Marc and Angel Hack Life

7 Mantras that Will Stop You from Taking Things Personally

01.12.2021 by Marc Chernoff // 70 Comments

Don’t let the drama of today bring you down. Keep calm when stress or negativity surrounds you. Breathe, and let calmness be your superpower. The ability to not overreact or take things personally always gives you the upper hand.

Remind yourself that people are toxic to be around when they believe everything happening around them is a direct assault on them, or is in some way all about them.

It’s the truth. Let it sink in…

What people say and do to you is much more about them, than you. People’s reactions to you are about their perspectives, wounds and experiences. Whether people think you’re amazing or believe you’re the worst, again, is more about them and how they view the world.

Now, I’m not suggesting we should be self-indulged narcissists and ignore all the opinions and commentary we receive from others. I’m simply saying that incredible amounts of hurt, disappointment and sadness in our lives come directly from our tendency to take things personally. In most cases it’s far more productive and healthy to let go of other people’s good or bad opinions of you, and to operate with your own intuition and wisdom as your guide.

The underlying key is to…

Watch Your Response

When something stressful happens in a social situation, [Read more…]

10 Things to Remember When Everything You Want is Out of Reach

01.05.2021 by Angel Chernoff // 64 Comments

Doubt your doubts before you doubt your hope.

That’s the super-short version of my advice for those moments when nothing seems to be going as planned in the days and weeks ahead—when everything you want seems out of reach.

Yes, just be right where you are, with an open mind.

Let go of what you think your life is supposed to look like and sincerely appreciate it for everything that it is.

Easier said than done of course, especially when tragedy strikes. And although Marc and I have coped and grown through our fair share of real tragedies (including the recent pandemic), let’s be honest about something: 98% of the time we create tragedy in our daily lives out of fairly minor incidents. Something doesn’t go exactly as planned, but rather than learn from the experience, we freak out about it and let stress become us.

My challenge for you today is [Read more…]

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

01.01.2021 by Marc Chernoff // 47 Comments

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

This morning one of our coaching clients, 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 again, in her mind first and then in her life. It’s taken her several months of healing and practice, but she has consciously let go of the “shoulda, woulda, coulda” attachments in her head about her circumstances, and she has stepped forward with grace and determination. Her new beginning has nothing to do with the recent New Year, and everything to do with a new way of thinking.

Truth be told, today is really the beginning, for all of us. And we can prevent the wrong thoughts and beliefs from getting the best of us as we move forward with our lives in 2021. We can train our minds to make the very best of the present moment, even when our circumstances are far less than ideal. All it takes is practice.

The mind is like a muscle, and just like every muscle in the human body, it needs to be exercised to gain strength. It needs to be trained daily to grow and develop gradually over time. If you haven’t pushed your mind in a dozen little, positive ways over the course of time, of course it’ll crumble on the inevitable days that get overwhelmingly stressful.

The easiest way to begin strengthening the mind? [Read more…]

21 Tiny Changes You Can Make in Your Home to Make Life Simpler in 2021

12.30.2020 by Angel Chernoff // 207 Comments

by Joshua Becker, author of The Minimalist Home

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”
—Hans Hofmann

Have incredible stories to tell by the end of 2021, not incredible clutter stuffed in your closets. I sincerely wish this for my family, and yours, in the year ahead.

So, let me start off here by asking you…

Does your home serve you—or do you serve your home?
Will your home afford you the necessary space to create happy, healthy memories and stories in the year ahead?

These are not questions most of us ask ourselves, but we should. After all, our homes are meant to serve a distinct purpose in our lives—to be both the space we come back to, and the space we go out from each day. Our homes are, in essence, the foundation of our daily lives. This has been especially true over the past year, while we’ve lived through COVID-19.

And as we enter the New Year, it’s a great time to check in with yourself…

If your home is serving you well, it is [Read more…]

5 Year-End Mantras that Will Move Your Life Forward in 2021

12.28.2020 by Marc Chernoff // 37 Comments

Let’s end this crazy year with a quick story about life…

Tragedy strikes a woman who isn’t yet old. A minivan traveling toward her on a dark mountain highway hits her car nearly head-on just after sunset. She grips her steering wheel as hard as she can and veers into the rocky mountainside until her car screeches to a halt. The minivan flips onto its side and skids in the other direction off a cliff, plummeting nearly 500 feet to the ground below. Inside, a young family of five on their way to grandma’s house for New Year’s Eve.

The woman doesn’t recall the events that followed during the next several days. She doesn’t recall the three eye witnesses who comforted her and assured her that it wasn’t her fault—that the other driver had swerved into her lane. She doesn’t recall how she got to the emergency room or the fact that she stayed there for over a week, well into the New Year, to treat a [Read more…]