Here's some free advice, Jack. These simple things have really helped me find true contentment and gratitude in my life.
1. Take responsibility for your thoughts, feelings, words and actions.
To take responsibility for your life, is to take responsibility for your powers of thinking, feeling, speaking and acting, because this is the structure of all human experience. You create your life with your thoughts, feelings, words and actions.
You take responsibility when you accept that the thoughts you have, are your thoughts coming from your mind. How you feel happens in your body and is a result of your thoughts. The words you speak come from your mouth and voice. The actions you take, are taken by you.
What this means is that nobody can make you think, feel, say or do anything. Nobody can push your buttons, because you are the button maker! In the same way you don’t have control over how other people respond as they respond from their mindset.
2. Stop blaming
Stop blaming your partner, parents, economy, your upbringing or the dog for your misfortune. Blaming keeps you in victim mode and robs you of changing your situation.
When you stop blaming and accept responsibility, you shift from victim to victor. Now you can look at the situation and decide what to do about it.
Ask yourself, “What is my role in this?”
3. Stop complaining
Complaining is another form of blaming and playing victim as if you have no choice. It also shows that you focus on lack, things going wrong, things happening to you. In everything not going according to plan, there is a gift, there is a bigger picture.
Ask yourself, “What is the gift here? What can I learn from this?”
4. Refuse to take anything personal
This is a biggie. Assuming that everything is about you. Taking any form of disagreement as a personal attack. Remember, you don’t have control over how other people respond, you only have control over how you respond.
Refuse to take anything personal. It is most probably not about you, but about the issue at hand. Instead of making assumptions, rather ask questions. This is a very powerful and liberating practice, with never ending surprises.
Ask yourself, “Is this about me, or the issue at hand?”
5. Make yourself happy
Taking responsibility for your happiness is liberating. Firstly to realize that happiness does not come from outside of you. It is not the job of your partner, parent, friend, child, to make you happy.
To be happy is a decision and the gateway to happiness is gratitude. Keep a gratitude journal and you will find lots to be happy about.
Also, do things that make you feel happy. Listen to your favourite music, surround yourself with beauty, express your creativity, do acts of kindness, etc.
Ask yourself, “What about this could make me happy?”
6. Live in the present moment
Life is now. There is only one moment, now. The past is history, the future is a mystery, so there is only now, this moment. Take responsibility for this moment and make the best of it to redeem the past and create the future you want. Paulo Coelho wrote something to this effect in his biography.
Be the gatekeeper of your thoughts and refuse to have a rerun of the same 60000 thoughts of yesterday if they do not get you want you want in life.
Choose your thoughts carefully in every moment and when you become present you have the awareness of what you are thinking and feeling. This then allows you to interrupt thoughts that do not serve you. Deliberately change them in the moment to what you want to create in that moment to shape your future.
Ask yourself, “Am I in the present moment and what do I want?”
7. Use the power of intention
You have the power to choose. In fact, you are making choices all the time. Tea or coffee, red dress or black dress, hair up or down, yoga or go for a run. Even by not making a choice, you are making a choice.
Become intentional in making choices by having a vision in mind. A vision for your life, your business, your relationship, your health, wealth, etc.
Living intentionally by deliberately making choices to move you forward toward manifesting your vision or outcomes, is consciously taking responsibility for your life.
Ask, “Is saying yes to this moving me towards my goal?”
8. Feel calm and confident
When you take responsibility for your life and experience, you step into a place of calm confidence. You feel calm because you know that you are consciously in charge of yourself and that you can choose how you respond.
You feel confident that you will not fall into victim-mode by sucking up other people’s verbal vomit. They can keep those gifts.
Ask yourself, “What do I choose to accept from this conversation and how do I choose to respond?”
9. Look for the good in people
There’s a saying that we judge ourselves by our intentions and we judge others by their behaviour.
Make it your new habit to look for the intentions behind people’s behaviour. So often when we understand where someone comes from, we let go of judgement.
One excellent practice is to remove the labels we hang onto people like bibs around their necks and that somehow gives us permission to treat them in the worst possible way. Often this applies to the people closest to us.
Ask yourself, “If I just see him/her as a human being, how will I respond differently?”
Another effective practice is listening to understand instead of listening to respond. This means to practice asking questions to really understand what the other person means, instead of waiting for a chance to interrupt and voice your important opinion.
This allows you to take responsibility to intentionally have illuminating conversations and fulfilling relationships, because the person that you are talking to will appreciate your attention, like and trust you and support you in return.
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I’m crap at
(this honestly isn’t an ask for info, I’m just impressed? at skills I don’t have). Nice one for squiggling the finer details - she’s apparently given away loads of clues, the idiot. She just can’t resist attention.
