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Surround Yourself With Positive People

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We’ve all heard the quote about “You’re the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time with,” and while it’s a great idea, sometimes it’s hard.

When some people hear this idea, they get upset. They think this means they have to ditch all their friends and be alone until they only are surrounded by “winners”.

That’s one side, and then the alternative is the importance of surrounding yourself with people who lift them up.

This article is for that second group of people.

Look, I understand hanging out with friends who you have a history with.

I also understand how exhausting some people are. There is a huge difference between someone going through a hard time and someone who complains about everything.

There’s nothing wrong with evaluating the people you spend the most time around to see if they’re contributing to your life or taking away.

The biggest question is to ask yourself if you feel better or worse after talking to someone on a regular basis.

It’s amazing how over the years I’ve become more and more sensitive to this issue. Once I graduated high school and college, I wasn’t forced to be around people I didn’t enjoy being around. I work for myself so I get to dictate who I interact with on a daily basis.

 

Some people don’t get that luxury. They have coworkers they have to deal with who are constant energy drains.

Sometimes it’s just a matter of you and your friend traveling down different life paths. You’re on different journies and although you had a solid friendship for a long time, it doesn’t mean you have to force a friendship that no longer fits.

It’s up to you if you want to have a harsh conversation with your friends or you just want to start putting some distance between you both.

This article from Ramit is incredible for some steps on building the foundation for new friendships. (Yes, it’s possible to build friendships as an adult.)

Before you decide who you want to surround yourself with, you need to decide what you need from your friends.

There are always things we need from a friendship, and if you don’t know what you need, you can’t find it.

I’m one of those people who just needs positivity. It’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day struggles of life, but to talk to people who know you’re gonna pull out of it are so important for my mental state.

Sure, there are always things happening in the world, and there is a time and a place to consume the news, but people who just incessantly talk about what’s wrong in the world can be tough to be around.

If your friendships energize you and lift you up, you’re one of the lucky ones. Send your friends a text right now and thank them for being great. If not, maybe it’s time to take a look around at your social circle.

Never Postpone Happiness

JackieLeave a comment

The longer you postpone the things you really want in life, the more every other area of your life will suffer.

Your job will feel that your heart isn’t in it.
Anyone you are dating or married to will feel the unhappiness radiating off of you.
Your friends will see you lying to yourself.

If you want to be miserable in life, this world will not stop you.

Actually, it will welcome your misery. So many people are miserable and you will fit right in. If you want something different, however, the world will challenge you. Particularly most of the people you know.

Miserable people don’t like people on a mission because it challenges all of the excuses they tell themselves. So, if you decide to go on a mission to create a better life, you have to mentally decide to do it for yourself regardless of what the people around you think.

The longer you postpone your deepest mission your chances of becoming happy again get smaller. You start to justify it within your mind then eventually you start to believe the excuses you tell yourself. The more believable they become to your own head, the more they start to crush the dreams in your heart.

This is also what I tell the people I know who seem to get irrationally mad at things for what seems like no reason. What is it about these things that seem to challenge deeply held beliefs you have?

One example I found within myself was when Tim Ferriss released the “4-Hour Workweek“. I was enraged and called it “stupid” and “cheating business”. Upon further examination I realized it is because the rhetoric I have told myself for years is that I must be alone, miserable, and overworked to be success. All of which were simply just excuses that I had started to believe.

I would argue that this is why people who are so unhappy with their own lives seem to hate absolutely everything because everything challenges them to the core of what they tell themselves. It challenges their excuses and their bullshit.

What personal excuses are you telling yourself that only hold you back?

Why Your Passion Is Dying

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Your side hustle is not a job.

Read that line again.

If you are spending your time what feels like “clocking in” to your side hustle, you are treating it like a job and you are going to burn out.

Your hustle isn’t something you clock into. It’s something you can’t wait to get to at the end of every working day. It’s something you don’t even have to write in your planner to get to because every day you can’t wait to get started on it.

If it is something you have to remind yourself to do, or you have at a scheduled “time” to start clocking in and out of, then you need to step back and think if it really is something you’re passionate about. If you know without a doubt that it is, then what you may be experiencing is full-blown burn out.

Burn out comes when you feel like you’re just running in circles with your business and you feel like no matter what you do, you’re not making progress.

Many business “guru’s” say to just charge through this time because you need to “work harder” and “if you want to be successful you have to be in non-stop hustle mode”!!! And while there are some truths to these in day-to-day life, but when it comes to your passion in life, if you’re feeling the candles being burnt at all ends, you need to stop.

I’m not saying stop forever and give up any dreams of being an entrepreneur. I’m saying grant yourself a weekend off to go do something else. Don’t even think about your business at all. Get outside of yourself and your problems.

Trying to figure out your problems when you’re already burning out is like trying to resist when you’re caught in a wave. The more you flail, the harder it is going to be to get out. Sometimes you just need a few days off to renew yourself.

Yes, this goes against every single success “guru” and their advice for starting entrepreneurs. They believe you should ignore every warning sign your body is trying to send you, miss every important family event, and never sleep again in order to be successful.

Here at Rethink the Rulebook, we don’t go with the “typical” advice. We know that we’re not trying to replace one job where we already don’t have enough free time with another job that makes us feel just as burned out. We realize that in the grand scheme of things, one weekend off from your hustle in a whole month isn’t going to make the whole world collapse on your business. Stepping away from your problems can bring you greater clarity in the long run.

Take a weekend off, then get back to hustling hard. It will only make things better in the long run. Plus, you only have one life, why not have a little fun?

Stop Making Decisions Out Of Fear

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You know what brings out the worst in people?

Fear.

Within the last two weeks I have been apartment hunting. There is nothing like a possible chance of being homeless in the future to bring out the fear in you.

Obviously I won’t wind up homeless… but that’s the thing about fear, nothing about it is rational.

Fear convinces us to:

– Stay in that shitty relationship
– Stay at that shitty job
– Take that shitty job
– Take that shitty apartment
– Not pursue our dreams… because what if we fail?

Fear convinces us to do the stupidest things. Reflect back on your life for a minute. How many decisions have you made out of fear?

I know I have made hundreds. Maybe I thought I wasn’t going to get something better… maybe I didn’t think I deserved better. Whatever it was, the fear in my head convinced me that I had to settle for less for some unknown, illogical factor.

Sure, fear keeps us from doing stupid things. That’s why it’s in our brain. But there are simple things like moving toward our dreams where it says, “HEY WHOA I DON’T KNOW THIS TERRITORY AND BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW IT, I AM GOING TO MAKE SURE IT DOESN’T HAPPEN.”

It takes a long time to recognize when your brain is trying to self-sabotage you.

This past week I almost signed two leases that my rational brain would never sign because I was afraid that I wouldn’t find anything better.

And what kind of agreement is that? I’d only be miserable and bitter every day that I was in those apartments. Seriously it was literally as close as, “Here’s the paper. Sign at the bottom.” And I heard that echo in my brain, I was like, “Oh shit… I hate this. I hate this apartment. Get me out of here.”

When you feel that little tingle of intuition that is overriding your fear, it is important to stop and wonder why you feel that way. If you suppress it, the fear will gladly take over. It will gladly say, “Let’s just settle with this.”

You can’t let the fear win.

This week, try and take notice of when your fear is taking over and think, “No! I am in control of my life. I am in control of my destiny. I AM going to achieve my dreams. I am making my own rules for life.”

This is what we’re all about here: Rethinking the Rulebook.

Define your own life. Make your own legacy.

It is never too late to be happy

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Growing up is a funny thing…

When we’re all young children, we have no problem saying what is on our minds. We let everyone know what our favorite things in the wholeeeee world are. We let everyone know that broccoli is the most disgusting thing to ever exist. We get excited all of the damn time over simple things like coloring.

Then, we get older.

We fake excitement, we swallow our words when we are unhappy, and most people sure as shit do not know what your favorite things are.

(Fun test: Ask the people you think know you the best what your favorite things are… It will be a huge wake up call to how quiet you keep your passions.)

Why?

Why do we mold into what other people say is acceptable for us to like or not like?

I am at the age where many of my friends are starting to get married and have babies.

To say that some of them feel lukewarm about it would be being nice.

Why on earth do we go through with things that we aren’t balls-to-the-wall happy about?

I understand following through on a commitment that you have sworn to stick it out with, but what about those commitments we make for life, not just short-term things like internships or college?

What about those relationships we only feel lukewarm about?

What about those jobs that make us hate every week that isn’t a vacation week?

What about those friends we allow to suck us dry until we don’t have the energy to do anything productive with our own lives?

Our inner 6 year olds would never ever ever tolerate this.

Think of all the six-year olds you know: they absolutely do not do anything they don’t like to do, they know what is fun to them and they pursue it relentlessly, and they absolutely do not fake friendships… But when they are excited, they are at levels far beyond excitement, into pure ecstasy.

All this week I have been asking myself: What would my inner 6-year-old say about my life right now? What would she change?

What would the inner part of you that demands happiness and rejects joylessness say about your life right now?

Cut the cord

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There people many people in your life that will refuse to accept change.

They don’t want to see you become the amazing person you are becoming.

They want to keep you where you always were before.

Seriously, this is the best advice I can give because I am dealing with this situation in my personal life right now:

-Create new rules and conditions.

-Inform them of these new rules. Be open to opinions but don’t change for them.

-If they refuse to follow these new rules: warn them sternly once.

-The second time: it is done.

If what you are doing is a positive change, don’t listen to them. These people refuse to see you grow because they don’t have the strength to change themselves.

You got this. Pursue your own happiness.

Go to your limit

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When was the last time you went 110% toward a goal you had?

I was thinking about this the other day, really really examining my past and thinking about why I wasn’t as far as I wish I could be (ah, the life of a perfectionist). So, I asked myself when was the last time that I committed so deeply to a goal that I couldn’t even imagine not achieving it.

Honestly, I couldn’t remember. It had been years.

Everything I had pursued, I had reservations. Whether what I was pursuing was working or failing, I still had reservations and there was always that minor reservation hanging in the back of my mind.

Think about what would happen if you fully committed yourself to something you really want?

Maybe you’ll fail. So what? The world truly won’t end. It will feel that way at the time, but when you look back on that failure years later, you’ll be grateful it happened because either you’ll learn something from it, or you’ll know you were never meant to go in that direction.

Here’s the thing though: If you went 110%, I would bet you anything that you actually wouldn’t fail.

The few things I deemed important enough to give it my all, I either succeeded or something so much better came along in the process of working toward it.

So many people get started on the path toward a goal. You go out and buy the planner. You make the whole plan. You make the day by day plans to get there.

Then it’s time to execute.

One day goes by where you miss your to-do’s. Usually this is enough to knock people off course.

Then the plan is made again.

Repeat.

I’ve learned that it’s better to do 30 minutes a day (which anyone can fit it) of focused work toward a goal than short day-long bursts every few weeks.

What can you do for those 30 minutes today?

This is 2012, say your damn opinion

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Draw a line in the sand.

Be black and white.

Know where you stand.

Don’t let other people bully you and push you around.

If someone says something rude to you, let your opinions be known about the subject.

Respect everyone until they disrespect you.

Life is too short for bullies.

Draw that line through that damn sand and let them know where you stand.

Proud about your passions

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Here is the thought going out to my readers for the next few days: Why do we still search for approval from some people even though we are adults now?

Why do we sheepishly say “Oh, here are my hopes and dreams” in a timid voice without that raw, real, confidence that we should have because, well, it’s your whole life and why shouldn’t you be able to speak confidently about it?

I have only noticed this recently within myself. Why do I still seek approval from people? Is it just in our DNA?

Why do I want people to be as excited as I am about the things I am pursuing? If they don’t give a fuck, why am I upset?

If your passion is stickers, why don’t you walk around like, “HEY I THINK STICKERS ARE AWESOME! And since I am aware of my passion, I make sure to keep it in my life as often as possible and it makes me so damn happy.” For whatever reason we say to ourselves, “No, stickers are for kids. It’s time to grow up and get a real job.”

Fuck that.

There is nothing shameful about having a passion in any area.

Who cares if your friends approve or if your family approves… Take your passion, and be proud of it! The only thing that matters is if it makes you happy.

So the next time you unapologetically tell someone your passion, and they turn their head to the side in confusion, just smile and say, “Wow, I’m sorry you don’t have something that lights up your life the way ______ does for me,” and simply walk away.

Follow me on Twitter and let’s talk about how you are rethinking the supposed “rules” you’re supposed to be living.

The free tool to achieve your dreams

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Building a business after eight hours at your full-time job can be exhausting.

What if you came home and had an e-mail that you already received Monday morning straight into your inbox with your to-do’s for the week to get your business rolling?

And the best part is: what if it was free?

I have been working and working on some side personal products that I am releasing soon to help my incredible, awesome, readers get their businesses rolling so they can stop doing the things they hate, and have more time and more money to do the things you love. That is what life is about anyway!

Not to mention, it will be the best of the best information, articles, tips, and tricks to get your business rolling as soon as possible so you can finally build that life of freedom you have been craving.

So, for those interested: please click here to sign up for the newsletter to get free tools and tips right in your inbox when you need them the most. Also, you’ll be the first to get the free products I release and get the news about any future products right away.

I’m looking forward to chatting with and meeting all of you so we can celebrate our growth together! (I like pineapple juice and Malibu rum. Just saying.)

Feel free to ask any questions you have on my new Twitter and Facebook page where you’ll get tons of other information to get you to where you want to be!