Stop Taking Life Seriously

A post by philipparchan.com:

“Over the past one and a half years a lot changed in my life. In the end of 2013 I went through the most difficult phase of my life so far and it almost broke me. There was massive change going on in a lot of areas including friendships, the end of a relationship and making future decisions aka. life path. Long story short I had what were the worst couple of months of my life and I was at a point where I thought I’d never be happy again.

But after a couple of weeks I started to accept the fact that I was feeling miserable at the time and things slowly began to alter. I accidentally came across a book called The power of now by Eckhart Tolle. It planted some seeds in my head which supported big parts of my mindset to shift – slowly but steady. Of course not only the book had an impact on me but it felt just like a starting signal and I found it just at the right time. Since then my view on life totally u-turned and I am as happy as I’ve never been before. Before that I haven’t been a really relaxed guy and was very serious in my perspective on life. Looking at my thoughts, values and attitude back then, I feel like I’m a completely different person today.

 

I want to share my key insights and mindset shifting thoughts with you here as I hope they can help some of you. What I am not going to do right now is to write down some wishy-washy inspirational sentences to print out and stick on your bathroom door, I will rather try to describe how my thoughts on different topics changed and make it tactical for you so you can work on that from right now on – if you want. Remember this is and will always be a long-term process and nothing here changes over night and yes we will always catch us falling back into old patterns of thoughtand that is ok. As soon as you recognize that, you’re already on the right path and working on it.

 

I will write the key takeaways in one sentence in bold. If you’re in a hurry or don’t want to read a lot, just read those and you will probably get the idea (well… maybe not at the first one.) For all of you who feel like they’re resonating with a thought, I’ll add some sentences to explain further.

 

We’re only here for an hour, so enjoy. If you see the history of mankind as the length of an average human life, the time we are going to spend as a human on this planet is a bit more than an hour. So neither are we here for very long, nor are we really important. And I absolutely perceive this as something positive. We tend to see ourselves as the most important thing in universe, but realizing we’re not so significant in the big picture takes a lot of pressure and allows us to have fun, make the most of our time and esteem it. So I feel it as an obligation to have a lot of fun and if I get caught in thoughts or lost in a bad mood, I remind myself: I’m only here for an hour and I’m not going to waste this hour feeling bad.

 

Don’t hold on too tightly to something. Stop worrying about loss (of money, of all possessions, even of life itself.) It is easy to get caught up in thoughts about what is “mine”, what is “yours” and what/ who belongs to whom and so on. Fact is, we have gotten the wonderful chance to come on this planet but we came with nothing and we will leave with nothing. We are not in the position of claiming a right on anything, we can only be grateful and never greedy. Several studies and countless interviews with super successful people and also with dying people have shown that in the end it is definitely not our possessions that matter. Of course everyone needs a certain amount of money/food to survive but focusing mainly on objects/money will NEVER make you truly and sustainably happy. Friends, family, lovers, personal and spiritual development and experiences will. But same goes for people – don’t hold on too tightly. You can’t force it. You will see that it is true: once you start being comfortable with letting things go you will receive more than you ever imagined.

 

Be crazy. Life is just more fun this way. Push yourself out of your comfort zone. Stop thinking about what other people might think of you. They actually almost never do because everyone is so involved with himself. It’s just more fun to be crazy sometimes and be confident about it. And all the looks you might get by the “normal” people are really just saying: “God, I wish I dared to live like this myself.” If in doubt, just say to yourself: Will anyone remember the crazy sh*t I’m about to do right now in one year, one month, even one week? In 99,alotofnines% the answer definitely is: No.

If you feel like you’re not the “kind of guy/girl” to go crazy now and then, remember that also in this area, practice does the trick. Start with small wins and push it further if you feel comfortable to do so. Try to shout a friend’s name who is approaching you but is still further away. Wave towards him/her and don’t let peoples looks bother you. Sing along to a song playing in your headphones when people are standing next to you who can hear you. Don’t even care about them. Start small. Make it easy to win on a small scale in the beginning.

By pushing your comfort zone and forcing yourself to be in situations that make you sweat a little, you are giving a present to yourself. Not only will you feel great afterwards for overcoming your own barriers, by constantly doing so you will feel more confident AND people will perceive you as more confident. That feeling of being a child again and excitement in every area of life is just great. If you’re interested in pushing your comfort zone I can only recommend to check out the website of a great guy named Till: www.comfortzonecrusher.com (no affiliation). You can learn more about that topic there.

 

Worrying is unuseful thinking about the future. No matter how much you worry about the future, will you ever know how it is going to be before you are there? Right. Of course not. I am not saying that one should never think about the future. We all have to. But you should encourage yourself to limit those thoughts to an absolute minimum. About a week ago I was travelling by plane and although I’ve flewn a lot before and have no problem with flying per se, it was the first time I’ve been travelling by plane without friends with me. And even though there was not a slightest problem I felt that deep inside I was worrying a bit if everything was going to work out. Then I decided to try a technique I picked up in a book a while ago (I think it was in Tim Ferriss’ FourHourWorkWeek): I just pictured the worst case scenario (my train to the airport being late, getting off on a wrong station, getting lost inside the airport, missing my plane) and what I would do about it in that case. By doing so, I came to the conclusion that it would all be more or less okay and manageable and even if everything goes completely wrong it would at least make up a great story. From that point on I felt much more relaxed and was able to remain in the present moment much easier. You can use this technique almost every time if you catch yourself worrying about something.

 

Accept. If life throws something at you, it will be much easier to deal with it if you accept it first and start working with the situation afterwards. This sounds like total common sense right now but if you think back you can probably remember that you have – usually not only once – resisted something that already WAS. Also if it sounds crazy, this is what people (including me) constantly do. Same thing I wrote about in the beginning, before I didn’t accept my feeling miserable, I wasn’t able to start working on my situation.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying you should accept everything and just say yes and amen to all the things that happen. I’m a huge proponent of fighting for what you believe in and trying to change things that are wrong. But it is always easier and healthier for yourself to accept first and work with what you got afterwards.

 

I could probably write a couple more key insights and I maybe will but I don’t want to overload here. These are a few good thoughts to start with I suppose. If you want to read what I will write in the future, I’d be happy for you to PM me.

 

I really hope this helps a lot of people and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, what other things you might struggle with or which thought resonated the most with you.”

2 Replies to “Stop Taking Life Seriously”

  1. Thank you Charlie, I have been working on these perspectives myself. Sometimes I forget to look at the world as an entire experience and fall back into my own narrow experience. A timely read of wisdom such as yours will keep my perspective broader for a while longer.

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