Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life (Unfu*k Yourself series)

by Gary John Bishop

In simple terms, the language you use to describe your circumstances determines how you see, experience, and participate in them and dramatically affects how you deal with your life and confront problems both big and small.

can make small problems seem bigger—and even create problems where none existed before. Here’s the breaking news: your self-talk is fucking you over and in ways you can’t even begin to imagine.

Sometimes negative self-talk leads to anger, sadness, or frustration that manifests in different or seemingly unrelated situations.

With enough of these little persistent items hanging around it’s easy to collapse them in with the bigger, more important things until we find ourselves overwhelmed or exhausted by life.

The way we talk doesn’t only affect us in the moment. It can seep into our subconscious and become internalized, changing our thoughts and behavior in the long term.

How willing are you to consider that your life is the way it is, not because of the weight of your circumstances or situation, but rather the weight of self-talk that pulls you down? That what you think you can and cannot do is influenced much more directly by some subconscious response than by the reality of life itself?!

If you keep looking out there (outside of yourself) to your circumstances and feverishly working to get out of them you’ll keep getting the same response. No power, no joy, no vitality. At best it’s a seesaw of success and disappointment, happiness and despair. Sometimes your circumstances just don’t change, sometimes they stagnate and crystalize. What if that thing you’re working toward, that thing you are sure will make you happier, better, or more confident doesn’t happen? What then? Even if it does arrive someday, what happens to your life between now and that day?

people spend their lives waiting for the cavalry, all the while never realizing they are the cavalry. Your life is waiting on you to finally show up.

You have the life you’re willing to put up with.

You cannot, I repeat CANNOT dwell in any blame game in your life. Even blaming yourself is completely useless.

But there is always something you can do to impact those circumstances even if you’ve had them for years and still can’t see a way. But first, you must be willing. To fully embrace my approach, you must first accept that while there are things that have happened in your life that you had no say in, you are 100 percent responsible for what you do with your life in the aftermath of those events. Always, every time, no excuses.

“Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant.”

Either you control your destiny, or your destiny will control you. Life won’t stop for your pauses and procrastinations. It won’t stop for your confusion or fear. It will continue right along without you. Whether you play an active part or not, the show will go

We often view ourselves as procrastinators or lazy or unmotivated. When, in reality, we’re simply unwilling.

Which one works for you in your life currently? “I am willing” or “I am unwilling”? Can you see how being unwilling can potentially be just as powerful as being willing?

Whether you work for $25 per hour or $50 per hour, forty hours of work is still forty hours of actual work.

Your future is not the answer to your present.

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

The person who accepts how unpredictable and uncertain life is has no choice but to embrace it.

You’re never going achieve your true potential if you’re hooked by what other people think.

Focus on the things you can control and release yourself from worrying about what you can’t, like the weather, the Dow Jones, or what your neighbor thinks about your haircut.

You are not your thoughts. You are not defined by what’s inside your head. You are what you do. Your actions.

do whatever you need to do to unfuck yourself and get into your life.

You are not your thoughts. Act. You are what you do.

They’ll say you can’t do it, you’re making a mistake, it’s impossible, you’ll fail. The more unique and out-of-the-box your endeavor is, the stronger the pushback can be. Why? Well, mostly because the other people in your life have gotten used to relating to you as a specific “kind” of person. So anytime you attempt to break out of that mold, you’re not only messing with your own world, you’re also messing with theirs.

Listen, when it comes down to it, the world doesn’t stop you from succeeding; you’re not that big of a deal. The universe is conspiring neither for nor against you, and the only thing that stops you is when you buy into the notion that you are stopped. Then, my friend, you really are stopped. Until then, it’s on like freaking Donkey Kong.

“Sometimes you just have to grind it out, stake your claim, and hustle for what you want.”

“Stop doing all that shit you know you shouldn’t be doing and start doing all the shit you know you should be doing.”

Take a moment to examine that situation, and you’ll soon realize that your anger was a product of expectations. The gap between how it is and how it should have been. You harbor an unspoken expectation that people in your life will be agreeable, you expect them to tell the truth and follow through on any agreements you have with them. Expect, expect, expect. And when they don’t match those expectations? Oh boy!

why is it you show more passion for your past than you do for your future?

“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”