Do You Have the Courage to Eliminate?

Reach what’s important to you by eliminating the unimportant

"You just need to have the courage to eliminate everything that doesn’t directly feed what you really want."

This quote by James Clear is so powerful and yet challenging. Often we search for the one thing, have that one big goal or want everything to be perfect. Grow, maximize, achieve. 

There is nothing bad about having great ambitions or dreaming big and trying to achieve what is important to us. In contrary, I find this very important and helpful: knowing what we want in life, what is personally important to us, finding ways to get there, passing obstacles, getting back on track when we stumble and fall.

However, sometimes we focus too hard on single objectives and put pressure on ourselves, if we don‘t reach them in our expected timeframe. Or we believe that we are not good enough, that we could do better, and achieve more. This gap thinking – believing that we lack something – can make us feel unhappy or unfulfilled.

Why not turn thoughts around? 

What if we take our lives as they are and trust in the world and us that everything is allright? 

That could be the starting point. 

We observe, we accept, we appreciate. 

And after observing, we pick what negatively influences us most or what we dislike most and find ways to eliminate it. 

Eliminate could also mean that we don‘t do it anymore, that we avoid it, or that we reduce it. 

Eliminate what is negative to us means reducing pain and stress in our lives, which in turn increases our general life satisfaction. 

The more we notice what is not good for us the more we find ourselves. 

Reducing negativity will automatically leave us more satisfied and in the long run this practice will increase overall satisfaction.

Let‘s give it a try: 

What would you like to get rid of today? 

What would you like to stop doing? 

Who is in your life, but you preferred to see him or her less? 

Are there any tasks at work which you dislike and you could put less focus on?

If there are things or circumstances which you can‘t or don‘t want to change – try to accept them. 

If you are not fighting them constantly, they will harm you less and thus decrease your negative perception of them.