Marc Chernoff's Blog, page 50

9 Life (Saving) Choices Too Many People Wait Too Long to Make

They always say time changes things, but oftentimes you actually have to choose to change them yourself.

Maybe it’s the life lessons I was forced to learn the hard way, or the toll of loss and failure I had recently endured, but fifteen years ago in the midst of a panic attack on my 27th birthday, I had to admit to myself right then and there that the youthful world of possibility I once felt now seemed dead inside me. I wanted to feel light and free and ambitious and passionate again, but I didn’t know how. Luckily my wise mother, who has always been a true lifesaver, gave me some good advice. She told me (more…)

4 Ways to Actively Practice Letting Go (When You Catch Yourself Holding On)

If you worry too much about what might be, or what might have been, you will ignore and overlook what is. Remember this. On the average day happiness is letting go of what you assume life is supposed to be like, and sincerely appreciating it for everything it is.

Over the past decade, as Marc and I have gradually worked with hundreds of our course students, coaching clients, and live event attendees, we’ve come to understand that the root cause of most human stress is simply our stubborn propensity to hold on to things. In a nutshell, we hold on tight to the (more…)

One Tragic Mistake Too Many People Make Every Single Day

Busyness… is an illness.

On a chilly January morning just inside the entryway to a Washington D.C. subway station, a young man took his violin out of its case and brought it up to his shoulder. He was dressed in regular clothes — just jeans and a t-shirt. And although he had a face many people found attractive, on this particular morning it was mostly obscured by a dark baseball cap and shaggy brown hair.

After plucking the strings for a couple minutes to tune his instrument, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a (more…)

20 Little Things to Remember When Rejection Hurts

Be OK with walking away. Rejection teaches you how to reject what’s not right for you.

As you look back on your life, you will realize that many of the times you thought you were being rejected by someone or from something you wanted, you were in fact being redirected to someone or something you needed. Seeing this when you’re in the midst of feeling rejected, however, is quite tough. I know because I’ve been there…

As soon as someone critiques, criticizes, and pushes you away — as soon as you are rejected — you (more…)

16 Life Choices You Shouldn’t Have to Justify to Anyone Else

You don’t need to justify anything. You don’t need to change just so someone will like you. Be your best self and the right ones will love the real you.

Your life is yours alone. Others can try to persuade you, but they can’t decide for you. They can walk with you, but not in your shoes. So make sure the path you decide to walk aligns with your own intuition and desires, and don’t be scared to walk alone and pave your own path when you know it’s the right thing to do.

Will the people in your life always support your decisions? No they likely won’t. But you need to remember that life is not about justifying yourself — it’s about creating yourself.

So make this your lifelong motto: “I respectfully do not care.” Say it to anyone who (more…)

Sharing These 20 Truths with Your Child Could Change Their Life (and Yours)

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”
— Margaret Mead

Our children grow up so fast. Before we know it they’re out there somewhere in the real world, and we’re left hoping that we’ve done enough to prepare them for everything they’ll encounter. Marc and I talk to course students and coaching clients on a daily basis — mothers and fathers alike — who share these sentiments. They worry about their children. They wonder if they’ve done a good enough job parenting up to this point. And Marc and I can relate too, because oftentimes we feel the same way. We’re concerned about our son Mac’s well-being and education, and we discuss it frequently just like most parents do.

In fact, from what we’ve researched and studied, the well-being and education of their children is more important to most parents than just about anything else — more important than health care, cost of living, public safety, and even their own (more…)

18 Things My Now 80-Year-Old Dad Was Right About

“One day you will look back and see that all along you were blooming.”
— MHN

Twenty-seven years ago, when I was a freshman in high school, my English teacher gave my class a homework assignment entitled, “Advice for a Younger Generation.” The concept of the assignment was simple: Each student had to interview a person who was over the age of 25, gather enough information to write a basic biography of their life and find out what their top tips are for a younger generation. I chose to interview my dad. He was (more…)

12 Empowering Reminders We Need to Read Every Morning for the Rest of the Year

Where you ultimately end up is dependent on your daily attitude and response.

This morning one of our course students, Monica — a recovering victim of a fairly recent and debilitating car accident — was smiling from ear to ear the minute our FaceTime coaching session began. “What has you in such good spirits today?” I asked her. “I’m thinking differently about things…about how lucky I am to be alive,” she replied. “I thought the injuries I sustained in that accident last year signified the end of life as I know it, but now I realize they signify the beginning.”

All details aside, Monica decided to begin (more…)

5 Brutal Lessons that Ultimately Make Life Beautiful

The most common reason for our collective suffering on an average day is our resistance to the truth.

Sometimes it’s brutally hard to accept life’s greatest lessons, and yet we must.

Because it’s lessons like these that ultimately make our lives beautiful, by showing us how to thrive even through the toughest of times:

1. Everyone and everything in life is limited.

You can never read all the books you want to read. You can never train yourself in all the skill sets you want to have. You can never be (more…)

One Simple Perspective Shift that Will Change the Way You See the World

As human beings, we subconsciously tell ourselves stories pretty much every waking minute of our lives. And these stories we tell ourselves don’t just change how we feel, they actually change what we see, what we experience, and what we know to be true. This is one of the primary reasons multiple people can go through the same experience, but interpret it differently. Each of us may enter a shared experience with a different story echoing through our mind, and our unique story — our inner dialog — alters the way we feel. So each of us exits this shared experience with a different perspective on what just happened. And sometimes these differences literally make (more…)