Secret to a happy life
A personal development guru who reckons she has cracked the formula to a happy life, has identified 15 things you need to give up in order to be truly satisfied.
Romanian blogger Luminita Saviuc, who is known as the Purpose Fairy, outlined her list of 15 things you must stop doing to secure emotional wellbeing in a Facebook post, which was shared more than 1.3 million times.
And now she has turned her advice into a book, 15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy, which promises to help people let go of the things that cause pain, stress and suffering.
1. Give up the need to always be right
Luminita advises taking the advice of self-help guru Wayne Dyer whenever you feel the overwhelming need to prove your point: ‘Would you rather be right, or would you rather be kind?’
If you feel the urge to get into an argument that you know will hurt someone else, just to drive home the fact that you’re correct, take a pause.
Ask yourself how much it really matters and if your ego really can’t handle just letting it go.
2. Give up the need to be in control
Many of struggle with needing to be in control of every situation.
It could be something that arises in your working environment, a conflict that breaks out with a stranger on the street, or even the behaviour of a loved one .
Allowing them to just ‘be’ and accepting that you can’t control situations or other people’s behaviour will make you feel a lot calmer.
3. Give up on blame
This is all about taking personal responsibility.
Stop placing the blame on to others for your own feelings or for things that you don’t have in life.
They may have hurt you or taken something away from you, but blaming them just dilutes your personal power and prevent you from taking responsibility for your own life.
4. Give up self-defeating inner thoughts
‘How many people are hurting themselves because of their negative, polluted and repetitive self-defeating mindset?’ Luminita said.
‘Don’t believe everything that your mind is telling you – especially if it’s negative and self-defeating. You are better than that.’
5. Give up your limiting beliefs
Stop telling yourself that you can’t do certain things or that what you want out of life is impossible.
This will do nothing but keep you stuck in a rut.
6. Give up complaining
This is a reminder that situations can only make you feel upset if you allow them to.
If you complain that something is making you feel sad, angry or anxious rather than looking at it positively then you will experience all of those things.
7. Give up criticising
Resist the temptation to criticise situations or people who are different to you.
Realise that everyone is the same in terms of their need to be loved and their desire to be understood and that we all have dreams.
8. Give up trying to impress people
There’s no point trying to be something you’re not in order to make other people like you.
Accepting yourself and revealing the real you will mean people are naturally drawn to you without any effort.
9. Give up resisting change
Stop seeing change as a negative and realise it’s something that will actually help you see improvements in your life.
10. Give up labels
If you see things, people or events that you don’t understand as ‘weird and different’ then you will never be able to grow and learn.
Stop labeling those things, people or events that you don’t understand as being weird or different and try opening your mind, little by little. Minds only work when open.
11. Give up your fears
You’ll be surprised how freeing it is if you decided to stop being afraid of a situation or person that fills you with dread.
Fear is created in the mind and doesn’t exist outside of it, so you can choose not to fuel it.
12. Give up excuses
For the most part, excuses do nothing but stop us from growing.
Instead of improving and moving forward, they keep us stuck and lying to ourselves when a lot of the time they aren’t event real.
13. Give up the past
Living in the past will do nothing but prevent you enjoying the present moment.
And while it’s good to have a clear vision for what you want in the future, your priority should always be living in the here and now.
14. Give up attachment
Luminita admits that this is something she found hard and still struggles with.
‘The moment you detach yourself from all things, you become so peaceful, so tolerant, so kind, and so serene,’ she said. ‘You will get to a place where you will be able to understand all things without even trying. A state beyond words.’
15. Give up living your life according to others’ expectations
Too many people live their lives according to what other people think is best for them and ignore their own needs and ambitions.
This can only lead to losing control and forgetting about what makes you truly happy.
If you constantly please other people you will eventually end up forgetting who you are.