1.  Old regrets and excuses.

You can’t always choose what happens to you, but you can always choose how you feel about it and what you do about it.  You don’t have to be defined by the things you did or didn’t do in the past.  Don’t let yourself be controlled by regret.  Maybe there’s something you could have done differently, or maybe not.  Either way, it’s merely something that has already happened.

Be done with these old regrets; they’re just an excuse for people who have failed, and failing only happens if you learn nothing and give up.  Ninety-nine percent of all failures come from people who have a habit of making these empty excuses.

Think about it, you rarely fail for the things you do.  You fail for the things you don’t do, the business you leave unfinished, the things you make excuses about for the rest of your life.  Read Awaken the Giant Within.

2.  The burning desire to have all the answers.

Accept the feeling of not knowing exactly where you are going, and train yourself to love and appreciate this sensation of freedom.  Because it is only when you are suspended in the air, with no destination in sight, that you force your wings to open fully so you can fly.  And as you soar around you still may not know where you’re traveling to.  But that’s not what’s important.

What’s important is the opening of your wings.  You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as your wings are spread, the winds will carry you forward.

3.  The false hope of a pain-free life.

Pain is a part of life, and life’s pains have many shapes and sizes.

There’s the cold feet pain of moving on ‒ graduating, taking the next step, walking away from the familiar and into the unknown.  There’s the sharp growing pains of trial and error, of failing as you learn the best way forward.  There’s the immense, dizzying pain of life slapping you in the face when everything you thought you knew wasn’t true, or everything you had planned for falls through.

There are the more ambiguous aches and pains of successes, when you actually get what you had hoped for, but then realize that it’s not quite what you had envisioned.  And then, from time to time, there are the warm, tingling pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of sweet perfection, a priceless instant of achievement or happiness which you know cannot possibly last ‒ and yet will remain with you forever.

Even though so many folks forget, pain is actually a good thing.  It means you’re breathing, and trying, and interacting with the endless possibilities in this world.  Pain is for the living only; it’s worth fully accepting and dealing with while you still have a chance.  Read Radical Acceptance.

4.  Ties to insensitive people.

People are extremely difficult to change.

Throughout your lifetime people will make you mad, disrespect you and treat you bad.  Don’t consume yourself with trying to change them or win their approval.  And don’t make any space in your heart to hate them.  Simply walk away and let karma deal with the things they do, because any bit of time you spend on them will be wasted, and any bit of hate in your heart will only hurt you.

5.  Obsessing yourself with negative news.

For every prominent newscaster who howls about how bleak and unjust life is, there are thousands of other people behind the scenes working tirelessly to make a positive difference in the world.  For every disheartening crisis that is breathlessly reported, there are thousands of real, meaningful success stories that don’t get the attention they deserve, but that have an enormous positive ripple effect on humanity.

Try not to obsess over the negative news; learn from it and use your knowledge to work your way eagerly toward a brighter tomorrow.  Life does get better and better when you choose to make it so.

6.  The belief that fulfillment resides in the end result.

Fulfillment is not a matter of achieving a specific goal.  It is a matter of mindfully enjoying the process required to achieve that goal.  Fulfillment flows from focusing your life around specific and authentically held intentions – ideas and activities that genuinely speak to your purpose.  When these intentions are clear, consistent and meaningful, you have sufficient means to bring fulfillment and joy to your life, whether you ever fully achieve your intended goal or not.

In other words, the right journey is the destination.

7.  Measuring your success by material wealth.

We’re bombarded with images of stuff, with the implication that this stuff somehow elevates personal value and success.  So I encourage you to think about how much of your self-worth is connected to owning, giving, and getting STUFF.  Because truthfully, success, happiness, and peace of mind have little to do with STUFF.

So what does help create these things?

To laugh often and love genuinely.  To respect others and judge less.  To win the affection and sincere smiles of children.  To earn the regard of honest peers and endure the betrayal of fake friends.

To appreciate the beauty surrounding you wherever, whenever you are.  To find the good in people and situations.  To give what you can and leave the world a little better than you found it.  To have explored ideas and passions and sung at the top of your lungs with jubilation.  To know that at least one life has breathed easier because you have lived.

This is what makes a life successful.  This is how happiness and peace of mind are attained.  Read The Untethered Soul.

8.  The need to keep everything the same.

Things change.  People and circumstances come and go.  Life doesn’t stop for anybody.

Life moves very fast.  It rushes from calm to chaos in a matter of seconds.  It happens like this to people every day.  It’s happening to someone right now.

Sometimes the shortest split second in time changes the direction of our lives; a seemingly innocuous decision rattles our whole world like a meteorite striking Earth.  Entire lives have been swiveled and flipped upside down, for better or worse, on the strength of an unpredictable event.

Most of the time these changes come when you’re not asking for them and not expecting them, but they happen.  So are we helpless?  Are we puppets?  No.  These changes are going to come; you can’t help that.  But it’s what you do afterwards that counts.  That’s when you grow; that’s when you find out who you truly are.