As we create lives of happiness and meaning for ourselves, we believe that failure and stumbling blocks are not an option. We don’t realize it’s part of the practice, and that falling down is just as much a sign of growth as is getting up again.
When we set out to make a change, whether that be a habit or a new way of life, we expect ourselves to get it right. We know how to do it, we’ve learned the theory. Sounds doable. So if we’re 100% committed we shouldn’t fail, right? But then we stumble, and get mad at ourselves for being such a failure.
Check this: No matter how sincere your commitment, you are going to make mistakes. It’s natural, and it’s okay.
Give Yourself the Permission to Practice
This includes giving yourself the permission to fail and feel like crap. Especially when it comes to practicing happiness, we often feel like total failures if we still don’t feel awesome all the time. Not being happy means we’re not doing this happiness thing right, doesn’t it?
Going through phases of unhappiness is actually part of our growth. We all stumble. What’s important is that we keep on practicing with an open mind, and do our best not to judge and beat ourselves up. Happiness doesn’t thrive when we try to force it.
Since I learned some of the core principles of happiness on my trip to Oslo in April, I have been feeling good more often than not. Things have developed in ways that I couldn’t even have imagined and I’m grateful for that. But I still have days or even weeks where I go back to old patterns of overwhelming myself (“I really need to do these 23489347 things on my to-do list”), putting pressure on myself (“I have to get it all done NOW”), procrastinating, beating myself up about it (“You should have gotten all these things done ages ago”) and then judging myself for feeling crappy (“Why do I feel like this again? Shouldn’t I be over that by now?”).
What I’m starting to understand is that happiness is a practice, just like anything else that’s worth pursuing. It takes time, but it’s well worth the effort. Right now I’m in a place where I can see that I’m growing and that things are happening at just the right time if I allow them to. I’m happy. And even if I go back to old patterns again, that’s okay because it’s part of the practice and I learn from it every time.
Have you given yourself the permission to practice and fail? If this resonates with you, please share some of your thoughts in the comments below.
Hey, Potential Rebel.
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Your desk is cluttered, you’re running out of things to eat and have a deadline tomorrow. Too much to do, too little time. How can you stay positive and maintain your happiness when life gets busy?
I’ve lately been in a situation where I had to find out. My new found theories on happiness were tested by real life. It was messy, and I wasn’t sure if I would make it out alive.
Theory vs. Reality: The crash
I had been following the core principle of my hot new happiness philosophy (greatly influence by Danielle Laporte): Focus on doing things that make you feel good. Ditch the rest as best as you can.
Alright. So I was flowing through life, had synchronicities piling up everywhere and felt invincible. “I got this!” I assured myself, “Living this theory is the smartest thing I’ve ever done.”
Everything was plain awesome. Until…well, until I woke up one morning and noticed myself repeating my to-do list to myself before I was even fully conscious. Oups. I realized I was feeling stressed. Old buddies like anxiety, pressure and overwhelm started to stop over at my place more and more regularly.
Under these circumstances I couldn’t help but should all over myself a few times per day. Note: “should”, “must” and “need to” have become my personal indicators of ill-being. These words are symptomatic for me putting too much pressure on myself.
Of course I did my best to ignore that. I thought it didn’t matter all that much and that I should really just focus on pushing through this and get some stuff done. I wasn’t that unhappy, after all. Right?
The problem is that it always starts out that way. We notice the to-dos piling up as we get behind on things. We panic a little, and decide that we just need to suck it up and get shit done faster. So we try that. We start feeling more and more stressed, and before you know we stop singing in the shower, or humming on our way to the grocery store. We realize that this might actually be worse than we thought it was. We play it down, because by this time, we’re convinced that the world will blow up if we don’t get everything done right now. Our life depends on our to-do list.
This is not a good situation to be in. And it’s the start of something that could turn into a big messy unhappiness crisis if we go on for too long.
So:
How do we get ourselves back into a state of feeling good when we feel threatened by our to-do list?
One of my favorite lessons from the work I did with a former coach of mine, Sally Hope, was this: “You always have a choice.” She constantly reminded me of this one. And, funny enough, I often wanted to disagree with her. In my mind it went like this: ” I absolutely don’t have a choice! You don’t understand my situation, it’s different!”
Turns out, no situation is different. You always have a choice, in each and every moment. Even when it totally doesn’t feel like it. Even when you think the world is gonna blow up if you just start saying no to people so you can free up your time to destress every morning. Or when you feel like you need to have all this work done tomorrow (at the latest!), and then kill yourself over this deadline without realizing that it’s totally self-imposed and you have a choice to let it go.
Sometimes it’s hard to focus on creating positive feelings in your life, when all we wanna do is hide in bed and forget about those stupid obligations. Fear not, you awesome happiness seeker you, I’ve gone through this quite a few times now and here’s what I figured:
How to go from overwhelm to positivity
self-awareness. Most people have a pattern they fall back into when they go into stress mode. There are certain symptoms that come with being overly stressed. For me, these are mostly verbal cues. When I’m stressed I have a tendency to should all over myself using words like “need to”, “must” and”stressed” several times throughout the day, especially when someone asks me how I feel. Noticing these symptoms can help you become aware of your stress level, and awareness is the first step to any change.
choose to change. Once you grudgingly admit that you’ve maneuvered yourself into stress mode, it’s time to consciously make a decision to get yourself out of it again. Remember that you always have a choice. Now if your immediate reaction is to wanna start yelling at me, explaining how your situation is different and life just keeps throwing shit penguins at you, take a deep breath. This is another sure sign of yourself being deep into stress mode, at least it is for me. Pay close attention to the next step as it might be helpful:
challenge your assumptions. “I have to do it all now.”, “Bob will hate me if I don’t hand this in tomorrow”, “Life is just being a bitch at the moment, nothing I can change about that”, “I just need to push through this right now”. These are all assumptions, even though they feel very real if you decide to believe them. Thing is, most of us don’t consciously decide to. Make an effort to challenge your assumptions. Most of the time, you’ll be surprised at how exaggerated your expectations and sense of urgency are.
get minimalist on your to-do list. Once you’ve taken a closer look at your assumptions, you’ll probably realize that you don’t necessarily need to, or want to do everything right now. Get minimalist on your to-do list. Cross out everything that doesn’t absolutely need to get done this week. Ideally, have only 1-3 Most Important Tasks on your list. This step is only possible after you’ve gone through the previous ones, as doing less is counter intuitive when you’re deep down into stress mode.
focus on feeling good. Remember that the primary intention is to feel good. Happiness is the bottom line in life (YES! it is). Do one thing that will make you feel good today, no matter how small it is. Make life a bit fun again. Rinse and repeat tomorrow, or in 5 minutes. Whatever feels right to you.
Going through these steps might take you a few days, or even several weeks, but I’d recommend that you give it a try anyway. If it works, it can feel like a miracle. And yes, these are in a particular order, because focusing on self-awareness makes it easier to eventually focus on feeling good. Got it? Cool.
I was able to go from crazy overwhelmed mess to happy and excited about life several times through following the steps we just discussed. I hope they will do the same for you.
Are you struggling with marrying your to-dos and your desire for happiness? If yes, anything you’ve figured so far?
Hey, Potential Rebel.
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You will go high, almost touch the sky and then -you will fall. You will crash onto the ground and feel every one of your bones shatter.
Your confidence, broken.
Self doubts at an all time high.
You were doing so well. You put in all your heart, you were willing to do what it takes.
But you weren’t prepared for the pain. You didn’t expect it to be so hard. You didn’t know shattered bones would be all-inclusive.
You cry.
You’re loosing hope.
The dark is getting closer, and its cold foggy arms have almost reached you. You reach out your hand, longing to embrace it. You want to give up, you yearn for the relief the numbness of going back to your old life will give you. You want to forget.
Shame is burning inside you. Who are you to reach so high, dream so big? They will say they always knew you wouldn’t make it, nodding in comprehension and with a precocious look in their eyes. “You just got too big for your britches. Now come back to our side. We don’t have passion and fulfillment, but we can offer you flattened-out feelings, and comforting certainty. Your life will become predictable again.
You get up. You lift your head and look them in the eye, grasping the floating darkness behind them. You make a small step. They look at you, waiting. Nodding approval.
Your heart strikes. Your soul is aching.
You take a deep breath.
And you run.
You run away from the darkness, the approval, the certainty. Because you’ve heard your heart whisper “I believe in you”.
And that was enough for you to realize that there is a glimmer of hope waiting for you if you just turn around and open your eyes to it.
You’re here once again, at the starting line.
Plan B: Try again.
Hey, Potential Rebel.
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About a month ago I was sitting in an airplane on my way to Oslo to meet up with friends I’d never met before to go to a party with even more people we had never met before. Little did I know that this trip would mark a turning point in my life.
Let’s rewind a bit.
This trip was everything but planned. When I heard that two of my Mastermind ladies were going to Chris Guillebeau’s The End Of The World Party in Norway, I bought a ticket on a whim, because it would be the first chance for us to meet face-to-face. That was four weeks before I landed in Oslo. I bought a cheap Ryan Air ticket two weeks later, and we booked the Airbnb place three days before I left. Talk about spontaneous.
Yet up until the minute I sat in that airplane, I wasn’t sure if I’d really be going. It seemed so unreal to take a trip to Norway, a country I had never been to before, just to meet up with two friends I knew from the internet (you know what they tell you about meeting up with dangerous internet people) to go to a party. Not necessarily something I usually do.
In the end I went because I yearned to expand my comfort zone and make room for some adventure in my life. And I couldn’t be happier that I did. The conversations I had with my two friends in our lovely Ikea styled apartment were incredible, filled with laughter, joy and deep, deep insights. I’ve learned more about myself and life in these few days with my friends than I have in countless hours of self-study that I’ve gone through this year.
Some of the ideas have caused me to make some drastic changes in the way I go about my everydays, as well as the direction I’m going into. The lessons I learned are just too good keep to myself. That’s why I’m sharing the ones that had the biggest impact on me with you today. Maybe they’ll touch your life as much as they have mine.
10 Lessons Learned on a Trip to the End of the World
1. This moment is all we have. Time is fleeting, always. One moment you’re talking to your girlfriends and next thing you know you’re sitting at the airport, trying to get your head around the subtle sadness that comes with saying goodbye. This moment is all we have. So we might as well experience it while it’s there. [tweet]
2. Feeling good is the primary intention. [tweet] Got this from the brilliant Danielle Laporte. Everything we do can be explained by our desire to experience happiness. We want to feel good. So why not stop going on achievement detour and focus on creating our desired good feelings now?
3. Detach your self-worth from what you’re doing. Your to-do list doesn’t make you a better person. Self-worth is about loving who you are, taking a glimpse at your soul and honoring whatever you find. Self-love means understanding that you are enough.
4. “Because I want to” is an excellent reason for doing something. [tweet]
5. Searching for happiness in achievements only leads to misery. [tweet] It doesn’t make sense to live life as a series of achievements, because what we search for in our goals is usually plain old happiness The problem: We suffer our way through to make our goals happen and lose our ability to stay in the moment on the way. That means no happiness in the pursuit of the goal and no happiness when we succeed. Ouch.
6. Focusing on creating happiness now vs. through future achievements brings fulfillment. [tweet]
7. When people give you advice it’s rarely ever personal. [tweet] When someone has strong opinions about what you should be doing with your life, it’s often because he wishes he would have acted differently when he was in a similar situation way back when. It doesn’t mean what he suggests is the right thing for you to do. And only you can tell the difference.
8. Other people care less about what you do than you think. [tweet] Most of the pressure and expectations we project onto ourselves are our very own, even when we strongly believe we must act a certain way to please other people. We think they expect us to be/do/have {insert something scary}. We don’t want to let them down so we work towards being/doing/having what we think they expect from us. Truth is: They don’t really care what you do all that much. And if they’re your loved ones, the last thing they want is for you to kill yourself over perceived expectations.
9. Doing what other people tell you to do is exhausting. [tweet] Valuing other people’s opinion more than your own is hard work, even though it seemingly allows you to shut off your brain and take the easy route. Your intuition knows what you’re doing and it will keep bugging you until you start to make use of your own judgement again.
10. No one knows what’s right for you. Except for you. [tweet]
And as a bonus:
11. I love Norwegian cake. It’s like German cake, just with more berries and whipped cream.
Taking the trip was a big catalyst for me and one of the reasons I was able to go from unhappy to happy Iris again. Right now I’m implementing these lessons and I can already tell that they’re making the biggest difference. Though the trip is over and it will probably take a while until I get to eat Norwegian cake again, these insights and memories will stay with me for, well, hopefully forever.
Now I want to hear from you: Have you ever taken a life changing trip? When have you done something out of your comfort zone that has lead to profound changes in your life?
Hey, Potential Rebel.
Need help creating a life you love? We got you covered. Weekly wisdom to help you live your best life delivered straight to your inbox.
PS: Want proof I was in Norway? Check out Chris’ special broadcast from the end of the world and see if you can find my face in one of the pictures. 
Work hard. Make money. Eat less sugar. Do more yoga. Start a business. Do your hair everyday. Wear cool clothes. Don’t care about your looks. Burn out. Relax.
Should. Should. Should.
How do you feel when you say “I should really start exercising more.” or “I guess I need to manage my time better.”? Amazing? Excited? Or more like… blah? Cause that’s how I feel.
When I tell myself that I should do something, that something immediately gets less exciting. The energy shifts. And if that something was nothing that I cared too much about in the first place, especially if I feel like I should be doing it because of other people’s expectations, it feels even worse. It weighs me down, drains my energy and makes me wanna hide under a blanket and scream “screw you stupid world of obligations” at my laptop/door/random stranger.
Stop shoulding all over yourself.
In essence, saying should makes us feel like shit. So will you stop shoulding all over yourself, please?
Just because you acknowledge the fact that you should do something doesn’t make you more responsible or more productive. It doesn’t get things done for you. All it does is drain your feelings.
One of the main reasons I was so unhappy these past months (read Unhappiness 101 to get the full story), was because I did things I thought I should be doing. Wanna have a peak into my mind? This was on replay for months: I should really have this business thing figured out by now. I should probably start reading more so I can learn more stuff faster. I should probably finish my first major because I’m already halfway through it and people will think I’m a failure if I don’t.
Screw. That.
Thoughts like these were driving me crazy. Whether I acted on them or not, reminding myself of things I thought I should be doing generally made me feel like a loser who never accomplishes anything. And because I was feeling like a worthless idiot, I stopped trusting my own brain and intuition. I consumed all kinds of advice to figure out what I should be doing to turn me into a capable human being again. All that did was add more shoulds to my life, which led to me feeling even more crappy and guilty.
My guess is that some of you can relate to that. Now why on earth do we allow all these shoulds to come into our lives if they generally make us feel like a bad, lazy person? Why would we want to keep doing something that makes us feel like crap?
Why we keep shoulding all over ourselves
There’s a psychological trick at play. We somehow feel like telling ourselves all the things we should be doing is a responsible thing to do. At least we know that we should be exercising more, that means it’s not so bad that we don’t do it, because we at least feel guilty about it. Makes us a better person, right? No. It doesn’t. It makes us an unhappy, grumpy, guilt driven person. Does that sound beneficial? Because it isn’t.
In my case, I constantly reminded myself about all the things I should be doing or I should have accomplished by, well, yesterday. I felt guilty about not crossing things off my to-do list, not making enough money, or looking like a professional blogger. I kept thinking about all these shoulds because I thought that would make me a more responsible person. Turns out that made me feel less than ideal on a daily basis. And that in turn made me super unproductive. Feeling like crap most of the time is the surest way to for me to be unmotivated, unfocused and procrastinating.
Here’s what I figured out: Acknowledging what you should be doing doesn’t make you any more productive/responsible/accomplished. It also doesn’t get things done for us. And most importantly, it doesn’t contribute to our happiness.
Acknowledging what we should be doing doesn’t make us a better person in any way. [tweet]
I was able to stop shoulding all over myself a few weeks back. I feel good on a daily basis again. I’m excited and eager to get up when I wake up in the morning (my personal measurement of happiness). And guess what: Feeling good helps me show up as the high version of myself that I need to be to do my writing, work on my business and coach people effectively. I’m getting a lot more done these days. And I’m an estimated 27384,92% happier than when I was should-addicted.
How was I able to kick the shoulds and expectations? Well, my friend, while I was getting off the should train, I somewhat accidentally developed a process to figure out which shoulds made sense and and which ones deserved to be kicked out of my life. I eloquently call it the “Do I Really Need to Do This?” Decision Matrix.
So whenever you catch yourself saying “I should” or “I need to”, feel free to pause and go through these steps (adjust as needed. Don’t feel like this is the only way it should be done
How to deal with the shoulds in your life
1. Is this your should? Do you really believe that you need to do this or was this something that you feel you should do to please loved ones or fulfill expectations? Ask yourself: Who’s voice is this? Your daddy’s? Your best friend’s? Is it the girl who bullied you in 7th grade? If it’s not yours truly, check to see if this applies to your life now. Which leads us to the next step:
2. Make it more sexy. To get 100% sure whether or not you really need to do something, replace the word should with want or something similar that expresses a desire: “I want to get a degree in business.”, “I would love to work harder”, “I want to read that bestselling book”. Got it? Now the big question is:
3. What’s your belly saying? How does it feel to say you actually want to do this thing? Does it feel true to you? If your intuition doesn’t get along well with this want/should it might be a good idea to drop the should right now. Hot potato style. Really, this is the critical deciding factor. If it doesn’t feel right in your gut, I highly recommend you don’t do it. This has become one of the guiding principles for me and I can see each day how big of a difference it makes in my life (more on that in a later post).
If you’re belly is saying “yes” to whatever it is you want to do, awesome. There’s only one more thing we wanna do before we greenlight it:
4. Now or never. Do you really want to do this right now? Or does it just feel urgent because you decided that you should have achieved financial independence/the toned butt/the book deal by now? Be careful with self-proclaimed deadlines and expectations. Oftentimes they stress us out way more than they help us focus and get things done. If you’re belly said yes to your want and you decide that now is a good time to go after it, congratulations. You have just made an important decision to commit yourself to doing it (if committing to it doesn’t feel right, well, dump it).
The ”Do I Really Need to Do this?” decision matrix
Phew. Nice little process, eh? I wanted to make sure that it’s easy to understand it, so I got a little creative and created a simple graphic for you. Enjoy
Ain’t it super pretty?
How my new relationship to should has changed my life
I’ve got into the habit of inspecting every should that comes my way using this process. This has lead to me taking on a whole lot less stuff, which freed up a lot of my time (I even quit a side job of mine, because I realized it was out of alignment with what I truly want to do). I was able to let go of a lot of my own crazy expectations about what I should have accomplished by now. I also care less about what other people think I should be doing. I can tell you, treating shoulds this way has kicked up my happiness level a few notches, if not many.
If you’re feeling off track right now, or if your to-do list is killing you, I’d love for you to have a look at all the shoulds in your life. You can use the above matrix if you’re feeling it.
Let us know how it goes in the comments below. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on shoulds and other people’s expectations. Any experiences you want to share?
Hey, Potential Rebel.
Need help creating a life you love? We got you covered. Weekly wisdom to help you live your best life delivered straight to your inbox.
