5 Ideas You Must Leave Behind to Get Ahead in Life

12.10.2019 by Angel Chernoff // 27 Comments

5 Things You Must Leave Behind to Get Ahead in Life

If you don’t allow yourself to move past what happened, what was said, what was felt, you will look at your present and future through that same dirty lens.

You can never change things by holding on to the existing reality. To get ahead in life, you have to leave some things behind and build a new model for living that makes the existing model obsolete.

You must make a firm decision that you’re going to make a change too. It won’t always happen naturally or automatically. Sometimes you will have to rise up against the wind and say, “I don’t care how hard this is! I don’t care how disappointed I am! I’m not going to let this get the best of me! I’m leaving this behind and moving forward with my life!”

Ready?

Starting today, it’s time to leave behind… [Read more…]

7 Assumptions We Need to Stop Making About Other People

12.03.2019 by Marc Chernoff // 24 Comments

7 Assumptions We Need to Stop Making About Other People

Never underestimate a person’s challenges. Everyone is struggling. Some are just better at hiding it than others.

Too often we judge people too quickly, or too subjectively. We tell ourselves stories about them without thinking it through—our perceptions and biases get the best of us. I was reminded of this today when I received the following in an email from a Think Better, Live Better 2020 ticket-holder (I’m sharing this with permission):

“…I learned the hard way that a smile can hide so much—that when you look at a person you never know what their story is or what’s truly going on in their life. This harsh reality became evident to me this morning when I found out one of my top students—always straight A’s, a positive attitude, and a smile on her face—died by suicide last night. Why? Nobody seems to know. And it’s killing me inside.”

Talk about a reality check, right?

What we tell ourselves about others—what we think we know—is often far from the truth.

And with that in mind, I’m sitting here reflecting on all the little things we have to stop assuming about other people, for their sake and ours… [Read more…]

3 Great Ways to Force Yourself to Be More Grateful (and a Little Happier)

11.26.2019 by Angel Chernoff // 33 Comments

3 Great Ways to Feel More Grateful (and a Lot Happier)

At the end of the day, before you close your eyes, breathe deeply, appreciate where you are, and be grateful for what you have. Life is good.

Most of us have amazing family members, friends, and other loved ones who love us back. Learn to appreciate what a gift that is. Most of us have good health, which is another gift. Most of us have eyes, with which to enjoy the amazing gifts of sunsets and nature and beauty all around us. Most of us have ears, with which to enjoy music–one of the greatest gifts of them all.

We may not have all these things, because we can’t have everything, but we certainly have plenty to be grateful for. To an extent, we know this already, and yet we forget. It happens to the best of us.

Sometimes Marc and I get so caught up pursuing the next big thing that we forget to pause and appreciate the things we have, and the things we’ve experienced, learned and achieved along the way. And the most tragic part of this is that our happiness takes a major hit.

The Science of Gratitude and Happiness

As human beings, when we aren’t grateful for what we have, we aren’t capable of being happy.

This is not just some self-improvement cliché either. It’s been scientifically proven. For example, [Read more…]

5 Signs You’ve Been Doing Too Much for Too Long

11.12.2019 by Marc Chernoff // 20 Comments

5 Signs You've Been Doing Far Too Much for Too Long

When things aren’t adding up in your life, begin subtracting.

Busyness is an illness.

Think about your own life and the lives of those close to you. Most of us have a tendency to do as much as we possibly can—cramming every waking minute with events, extravagances, tasks and obligations.

We think doing more will get us more satisfaction, success, etc. When oftentimes the exact opposite is true.

Less can be far more rewarding in the long run. But we’re so set in our ways that we can’t see this.

And so…

When we work, we shift from one task to the next quickly and continuously, or we multi-task—juggling five things at once until the end of the day… and yet we still feel like we haven’t done enough of the right stuff.
When we finally break away for some healthy exercise, we tend to push ourselves as hard as we possibly can… until we’re exhausted and sore, and less likely to want to exercise tomorrow.
When we go to a nice restaurant, we want to try all the appetizers, drinks and entrees, indulging in as much deliciousness as we possibly can… and we leave feeling bloated, sometimes uncomfortably so, and then our waistlines stretch.
When we travel to a new city, we want to see it all—every landmark and every photo op—so we do as much as physically possible… and we return home from our trip utterly exhausted.

How can we tame our urge to do too much? [Read more…]

A 2-Minute Morning Routine that Guarantees a Great Start to the Day

11.04.2019 by Angel Chernoff // 21 Comments

by Neil Pasrisha, author of You Are Awesome

“Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.”
― Meister Eckhart

Do you know that clichéd Catholic confession chamber scene from the movies?

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” the mobster says, on bended knee, behind the metal lattice. “I put Two-Faced Tony in a vice at the deli and chopped him out of the family.”

I didn’t grow up Catholic, yet it always seemed interesting to me that confession was a religious practice.

I looked into this as part of my research for my new book on resilience You Are Awesome: How To Navigate Change, Wrestle With Failure, and Live an Intentional Life. I found it’s not just Catholicism! The act of confessing is an integral part of many world religions from Catholicism to Islam to Judaism to Mormonism to Buddhism.

Over the ages of our species coming into its own, across different geographies, different times, different backgrounds, we were somehow all wise enough to include a little emotional geyser of confession as part of how we lived and worshipped together.

Why?

Well, it seems [Read more…]