel Smith