Guide Post to Personal Freedom

· Stop jumping to conclusions. There are two common ways this habit increases people’s difficulties. First, we assume that we know what is going to happen, so we stop paying attention and act on our assumption instead. Human beings are lousy fortunetellers. Most of what we assume is wrong. That makes the actions we take wrong also. The second aspect of this habit is playing the mind reader and assuming we know why people do what they do or what they’re thinking. Wrong again, big time. More relationships are destroyed by this particular kind of behavior than by any other.

· Don’t dramatize. Lots of people inflate small setbacks into life threatening catastrophes and react accordingly. This habit makes mountains out of molehills and gives us anxieties that either don’t exist or are so insignificant they aren’t worth worrying about anyway. Why do we do it? Who knows? Maybe to make ourselves feel and seem more important. Whatever the reason, it’s silly as well as destructive.

· Don’t invent rules. A huge proportion of those “oughts” and “shoulds” that we carry around are most likely needless. All that they do for us is make us feel nervous or guilty. What’s the point? When we use these imaginary rules on ourselves, we clog our mind with petty restrictions and childish orders. And when we try to impose them on others, we make ourselves into a bully, a boring nag, or a self-righteous bigot.

· Avoid stereotyping or labeling people or situations. The words we use can trip you up. Negative and critical language produces the same flavor of thinking. Forcing things into pre-set categories hides their real meaning and limits our thinking. See what’s there. Don’t label. You’ll be surprised at what you find.

· Quit being a perfectionist. Life isn’t all or nothing, black or white. Many times, good enough means exactly what it says. Search for the perfect job and you’ll likely never find it. Meanwhile, all the others will look worse than they are. Try for the perfect relationship and you’ll probably spend your life alone. Perfectionism is a mental sickness that will destroy all our pleasures and send us in search of what can never be attained. Start by making what we have perfect.

· Don’t over-generalize. One or two setbacks are not a sign of permanent failure. The odd triumph doesn’t turn us into geniuses. A single event – good or bad or even two or three don’t always point to a lasting trend. Usually things are just what they are, nothing more.

· Don’t take things so personally. Most people, even our friends and colleagues, aren’t talking about us, thinking about us, or concerned with us at all for 99% of the time. The majority of folks in your organizations or neighborhoods have probably never heard of us and don’t especially want to. The ups and downs of life, the warmth and the coldness of others, aren’t personal at all. Pretending that they are will only make us more miserable than is needed.

· Don’t assume your emotions are trustworthy. How we feel isn’t always a good indicator of how things are. Just because you feel it, that doesn’t make it true. Sometimes that emotion comes from nothing more profound than being tired, hungry, annoyed, or about to get a head-cold. The future won’t change because we feel bad – nor because we feel great. Feelings may be true, but they aren’t the truth.

· Don’t let life get you down. Keep practicing being optimistic. If we expect bad things in our life and work, we will always find them. A negative mind-set is like looking at the world through distorting, grimy lenses. We spot every blemish and overlook or discount everything else. It is amazing what isn’t there until we start to look for it. Of course, if we decide to look for signs of positive things, we will find those too.

· Don’t hang on to the past. This is my most important suggestion of all: Let go and move on. Most of the anger, frustration, misery, and despair in this world come from people clinging to past hurts and problems. The more we turn them over in our mind, the worse we will feel and the bigger the problems of the past will look. Don’t try to fight misery. Let go and move on. Do that and you’ve removed just about all its power to hurt you.