Marc Chernoff's Blog, page 12

20 Essential Things to Start Doing for Your Own Peace and Happiness

Patience isn’t about waiting, it’s the ability to keep a good attitude while working hard for what you believe in.

As you move through the days and weeks ahead, remind yourself that it takes roughly 66 days to form a new habit. So for the next nine and a half weeks, consciously leverage the actionable reminders below to look at the brighter side of your life, and you will gradually rewire your brain…

1. Start steadying yourself with simple rituals.

When life feels like an emotional roller coaster, steady yourself with simple rituals. Make the bed. Water the plants. Rinse off your own bowl and spoon. Simplicity attracts calmness and wisdom.

2. Start filtering out the noise in your life.

Be careful about who you give (more…)

10 Painfully Obvious Truths of Life Everyone Forgets Too Soon

The truth does not vanish when it is forgotten or ignored.

You know how you can hear something a hundred times in a bunch of different ways before it finally gets through to you? The ten truths of life discussed here fall firmly into that category — timeless lessons most of us likely learned years ago, and have been reminded of since, but for whatever reason we haven’t fully grasped them yet.

This, my friends, is my attempt at helping all of us, myself included, “get it” and “remember it” once and for all…

1. The average human life is relatively short.

We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen to all of us eventually, and (more…)

7 Things You Should Insist On Doing for Yourself More Often

You can’t lift a thousand pounds all at once, yet you can easily lift one pound a thousand times. Tiny, repeated efforts will get you there.

I have witnessed people reinventing themselves at all ages — 48-year-olds starting families, 57-year-olds graduating from college for the first time, 71-year-olds starting successful businesses, and more. How did they all do it? In a nutshell, they started making gradual progress in their lives, step by step. And by doing so, they changed the trajectory of their their lives.

What you need to remember most right now is that it isn’t too early or too late to start making positive changes in your life. Your future is always affected by what you start doing today. Yet so many people wait around for some arbitrary date and time, like tomorrow, to take action. Don’t be one of them! Make yourself a priority starting now! It’s time to…

1. Insist on embracing your humanness.

“Human” is the only real label we are born with, yet we forget so easily. To become attached to a loaded label of (more…)

1 Quick Wake-Up Call for Those Tough Days When You Don’t Feel “Good Enough”

Sometimes the hardest part of the journey is simply believing you’re worthy of the trip.

“Life hasn’t been the easiest on me lately. I won’t get into all the details now, but the tough times I’ve been living through have left me with many cracks. And although I’ve still managed to be a reasonably successful person, on most days I struggle desperately with my self-confidence. I just don’t feel good enough. I feel flawed. I feel like my cracks make me undesirable…”

Those are the opening lines of an email I received recently from a new reader of our blog. I’m sharing that excerpt today, with permission, because Angel and I have spoken to hundreds of other readers, clients, and live event attendees over the past 15 years who struggle in a very similar way. In fact, almost all of us struggle with not feeling “good enough” at various points throughout our lives.

If you can relate right now — if today is one of those days — it’s time for a quick wake-up call (more…)

20 Things You Need to Stop Wasting Your Time and Joy On

The most important decision you will ever make is what to do with the time that’s given to you.

I recently received a thank you email from a reader named Hope. She said our work helped motivate her through an arduous recovery process following a serious car accident last year. Although her entire story is both heartbreaking and inspiring, this one line made me pause and think:

“The happiest moment of my life is still that split-second a year ago when, as I laid crushed under a 2000 pound car, I realized my husband and 9-year-old boy were out of the vehicle and absolutely OK.”

Dire moments like this force us to acknowledge what’s truly important to us. In Hope’s case it was her husband and son. And in the remainder of her email she talks about how (more…)

1 Important Step We Often Take Too Late in Our Lives

Too often people overestimate the significance of one big defining moment and underestimate the value of making good decisions and small steps of progress on a daily basis.

You’re probably familiar with what’s known as the Serenity Prayer. It goes like this:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

There’s an important lesson here — one that’s very often glossed over…

When a chaotic reality is swirling around us, we often try to relieve our anxiety by exerting our will over external things we cannot control.

It helps us stave off one of the most dreaded feelings: complete powerlessness.

With that in mind, I have good news and bad news.

The bad news is (more…)

20 Things 90 Years of Wisdom Told Me to Stop Worrying About

Worry gives small things a big shadow.

Some people wait all day for 5pm, all week for Friday, all year for the holidays, all their lives for happiness. Don’t be one of them. Don’t wait until your life is almost over to realize how good it has been. The secret to happiness and peace on the average day is letting each moment be what it is, instead of what you think it should be, and then making the very best of it — less worry and more presence every step of the way.

So go ahead and sing out loud in the car with the windows down, and dance in your (more…)

4 Things We Often Do Everyday that Drains Us of Our True Potential

We ultimately become what we habitually do. If our daily habits aren’t moving us forward, they are holding us back. Here are four widespread examples of the latter that often drain us all of our true potential, day after day, and some strategies for turning things around…

1. We weigh ourselves down with our thinking.

Twenty years ago, when Marc and I were just undergrads in college, our psychology professor taught us a lesson we’ve never forgotten. On the last day of class before graduation, she walked up on stage to teach one final lesson, which she called “a vital lesson on the power of (more…)

The Secret Habits of Optimists: 6 Hidden Practices They All Live By

It takes roughly 66 days to form a habit. So for 9 weeks look at the bright side of your life, and you will rewire your brain.

If the grass looks greener on the other side…

Stop staring.

Stop comparing.

Stop complaining.

And START watering the grass you’re standing on…

Truly, the most powerful weapon against stress on the average day is our ability to choose one thought or response over another. I was reminded of this today when a reader named Sarah sent me the following in an email (I’m sharing this with permission): (more…)

10 Life Choices You Will Regret in 10 Years (And Probably Even Sooner)

In the end, more than anything else, we regret the little things we wish we’d done differently.

“If only…” Those two words paired together create one of the saddest phrases in the English language.

Here are ten life choices that ultimately lead to that phrase of regret, and how to avoid them on the average day:

1. Wearing a mask to impress other people.

If the face you always show the world is a mask, someday there will be nothing beneath it. Because when you spend too much time concentrating on (more…)