Marc Chernoff's Blog, page 35

40 Quotes for Letting Go and Coping with Things You Can’t Really Control

The goal each and every day 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 (more…)

10 Things We Often Wait Way Too Long to Do for Ourselves

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

Yes, it’s finally time to admit that… (more…)

3 Fundamental Lessons Most of Us Learn Too Late in Life

“In elementary school my parents told me it didn’t matter what I did when I grew up, so long as it made me happy. ‘Happiness is the whole point of life,’ my father said. ‘But it doesn’t always come easy. Your mother loves to help people in need, so she became a psychiatric nurse. I love reading, writing and poetry, so I became an English teacher. We both find happiness in the hard work we do each day.’

A few years later when I was in junior high, my sixth-grade homeroom teacher put me in detention for ‘being difficult.’ She went around the classroom and asked each student what they wanted to be when they grew up. When she got to me, I told her I wanted to be happy. She told me I was missing the whole point of the question. I told her she was missing the whole point of life.”

That’s an old parable my grandmother recited to me countless times when (more…)

10 Hard Realities that Actually Help Us Grow in Life

“The world is full of struggle. It is also full of overcoming.”

Character and wisdom are both sculpted over time. These qualities come with loss, lessons, and triumphs. They come after doubts, second guesses, and exploring unknowns. If there was a definitive path to personal growth, everyone would be on it. Truth be told, the seeds of your success are often planted in your past failures, and some of your best stories will likely come from overcoming your greatest struggles.

Marc and I learned all of that the hard way. Over the past fifteen years we have dealt with several significant hardships, including the sudden death of (more…)

20 Things My 90-Year-Old Grandma Told Me to Stop Worrying About So Much

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 Daily Habits that Keep Holding 90 Percent of Us Back

If it keeps you busy but will hold you back someday, it’s a distraction.

There’s a big difference between empty fatigue and gratifying exhaustion. Life is too short not to focus more on what matters most. And life is definitely too short for habits and routines that keep you stuck in a cycle of feeling like you’re a day late and a dollar short. So today, let’s discuss three incredibly common patterns of behavior that keep the majority of us (myself included for several years) stuck in that cycle, day after day.

1. We keep trying to overcome the odds in an unsupportive environment.

No matter how strong you are, and no matter how much determination and willpower you have, if you keep yourself positioned in an environment that works against your best intentions, you will eventually succumb to that environment.

This is where so many of us make life-altering (more…)

10 Things We Often Wait Way Too Long to Let Go of in Life

Oftentimes we don’t even realize we’re blocking our own present blessings by holding on so tightly.

Letting go is not giving up. Letting go is surrendering any needless attachments to particular outcomes and situations. Surrender means showing up in your life with the intention to be your best, and to do the best you know how, without expecting life to be ideal. Have goals, have dreams, take purposeful action, and build solid relationships, but detach from what life must look like every step of the way.

The energy of someone aspiring to create something wonderful this year, teamed with a healthy balance of surrender, is far more effective than someone determined to create outcomes with a desperate must-have mentality. Surrender brings inner calmness, awareness, and understanding. And lest we forget that our outer lives are a reflection of our inner state of being.

Thus, take a moment to remind yourself of some things many of us typically attach to long after it’s time to let go, so you can loosen your grip on them as you move forward… (more…)

12 Sticky Notes We All Need Hanging Up on Our Walls (Until We Feel Stronger)

It’s not what you say to everyone else that determines your life; it’s what you whisper to yourself that has the greatest power.

The best lessons we learn in life are the lessons we learn over and over again. The human mind needs lots of reminders — lots of practice — to operate effectively. For example, deep down we know it’s OK to…

Say “no”Speak upTell the truthBelieve differentlyChange our mindPrioritize our needsLearn from our mistakesEmbrace our imperfectionsForgive and seek forgivenessBegin again, with grace and gratitude

Yet, we often (more…)

3 Daily Habits that Often Drain 90 Percent of Our True Potential

“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

As you age you will learn to value your time, genuine relationships, meaningful work, and peace of mind, much more. Little else will matter.

Deep down you know that already, right?

Yet on most days, just like the majority of us, you are distracted by so many others things. You give your time to lots of meaningless time-wasters. You take your important relationships for granted. You get to work skeptically with inner resistance. And you let everyday stress get the best of you…

Why?

Because you’re human, and human beings are (more…)

10 Life Choices We Will All Regret in 10 Years (If We’re Not Careful)

“If only…” These 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 incredibly common and specific life choices 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…)