10 Rules I Live By For More Happiness, Success, and Wellbeing

About work, love, money, emotions, change, and decision-making

Life gives you lemons, so you make lemonade. But life also gives you situations, and you make progress. Tough circumstances are the best way to learn. To understand how life works.

Some events, situations, relationships, conversations, readings, and thoughts have led me to pay more attention to what was going on in my life. I began to observe my attitudes, my reactions, and my thought process. And I learned a few lessons from that.

These rules concern various topics, such as work, love, money, emotions, change, decision-making, and life in general. What links them all is the fact that I apply them daily, and that they make my life better. I’ve got a list of them stored on my phone. Sometimes, our emotions get in the way, and we suddenly forget everything we’ve so long learned. Keeping them handy can be helpful. And prevent us from reacting instead of acting.

These 10 rules structure my life. They’re a compendium of my personal experience. I’m happy to share them with you. I hope they can complement your own life experience.

About work

Don’t quit because of transient moods

“Most people knock on the door of their dreams once, then run away before anyone has a chance to open the door. But if you keep knocking, persistently and endlessly, eventually the door will open.” — Les Brown

I’ve had a lot of projects. I’ve given up on most of them. I was a quitter.

Each time life got in the way, with its share of doubts, laziness, and transient moods, I managed to convince myself that it wasn’t worth it. My projects were subject to my mood and motivation variations.

I will never know where these projects would have taken me if I had pursued them long enough. These are surely many missed opportunities.

But I’m glad. Because it taught me two things.

The first thing I learned was to gauge whether or not I feel a project is worth pursuing. I question my emotions and my little inner voice.

The second thing I have learned is to keep working on worthwhile projects, even when I have the least motivation to do so. Motivation always comes back, tenfold.

I often apply the 6-month rule. Commit to something for 6 months, without questioning everything all the time. Go ahead, and work your ass off. If after six months, the results are not conclusive, then you can consider that you have given it a chance.

But when you give your all to a project, the first results often take less than six months to arrive.

Don’t optimize prematurely

Here’s one of the reasons I quitted.

Whatever I started, I wanted it to be perfect right away. Instead of starting, I would spend days, weeks, and sometimes months reading about it and planning everything. Ultimately, I would get tired of it. It would lead nowhere.

My expectations were too high, and as soon as something went wrong, that was reason enough to drop everything.

Instead, I’ve learned that it’s better to just take the plunge. Start. It’s at the same time the most and least difficult thing to do. Then, focus on improving one thing at a time, one day at a time. Trust time, and trust the process. Your sole goal should be to improve.

You’ll see your project unfold as time passes, and as you work on it. It’s a truly rewarding process. Time will bring new perspectives, new ideas, and change your relationship to your project. You’ll see with more and more clarity where you want to lead it, how you can reach your goals, and how you want things to evolve.

About relationships

My relationship is only one part of my life

When I love someone, I get deeply involved in the relationship. That’s a good thing since that probably makes me a pretty good partner. But I always end up merging into my relationship.

It becomes my whole world. Everything starts revolving around it. I see my whole life through one prism.

Except my relationship should only be one part of my life. Not my entire existence. Besides being a partner, I must not forget that I am a whole person, with interests, passions, a job, a family, friends, goals, desires. I am not my relationship.

Since I identify too much with my relationship, I get too intense, and the smallest thing wakes an earthquake up in my emotions.

About money

Is it adding value?

This is the question I ask myself every time I want to buy something. Taken from the Minimalism documentary, this question helps me avoid buying useless things that will only clutter up my space and my mind.

Is it adding something to my life? Will it bring more happiness? Is it useful? Or is it a temporary whim? Couldn’t I borrow it from someone instead of trying to own it?

On the other side, if I find out something is worth buying, I just buy it. I’ve learned not to feel guilty about spending money. I’ve worked for it. I can use it to bring more joy into my life.

About decision making

Get closer to your values and needs

“I’ve discovered that the key to answering life’s tough questions is to focus on the feelings instead of thinking your way to the right answer. Your feelings never lie.” — Sergey Faldin

The only way to make a choice is to get closer to one’s values and needs.

Sometimes we feel lost. We don’t know what we want anymore. We’re too involved in the situation to see clearly. Or we’re torn between what our heart wants and what our brain wants.

Take a moment to cool off. Question your values and your needs. Listen to the answer given by your little inner voice, without censoring it, without ignoring it. Only it knows.

If you listen carefully, you’ll always hear it. Always. It keeps whispering what to do in your ear. What’s right for you. Trust it. Trust your gut. Trust your instinct. Listen to your deepest emotions, and act according to them. Don’t try to convince yourself otherwise.

Don’t lie to yourself.

About emotions

Negative emotions are positive

Emotions are signals. Raw signals.

I had a revelation. I realized that, over the past two years, I’ve been cutting myself off from my emotions.

I was so focused on self-development, trying to figure out life through mindfulness and a quest for inner equilibrium, that I wasn’t aware of it. Trying to avoid negative emotions — mainly sadness, disappointment, and anger — led me to ignore them. To reject them. I only wanted to feel joy, enthusiasm, happiness, excitement. I wanted to feel alive.

We can’t avoid negative emotions.

Without fear and sadness, there would be no joy and happiness. They are part of us. I learned to sit down and welcome them. Feel them living in my chest. When you stop pushing negative emotions away and just sit with them for a moment, when you listen to what they have to say, they deliver their message and then, they leave. You feel better and enlightened.

About life

Question everything

It’s easy to keep going without questioning. But it’s the safest way to go straight to the wall.

I took my blinders off. And I started questioning everything, frequently, honestly. I won’t lie to you: it’s scary.

You never know what you might run into. You never know if what you’re about to stumble upon won’t force you to make big changes in your life. Changing a whole part of one’s life takes work.

We spend so much time and energy trying to figure things out that, once we finally get some answers, we don’t want to put everything back into question.

But it’s the only way to stay close to our core. Not to deviate from our lifeline. If we keep our blinders on, we’ll one day find ourselves miles away from who we are. The work to realign ourselves will only grow bigger.

Question everything. Listen to your emotions and sensations. Trust these pieces of information. Don’t be afraid to realign yourself constantly.

No reason needed

In my quest for productivity, I have come to see things only through the prism of their usefulness. Everything I did needed a strong purpose. A function, a utility. I didn’t give myself anything for free, I had to earn it all.

Anything that didn’t serve a purpose was seen as useless. A waste of time.

That’s not a good way to think. It made me feel empty. I felt like my life had become all about work.

Life has no other purpose than to enjoy it.

Wanting to do something, and knowing that something will bring you joy, is reason enough in itself.

Change is a matter of will

If there’s something in your life that you don’t like, change it. It’s as simple as that.

This is one of my oldest rules. As soon as I’m not happy anymore with something in my life, I sit, take a sheet of paper and a pen, and make a plan about how I can get rid of it.

That way, I make sure I stay close to who I am, and what I want in my life. I’ve quit several jobs for this reason. Several relationships. Several situations.

What’s the point of staying in something that doesn’t make you happy? Life’s too short to waste time.

Saying we don’t have a choice is a lie. There’s always a choice. But it takes some soul-searching. Some work. But if we don’t, life loses its meaning.

Thoughts become things

Beware of what you think and say out loud. Formulated thoughts have a strange ability to become reality.

That’s what I realized when I was in an internship I hated. During three months, I felt bad. I would sometimes even cry in the morning because I didn’t feel strong enough to go and spend a whole day there.

I realized that the moment I expressed my anxiety to my partner, I felt even worse. Same when I thought about it too much.

Thoughts become things. Realities. Words make things stronger. To the point where we can no longer ignore them. Be careful about what you think or say.

These things might very well become a reality.

Unlock Your Best Life → https://bit.ly/388XW0t