Marc Chernoff's Blog, page 6

4 Hard Lessons We Slowly Learn by Letting Go in Life

If somebody is working on themselves and changing for the better, it’s unnecessary to keep bringing up their past. People can change and grow. You know that’s true. But have you given yourself a fair chance to change and grow, too?

Have you loosened your grip on what’s behind you, so you can step forward?

If you’re shaking your head, you aren’t alone. At times we all fall victim to our attachments. We simply don’t realize how often we block our own present blessings by holding on to everything so tightly.

Thus, it’s time for a quick true story about life and letting go…

When Our Old Stories Hold Us Back

She rarely makes eye contact. Instead, she looks down at the ground. Because the ground is safer. Because unlike people, it (more…)

10 Painfully Obvious Facts About Life We All Forget Too Often

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 facts discussed here fall firmly into that category — timeless truths and 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 (more…)

20 Things My Now 82-Year-Old Dad Was Right About the Whole Time

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

Twenty-nine 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…)

3 Small Morning Habits that Will Change the Rest of Your Life

A good morning, and thus a good day, aren’t experiences that magically happen — they are created consciously.

Most of us are distracted from the get-go every morning. Trivial activities like checking social media, watching TV, and worrying about things we can’t control often set the tone of the day. And that means we waste our most well-rested time on things that don’t matter, while gradually losing touch with the significant, controllable parts of our lives that actually do matter.

We simply forget that the morning hours are enormously important — they form the foundation from which the day is built. We forget that how we choose to spend these hours can be used to predict the kind of days we’re going to have, and ultimately the kind of lives we’re going to live. So if you feel like you’ve been getting a rough start lately, and stumbling through your days with diminished intention and focus, it’s time to consider (more…)

7 Daily Expectations that Often Drain 99 Percent of Our Joy and Peace

“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
— Bruce Lee

The biggest and most draining disappointments in our daily lives are often the result of misplaced expectations. This is especially true when it comes to our relationships and interactions with others. So don’t lower your standards, but do remember that removing your expectations of others is the best way to avoid being utterly disappointed and drained by them.

Which means it’s time to…

1. Stop expecting everyone to agree with you.

You deserve to find joy and inner peace in your own way. You deserve to (more…)

3 Daily Habits that Keep Holding 99 Percent of Us Back in Life

If it keeps you busy but will hold you back someday, it’s a distraction. Don’t settle.

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 vast majority of us 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 (more…)

10 Wake-Up Calls We Typically 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…)

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…)

1 Meaningful Step We Often Take Too Late in Life

Too often people 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…)

5 Great Truths We Often Learn the Hard Way in Life

Some of life’s greatest truths and lessons are the hardest to learn and accept, and yet we must. Because they ultimately allow us to navigate the inevitable obstacles we can’t avoid. So it’s time to remind yourself…

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 all the things you want to be and live all the lives you want to live. You can never spend all the time you want with the people you love. You can never feel every possible temperature, tone, and variation of emotion in a given situation. You are incredibly limited, just like everyone else.

In the game of life, we all receive a unique set of limitations and variables in the field of play. The question is: How will you (more…)