Life

31 Five-Second Reminders that Will Make Calmness Your Superpower

06.20.2022 by Angel Chernoff // 15 Comments

Your goal is to grow so strong on the inside that nothing on the outside can affect your inner peace of mind without your conscious permission.

The ultimate measure of your wisdom and strength? How calm you are when facing any given situation. Yes, calmness is a human superpower. The ability to not overreact or take things personally keeps your thoughts clean and your heart at peace, which instantly gives you an upper hand regardless of your circumstances.

Thus, the biggest and most complex obstacle you will ever have to overcome is your own mind. If you can overcome that, you can overcome almost anything. And by “overcoming,” I’m referring to the skill of mindfulness, and learning to effectively control your emotional responses to life’s unexpected tests. Because most of your deepest pain and frustration on a daily basis will come from the way you respond, not the way life is.

Of course, being calm and mindful is easier said than done, [Read more…]

9 Hard Things You Have to Do to Move Forward with Your Life

06.10.2022 by Marc Chernoff // 21 Comments

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, I had a wise mother nearby who gave me some good advice. She told me that she could still see a positive, passionate young man inside of me, but that I needed to do some soul searching to reconnect myself to him.

As I attempted to follow my mother’s advice, I remembered that I used to have two quotes written on post-it notes hanging on my bedroom wall when I was a kid: [Read more…]

5 Painfully Obvious Truths We Tend to Forget in Hard Times

06.01.2022 by Angel Chernoff // 23 Comments

The truth does not cease to exist when it is forgotten.

You know how you can read or hear something dozens of times in dozens of different ways before it finally sinks in? The little truths listed below fall firmly into that category — timeless life lessons that many of us likely learned years ago, and have been reminded of ever since, yet for whatever reason we tend to forget in the heat of the moment.

This, my friends, is my attempt at helping all of us, myself included, “get it” and “remember it” once and for all, especially as we collectively cope with the evolving struggles in the world today…

Reminder: Our 6th annual Think Better, Live Better conference just took place this past weekend in Orlando. If you didn’t attend in person, get yourself a full recording of the 2022 live event HERE.

1. Life is short, and nothing is guaranteed.

We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen to all of us eventually, and yet we are infinitely surprised when it happens to someone we know. It’s like walking up a flight of stairs with a distracted mind, and misjudging the final step. You expected there to [Read more…]

40 Quotes for Coping with Things You Can’t Control

05.26.2022 by Marc Chernoff // 17 Comments

The goal is to grow so strong on the inside that nothing on the outside can affect your inner wellness without your conscious permission.

How you cope with unexpected stress and frustration 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 deny the situation, or to avoid dealing with it altogether. But by doing so you’re inadvertently holding on even tighter to the pain that you wish to let go of — you’re, in effect, sealing it up inside you.

Let’s imagine someone close to you has grown ill, and supporting this person through his or her illness is incredibly painful. You might not want to deal with the pain, so you cope by avoiding it, by finding ways to numb yourself with alcohol and unhealthy eating. And consequently, you grow physically ill too while the pain continues to fester inside you.

Obviously, that’s not good.

If you notice yourself doing something similar, it’s time to pause, admit to yourself that you’re coping by avoiding, and then shift your focus to a healthier coping mechanism, like using the quotes listed later in this post (several of which are excerpts from our books) to help you open your mind.

When you face struggles with an attitude of openness — open to the painful feelings and emotions you have — you find out that it’s not comfortable, but you can still be fine and you can still step forward. Openness means you don’t instantly decide that you know this is only going to be a horrible experience — it means you admit that you don’t really know what the next step will be like, and you’d like to understand the whole truth of the matter. It’s a learning stance, instead of one that assumes the worst.

Reminder: Our 6th annual Think Better, Live Better conference is taking place this coming weekend in Orlando. If you can’t attend in person, get yourself a full recording of the 2022 live event HERE.

The General Benefits of Healthy Coping

Coping certainly isn’t an [Read more…]

An Open Letter to Those Who Are Trying to Make the Best of a Bad Situation

05.12.2022 by Angel Chernoff // 20 Comments

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.”
— Iain Thomas

This article was inspired by a short email we received this morning from a new course student:

Dear Marc and Angel,

There’s so much meaning and value I want to foster in my present life, and yet a tragic past continues to drag me down. I feel like I have weights tied to my ankles. It’s the heaviness of grief that still sneaks up on me. Truly, I’ve been through a lot – the toughest and most heartbreaking of which was losing my husband in a car accident when he was only 35-years-old. And right now, six years later, I’m at a point where I’m trying to make the best of a bad situation, but I wake up on some mornings and just can’t seem to let go of the way things were “supposed to be” in my life.

Anyway, I know you can’t solve all my problems, but I was hoping you could shine some light on my situation. I could use a little perspective today. Do you have any wisdom you could share?

Sincerely,
A Struggling Student

Reminder: Our 6th annual Think Better, Live Better conference is taking place May 28-29, 2022 in Orlando. We just released 4 more discounted early bird tickets that are still available right now (while they last). Check out the 2022 event here.

Our reply (an open reply to all who are trying to make the best of a bad situation):

Dear Struggling Student,

Marc and I just finished reading your email, together, and we sincerely wish we could start by giving you two of the biggest, longest hugs imaginable. But since that’s not possible at this very moment, let me tell you about an unexpected phone call I received in the middle of the night last night.

My phone rang just before midnight. I didn’t answer. Then it rang again a minute later. I rolled over, grabbed it off the nightstand, and [Read more…]