The 20 Things You Need To Stop Doing To Yourself

We are our own greatest enemy. We doubt ourselves, complicate our lives, cloud our minds with unimportant thoughts and negativity, we punish ourselves, hate ourselves and then feel sorry for ourselves because “outside forces” are making our lives a living hell. Life is beautiful — you’re making yours a living hell all on your own. Each of us does things from time to time that make living happily more difficult than it needs to be.

Surely some of us have it difficult because those are the cards that we’re dealt, but most of us — especially those who are better off financially and don’t live on the streets — make our very own lives more difficult for ourselves. But there are things you can do to stop the miserable cycle that you have found yourself in — a cycle that I know all too well. Here’s 20 of them:

1. Stop Running From Your Problems and Procrastinating.

Problems don’t go away on their own. You can either make them go away or live with them. If you know you can’t live with them, then don’t procrastinate because the weight of them on your mind only increases over time. If you have a problem, then accept that you have a problem and face it — deal with it. Life is a long list of problems that must be overcome. The faster and better you overcome them, the better and happier your life will be.

2. Stop Lying To Yourself.

People will lie to you left and right throughout your life; don’t add to the pile of lies. It is one thing for others to be lying to you and an entirely different issue if you’re lying to yourself. You are the only person that you can trust…but if you have a habit of lying to yourself, then you can’t even trust yourself. You have to be able to rely on yourself and on what you believe.

If you know something to be false, then stop convincing yourself that it is or could possibly be true. Improbable is one thing, but impossible is another. Feeding yourself lies or half-truths will lead to the forming of a reality that doesn’t actually exist past the confines of your psyche.

3. Stop Living In The Past.

Yesterday was yesterday — it’s gone and will never again be. Everyone carries emotional baggage with them. Some of us carry the weight of a depressing past while others live in those happy long-gone moments that we consider to have been the best of our lives. You can reminisce if you’d like as long as you don’t forget that your reality exists only in the present.

It can be a dangerous thing to dwell on the past. Nostalgia can overcome us and make us feel that the world we are living in today falls short of the happiness we experienced in the past. Other times we will punish ourselves for mistakes that we have done and dwell in the negativity and bad feelings that we had. Whatever the case, be wary of focusing on past events and do your best to live in the moment.

4. Stop Attempting To Buy Happiness.

I’ve tried; it doesn’t work. You can buy drinks, buy drugs, buy sex, buy trips, buy experiences, buy toys and clothes…none of it will make you happy — at least not past the day that you buy them. I always revert to Paulo Coelho on this matter: happiness must be something attainable by each and every person no matter what his or her circumstance. If the poorest of the poor can be happy, then happiness cannot lie in the material.

5. Stop Relying On Others.

People have their own lives filled with their own headaches, own problems, own mishaps and own successes. Friendship is great, but often doesn’t weather the storm. Be self-reliant. Be independent. We all find ourselves alone at several points throughout our lives. If you find yourself on your lonesome and don’t know how to deal with it because you are used to having constant support, then you will drown.

6. Stop Fearing Failure.

Failure is such a derogatory term… I don’t understand why. Failing is learning in the real world. There is only so much that you can read up about the way the world works, but true knowledge comes from experience. And no one gets it right the first time around. You failed. Great. Try it again. And again. And again. The more times you get it wrong, the more ways you know NOT to do it.

7. Stop Doing The Same Thing Over And Over, Expecting Different Results.

At the same time, don’t keep making the same mistakes and expecting different results. If you tried something one way and it didn’t work, then guess what will happen when you try again exactly in the same manner? Failure is only good if you learn from it. Otherwise it really is just failure.

8. Stop Rejecting Prospective Partners Because Of Your Past Sh*tty Relationships.

You fell in love and had your heart broken; we all have. Luckily for you, now that you have experienced the pain of a broken heart, you have fully experienced the love cycle and can grow as an individual. Relationships, like the rest of life, are learning experiences. Don’t generalize and make yourself believe that all relationships end in heartache because that doesn’t have to be the case. Ultimately, you and your partner decide whether or not the relationship will work. Check your baggage at the door.

9. Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself.

Life is tough for everyone. The richest of the rich have problems. The poorest of the poor have problems. We make problems for ourselves — they don’t exist outside of us. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and start interacting with the world around you.

10. Stop Trying To Change Others.

People don’t want to be changed and most often can’t be changed. You must learn to accept people for who they are. The less you focus on all the things you find wrong about an individual, the more you can focus on how to deal with them and all their discrepancies. Don’t fix people; learn to deal with them and — I hate to say it — learn to manipulate them into doing what you want them to do; mind-f*ck them.

11. Stop Making Excuses.

I understand that the time isn’t right, the place isn’t right, and the stars have yet to align perfectly. The setting will never be perfect for anything. Perfect is not the alignment of outside forces; it’s making havoc the perfect opportunity. Stop making excuses and start making opportunities for yourself.

12. Stop Worrying.

Sh*t happens. Then it happens again. Then sh*t won’t happen for a day or two…and then it returns with a vengeance. The more responsibilities that you have the more you have to potentially worry about. The key is to not procrastinate and approach all problems logically. You only have so much time in a week to work on the things that need to be worked on. You can do so much with that time. As long as you do as much as you can do, there is nothing you should be worrying about. The only thing worth worrying about is your own laziness; everything else is out of your control. If you worry about things out of your control, then you are setting yourself up for a mental breakdown.

13. Stop Focusing On The Negative.

Negativity is overwhelming and contagious. It tints the way we look at the world and makes us believe that we are worse off than we actually are. Negativity and worry go hand in hand and can be the downfall of all that you have worked so hard for. Living in a world filled with your negative thoughts doesn’t leave any room for the positive. Focus on the negative and you will hate your life.

14. Stop Being Ungrateful.

Statistically speaking, if you are reading this then most people in the world have it worse off than you do. That may not be very comforting…but consider that most of these people are likely to be happier than you. Happiness does not lie in the material, but in the immaterial. Be grateful for what you do have — especially those that play important parts in your life. You could be worse off and may very well be worse off some time in the future. Enjoy whatever prosperity you have.

15. Stop Wasting Time.

You are only allotted a sliver of time to call your life. Use those minutes and hours to make the most of your life. Ever hear your elders complain about how fast time flies by? Listen. They’re speaking the truth.

16. Stop Overloading Your Schedule.

Doing more does not necessarily mean getting more done. It’s all about efficiency. Human beings require certain things in order to live tranquilly. Divvy up your time for all the things that you MUST do and then divvy the rest for the things that you WANT to do. Just make sure to be clear on what you need before you start going after what you want.

17. Stop Trying To Impress Others.

It’s not worth it. The only reason you should ever try to get on someone’s good side is if you need them for something — only in business. When it comes to more personal relationships you can’t do anything more than be yourself. If they don’t love you for who you are, then they will never truly love you.

18. Stop Wishing You Were Someone Else.

Make sure that you know who you are and do all you can to develop — not change. People don’t change, they develop and grow. You are a great individual because you are a human being. You have the potential to do anything you want. Figure out what it is that you want out of life and go after it. There is no need to change who you are to match some preexistent notion of who you should be. Of course, certain situations you may find yourself in will have certain rules of etiquette, which you will need to learn and adopt. However, who you know you are and who others perceive you to be does not have to be the same person.

19. Stop Overlooking The Simple Things In Life.

The simplest of things are the most beautiful of things. Take walks. Talk to strangers. Look up at the sky, the trees, the birds. Connect with nature and all that which comes at little to no price. We often do our best to reach for things that we believe will make us more in tune with reality — happier — only to find out that we were greatly mistaken. Life offers us simple beauties. Relish in them.

20. Stop Hating Yourself.

We are often too tough on ourselves. We hate ourselves for our failures and our inabilities — which makes no sense whatsoever. Failing is learning and inabilities can be turned into abilities with enough work and patience. Whatever you dislike about yourself can be changed… just be sure that it’s worth changing. My advice: learn to love yourself the way that you are. Changes are easier to make when you already have a good relationship with yourself.

All the religions have been teaching you to fight against nature

Religions say that you have to manage to do something unnatural

All the religions have been teaching you to fight against nature. Whatsoever is natural, is condemned. Religions say that you have to manage to do something unnatural, only then can you get out of the imprisonment of biology, physiology, psychology, and all the walls that surround you. But if you go on in harmony with your body, with your mind, with your heart, then the religions say you will never be able to go beyond you. That’s where I oppose all the religions. They have put a poisonous seed in your being, so you live in your body, but you don’t love your body.

The body serves you for 70, 80, 90, even 100 years, and there is no other mechanism that science has been able to invent which can be compared to the body. Its complexities, its miracles that it goes on doing for you. and you don’t even say thank you. You treat your body as your enemy, although your body is your friend. 

Perhaps every cell of your body has a small brain in it.

It takes care of you in every possible way, while you are awake, while you are asleep. Even in sleep it goes on taking care of you. When you are asleep and a spider starts moving on your leg, your leg throws it away without bothering you. The leg has a small brain of its own. So for small matters there is no need to go to the central system, to go to the brain—that much the leg can do. A mosquito is biting you, your hands move it or kill it, and your sleep is not disturbed. The hand is not supposed to have a brain, but certainly it has something which can only be called a very small brain. Even while you are asleep your body is continuously protecting you, and doing things which it is not generally supposed to. Perhaps every cell of your body has a small brain in it. And there are millions of cells in your body, millions of small brains, moving around, continuously taking care of you. 

The body has certain wisdom of its own.
 

You go on eating all kinds of things without bothering what happens when you swallow them. You don’t ask the body whether its mechanism, its chemistry, will be able to digest what you are eating. But somehow your inner chemistry goes on working for almost a century. It has an automatic system of replacing parts which have gone wrong. It goes on throwing them out, creating new parts; and you have to do nothing about it, goes on happening on its own. The body has certain wisdom of its own.

And the religions say that the body is your enemy, you have to starve it, you have to hit it hard, because unless you starve it, torture it, how are you going to be free of it? They say the only way to be free of it is to cut all attachments to it. They teach you hatred for your body, and this is something so dangerous. The very idea turns your greatest friend into your greatest enemy. 

Body simply serves you without any payment from your side, no salary, no facilities, and religions says go against it

These religions go on saying to you, “You have to be always fighting, you have to move against the current. Don’t listen to the body—whatever it says, do just the opposite. The body is hungry, let it be hungry. You starve it, it needs that treatment.” It simply serves you without any payment from your side, no salary, no facilities, and religions says go against it. When it wants to fall asleep, try to remain awake.

It is not your foe, it is your friend. It is a gift of nature to you. It is part of nature. It is joined with nature in every possible way. You are bridged not only with breathing; with sun rays you are bridged, with the fragrance of flowers you are bridged, with the moonlight you are bridged. You are bridged from everywhere; you are not a separate island. Drop that idea. You are part of this whole continent, and yet… it has given you an individuality. This is what I call a miracle. You are part and parcel of existence, yet you have an individuality. Existence has done a miracle, has made possible something impossible.

Men & Women, do they understand each other?

Man and woman make a single unit. So do our body parts and mind. Understanding the unity of polarities is the secret to feeling complete.

Basically, the polarities can be named man/woman: the masculine, the feminine. And it is closer to our human reality to understand it that way. We can call it negative and positive, but that would be a little far away. To call it yin and yang, Shiva and Shakti, man and woman, brings it very close to our heart—we know this duality.

Accept your other half

Man is attracted towards the woman, the woman is attracted towards the man, and yet when they are together they constantly fight. They cannot live separately and they cannot live together either. Attraction is tremendous, repulsion too. When you are with your woman or with your man, you start thinking of how to be alone. You start thinking of freedom, of being alone, and the beauty and the silence and all that. When you are alone you simply start feeling lonely and you start hankering for the other, and you start thinking of those loving spaces, warmth and all that. When alone you want to be together, when together you want to be alone.

Watch it; it has a great message for you. It simply says: you are half and the woman is half. Together you become one. But then a problem arises. In that moment of oneness, you are ecstatic, you rejoice, but then the problem arises: this oneness, is it man or woman? Which is the dominating factor? That is the conflict. Man and woman want to be one, but man wants to remain the dominating factor in that oneness; the woman should surrender, submit. And the same is the desire from the woman’s side that the man should surrender and submit.

Both want to be one, but that oneness has to be ‘mine’. If I am man then that oneness has to be man’s; the woman has to disappear into the man. If I am a woman then it has to be that of woman; the man has to disappear into the woman. Hence the conflict, the attraction and the repulsion, and the whole comedy and tragedy of life.

Follow your nature

The people, who are intelligent, should create a man’s movement for women’s liberation. They should fight! It is their imposed slavery on woman—they should feel guilty, they should undo whatsoever they have done. But if the woman starts fighting—and then naturally she starts thinking to be creative, paint, dance, sing, sculpt, compose—very unconsciously she is imitating man. And remember, woman imitating man will always be a second-rate man. And that is ugly. The very effort of being equal is lost. The woman can only be a first-rate woman. If she wants to be a man, she will only be a second-rate man. It is just the same way if a man wants to be receptive: he can’t have that natural receptivity of a woman. He will become a second-rate woman. To be first-rate you have to follow your nature.

Never imitate. Follow your own intrinsic nature. Follow your own built-in nature; because only from the fulfilment of that nature does one arrive to a state of bliss, fulfilment, contentment. Woman creates life, life in general, life as a universal phenomenon. Man, or the male element, creates human nature. Man is particular; woman is universal. Man goes into details of things. Man becomes a specialist. That’s why male-dominated fields all become fields of specialisation sooner or later.

Man has created much knowledge and has gone into deep detail, but now there is nobody to make a whole out of that knowledge. Nobody knows how to create a synthesis. That synthesis is possible only through a woman, not through a man, because woman is a universalising principle.

Man dissects. Woman unites. That’s why a woman feels closer to religion than a man, and has always felt closer to religion than a man. You may not have observed the fact. The fundamental fact is that religion thinks in terms of one, wholeness, totality. That’s what Tao is, or God, or whatsoever you will.