10 Things You Absolutely Need To Let Go Before 2017 Comes To An End
By Maia Stone
Living a productive life does not need to be complicated. Sometimes, decluttering your workspace, personal life, and your mind will do the trick. Here are some things to let go before the year ends so you can start the next year right.
1. Things you don’t need or enjoy.
Clutters in your house, room, or workplace can easily distract you throughout the day. You’ll have the constant need to clean up and looking for the stuff you need can be a pain in the butt. It’s so much easier to start a task and slip right into the flow of working when you’re in a clean and clutter-free space.
2. People who do not support you or help you to reach your goals.
Just like your workspace, your personal life needs some cleaning up to do, too. All the voices in people’s mind started out as voices outside of yourself. These voices can either make or break you. You have the power to choose the voices that you constantly hear by being wary of the people you surround yourself with.
By getting rid of the people who hinder you from achieving your goals, you’ll be able to focus more on the people that help you, motivate you, and pick you up when the road to success becomes a bit rough.
3. Self-doubts.
Doubting your skills is normal. It’s even healthy. You need these doubts so that you’ll know what needs to be improved in yourself. What’s unhealthy is doubting your tenacity and your ability to improve. You already survived the whole year and I bet there’s this one thing that you’re working on and you’re already better at it than you were last year. Improvement needs patience and hard work. You need to allow yourself to be a beginner and trust that no matter how slowly, YOU’LL GET BETTER.
4. Unhealthy habits.
Your habits determine who you are as a person. In the long run, these habits will get wired in your brain and you’ll just do them automatically – making your bed in the morning, going for a run, eating vegetables, planning for the day. Wouldn’t it be easier to have the tendency to do these things automatically? Instead of thinking about and exerting effort into doing these things, you can focus all your energy to other pressing tasks of the day.
5. Grudges.
I know. Some people don’t deserve forgiveness and that’s okay if you are not ready to give it to them. You can write about it, consider and process your feelings, and burn the paper away. You can talk to a trusted friend about it. Think about how it affected you as a person and where you can go from there. It’s not so much about what you feel about the people who hurt you but what you learned through that instance in your life. Don’t let your grudges cloud your judgment and hinder you from chasing your goals.
These people might not deserve your forgiveness but you don’t deserve to suffer even further than you did before, too. When you stop caring about what other people think about you, your enemies will lose their power to hurt you.
6. Unresolved issues.
Life’s just like that. Some things end before they even begin. Some things start quickly, come to a screeching halt, and leave you hanging. Let it go. There’s no point in getting frustrated over something you have no power on.
7. Feelings of guilt.
Forgiveness is hard to give to other people. It’s even harder to give to yourself. Other people will always remember your faults. If you’re going to remember these things, too, you’re already defeated. As a dreamer who’s working to chase his/her goals, you may be prone to being over critical with yourself. Give yourself a break, learn from your shortcomings, and use them to your advantage.
8. Goals you failed to achieve this year.
You can do anything, but not everything. Goals don’t get realized for so many reasons. Maybe you have a lot on your plate. Maybe the time isn’t enough. Maybe you need to work harder for it. Whatever it is, don’t pound on yourself too hard and think that you failed because you aren’t up for it. New Year means new chance. You have a whole year to catch up on your schedule. Trust that it’ll be easier next year since you already started on the great things you wanted to achieve this year.
9. Recurrent thoughts of giving up.
How many things have you given up on in the past? How did it affect you? If you didn’t give up on those things, how different would your life be right now? Maybe you’ll also realize that things do not seem as hard as you thought. If you just had the courage to try and started it back then, your life would have been so different, or easier. Do you want to make the same decisions now? Let’s change the questions. If you don’t give up now, how different would your life be in a year? How about in 5 years?
10. The urge to keep up with everyone else.
Life isn’t a race. If it is, other people are running on different race tracks. Some people compete with their friends, co-workers, schoolmates. Competing with someone with the same goals as yours is just pathetic. Get ahead these petty competitions and focus on goals that are bigger than your ego.