Marc Chernoff's Blog, page 2

1 Important Step We All Take Too Late in Life

Too often we overestimate the significance of one big defining moment and underestimate the value of making a little progress every day.

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 (more…)

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

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…)

3 Essential Things to Start Doing for Your Personal Growth and Self-Confidence

When I was a high school freshman, a 260-pound freshman girl showed up for track and field tryouts right alongside me. Her name was Sara, and she was only there because her doctor said her health depended on it. But once she scanned the crowd of students who were on the field, she turned around and began walking away. Coach O’Leary saw her, jogged over, and turned her back around.

“I’m not thin enough for this sport!” Sara declared. “And I’ll never be! It’s impossible for me to lose enough weight. I’ve tried.”

Coach O’Leary nodded and promised Sara that her body type wasn’t suited for her current weight. “It’s suited for 220 pounds,” he said.

Sara looked confused. “Most people tell me I need to (more…)

10 Choices in Life We Will All Regret in 10 Years (If We Aren’t Mindful)

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

In the end, more than anything else, we regret the small chances we didn’t take, the priceless opportunities we were too busy to nurture, and the good decisions we waited too long to make. Angel and I have learned this over the past 15 years from the countless hours we’ve spent coaching hundreds of clients, students, and live event attendees from around the world. The exact same regrets pop up in the personal stories people share with us, time after time.

Here are ten extremely common and specific choices in life that ultimately lead to that “If only…” phrase of regret, and how to elude them on the average day:

1. Letting others tell us what we are worth.

We tend to forget that most people judge us based on (more…)

10 Wake-Up Calls We All Receive Too Late in Life

There’s a big difference between empty fatigue and gratifying exhaustion. Life is too short not to focus more on what matters most.

Before you know it you will be asking, “How did it get so late so soon?” Perhaps you can already relate. So take time to reflect. Take time to realize what you want and need in the days and weeks ahead. Take time to take calculated risks. Take time to love, laugh, learn, cry, and forgive. Life is so much shorter than it often seems.

In our line of work we speak with people on a weekly basis who have been forced to ‘wake up’ to life’s fleeting nature. Consider these two small excerpts from people’s stories that we recently received in our email (more…)

40 Quotes for Letting Go and Coping with All the Things You Can’t Control in Life

The goal each and every day of your life is to gradually grow stronger on the inside, so that less and less on the outside can affect your inner wellness without your conscious permission.

Truth be told, how you cope with unexpected problems and frustrations can easily be the difference between living a good life and living an unhealthy one. If you choose unhealthy coping mechanisms like avoidance or denial, for example, you can quickly turn a tough situation into a tragic one. And sadly, this is a common mistake many people make.

When you find yourself facing a disheartening reality, your first reaction might be to (more…)

10 Things We All Wait Too Long to Do for Ourselves in Life

Opportunities are like sunrises, if we wait too long we miss them.

Too often we waste our time waiting for the ideal path to appear. But it never does of course. Because we forget that paths are made by walking, not waiting. Let this be your wake-up call today!

If you always sit around until you feel 100 percent ready for the journey, you’ll likely be sitting around for the rest of your life. Most of the time you just have to get up and go for it. And no, you shouldn’t feel any more confident before you take the next step. Taking the next step is what gradually builds your confidence.

Today is the day and now is the time! Thus, it’s finally time to admit that… (more…)

7 Mindful Things You Should Insist on Doing for Yourself More Often in Life

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 being more mindful about making progress in their lives, step by step. And by doing so they changed the trajectory of 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! Be mindful, and make yourself a bigger priority right 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…)

10 Good Reasons to Let Go in Life Sooner Rather than Later

The most powerful changes happen when we decide to take control of what we do have power over, instead of craving control over what we do not.

Holding on is hard. Holding on contributes to stress, unhappiness, relationship issues, and so much more. Yet, as human beings, we cling desperately to almost everything…

We don’t like change, so we hold on tight to the past.We want life to be the way we think it “should” be.We get attached to our ideals even when they hurt us.

Over the past 15 years, as Marc and I have gradually worked with hundreds of coaching clients and live event attendees, we’ve come to understand that the root cause of most human stress is (more…)

8 Wake-Up Calls We All Need to Receive in Life (Before it’s Too Late)

You have come a long way, and you’re still learning and growing. Be thankful for the lessons. Take them and make the best of things today.

For my 18th birthday, many moons ago, my grandfather on my mom’s side gave me four lightly-used flannel shirts that he no longer needed. The shirts were barely worn and in great shape; my grandfather said he thought they would look great on me. Unfortunately, I thought they were odd gifts at the time and I wasn’t thankful. I looked at him skeptically, gave him a crooked half-smile, and moved on to the other gifts sitting in front of me. My grandfather died two days later from a sudden heart attack. The flannel shirts were the last gifts he ever gave me, and that crooked half-smile was the last time I directly acknowledged him. Today, I still regret the little thing I didn’t say when I had the chance: “Thank you Grandpa. I appreciate you.”

That was a huge wake-up call for me — one that has served me well for over two decades now.

And here are eight wake-up calls for all of us to reflect on today — some important lessons worth learning and living by, before it’s too late: (more…)