Are you making life difficult for yourself?
Or are you consciously setting yourself up, to experience life, without allowing anything to kill your vibe?
Life doesn’t have to be hard. It really doesn’t. You’re the gatekeeper of your happiness, the catalyst of your success (or failure) and the master of your universe.
You can make life more enjoyable for yourself. Actually, you’re the only one who can. You just need to first be aware of the ways you’re sabotaging your inner peace and joy…
12 Ways You’re Making Life Difficult for Yourself…
1. You’re not in touch with yourself.
You’re not aware. You’re not in tune with your essence.
(This actually allows the rest of the items listed to come to fruition.)
Get to know yourself. Get to know your body. Be aware of your thoughts, emotions, actions…etc. Awareness is the first step in changing anything, and your point of personal power.
2. You care too much about what other people think.
Not caring what people think is the ultimate freedom. It living based on inner inspiration, as opposed to perpetually being at the mercy of external forces.
“Here’s the truth : the tribe doesn’t give a shit. There is no tribe. That gang or posse that we imagine is sustaining us by the bonds we share is in fact a conglomeration of individuals who are just as fucked up as we are and just as terrified. Each individual is so caught up in his own bullshit that he doesn’t have two seconds to worry about yours or mine, or to reject or diminish us because of it.When we truly understand that the tribe doesn’t give a damn, we’re free. There is no tribe, and there never was. Our lives are entirely up to us.” -Steven Pressfield (Turning Pro)
Are you living life on your own terms, or someone else’s?
3. You’re living your life based on other peoples’ (or society’s) expectations.
Piggybacking off of the last point, if you care too much about what other people think, that means you’re living your life based on their terms (or society’s terms) instead of your own. It’s your life.
I’ll say it one more time…
It’s… your… life.
If your life is based on the standards and expectations of others, you’re ignoring your inner genius, being dragged around by external forces and making life unnecessarily difficult for yourself.
4. You have a victim mentality.
A victim mentality creates a victim reality. It leaves you pessimistic, downtrodden, craving attention, dependent, and pretty much everything “negative” you can think of.
Having a victim mentality is self-imposed suffering and bondage. Lose it, if you want to truly live as you were destined to.
Be empowered and positive, and your reality molds accordingly.
See my post on the victim mentality here.
5. You have rigid beliefs.
Are your beliefs bringing you to a state of love, or a state of fear?
Are your beliefs creating obsessive compulsive behaviors?
Don’t you want to cultivate inner peace, instead of rigid, nonsensical behaviors that make life difficult?
Do you have to take one shoe off and hop five times every day at noon? (Not because you want to, but because it says you must do so in a book written by who knows who, who knows when, in who knows what context and translated and edited by who knows who.)
Are you following “rules” out of fear? Or are you letting love be your motivating force?
Skip all the fear-based bullshit used for controlling people. Choose love, and uncover your natural state of inner peace.
6. You have obsessive compulsive behaviors.
You have inflexible rituals. You have routines that make no sense. You have habits that don’t benefit you, at all. Why?
Drop the behaviors, rituals, habits and routines that don’t serve your best interest. There’s no need to hold onto them.
And be like water my friend…
Life becomes infinitely more enjoyable when you just go with the flow. Go with the flow of life. Go with the flow of your intuition. Go with the flow of love.
7. You’re trying to please everybody.
Learn to say “no” when necessary. Constantly trying to please everyone is a sure-fire way to make your life miserable. Because in doing this, you don’t live life on your own terms, while constantly compromising your character.
Develop yourself, and almost paradoxically, you’ll have the capacity to give much more.
“Become the strongest version of yourself, then help others do the same.” -Elliott Hulse
8. You’re not present. You’re clinging to the past and worrying about the future.
All forms of suffering and (mental/emotional) pain come from not being present. Think about it. When you worry about something, it’s always in the future. When you’re holding onto anger, it’s because of what happened in the past. Be aware, be present, and fall into the depths of inner peace.
But on the flipside you can make life difficult for yourself if you don’t plan when it’s necessary, or learn from the past when it’s relevant to the present. (Both of which are done in the present, by the way.)
“The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more ore you are free of pain, of suffering – and free of the egoic mind. Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.” -Eckhart Tolle
9. You have preconceived notions about everything.
Instead of being open to all possibilities, you project (often fear-based and controlling) desires upon people and situations. When you have control (fear)-based beliefs on how situations and people should be, you set yourself up for disappointment. Preconceived notions are another form of living in the future, as discussed above.
Be open to all possibility, be present and go with the flow of life.
10. You’re too comfortable to create change.
There are so many people who are too comfortable with their fears and their pain. It’s sad that the idea of change (even for the better) can seem harder than staying in a negative situation. Don’t let your essence rot away by staying in negative situations. You have the power to change. Release your fears and practice stepping out of your comfort zone, even if it’s through very small changes at first.
11. You’re afraid of death.
You’re afraid of non-existence. This is the root of all fear. And fear is the root of all things labeled as “negative.” There’s no need to fear though…
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Don’t fear death. Embrace it. It’s the only certainty in life. Use it as motivation to live every day to the fullest.
“Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.” – James Dean
12. You hold the belief that life is difficult.
When you hold a belief, guess what “reality” you get as a result?
Your “reality” mirrors your beliefs
“Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.” – Albert Einstein
“The world is a mirror, forever reflecting what you see inside yourself.” -Neville Goddard
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” ― Anaïs Nin
“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” ― Wayne W. Dyer
Change your perception, change your reality.
Stop making life difficult for yourself.
Stay feelin’ good, feelin’ great.
-Stevie P!
