Episode #139 – 10 Things You Should Quit NOW!

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A lot of times in coaching I talk about what to do, methods, techniques, creation of new things, like new thoughts and adding new habits to your routine. But sometimes new results can come from not doing things as well.
So I thought about the top things that I see others doing, my clients and myself and decided to put them in a podcast today just in case you need to remember to quit doing them. 

Some of them will be easier to quit than others.

#1 – Quit comparing yourself to others

You never truly know anyone’s situation, so comparing yourself to them or what you imagine is their truth is useless. I’m 100% sure that each one of you when you saw the title of this podcast knew that this would be on the list. 

#2 – Quit degrading yourself

I would never let a stranger degrade you and talk down to you, but some of you might be doing it to yourself. As a matter of fact when we talk down to ourselves we are often WAY more harsh than anyone else would be. I’ve heard people say some pretty hard and horrible things about themselves when trying to figure out why they are where they are. There is also another very sneaky way that others degrade themselves that I”ve noticed glaringly since I began coaching. It’s through humour. I love humour, I learned to use humour to get through many situations. Laughing is great for the soul. But there is a particular type of humour that is often used and that is one that degrades yourself. For example if someone is very heavy they might constantly joke about that, about food, about being the big guy, or eating all the cake. If someone has a particular personality trait they might joke about it so much that it becomes part of their identity and others around them start treating them like it’s true. Other people think it’s ok to poke fun at the girl who always drinks too much or the guy who eats too much at every function. And it starts to become ingrained in them where if that person wanted to change their behaviour around those things they have to first change the habit of joking about it and their identity attached to it. I try to use humour now in a way where I don’t degrade myself. I think that’s a big one that many artists do and that we could all stop doing. We are creatives, let’s come up with better and more creative ways to use humour to not degrade our thoughts about who we are as a person.

#3 – Quit being around people who make you feel less.

I don’t suggest that you abandon friendships easily. But you will know if you have that one friend who you always get together with feeling “yuk.” This is a great thing to teach your teenagers. If you constantly leave a situation feeling that the same someone was kinda putting you down, making passive aggressive comments about you then you need to seriously think about distancing yourself from that person. Spend some time not in their company, think about whether they would respond to you asking them why or if they know that they

#4 – Quit being around highly negative people

Have you ever heard the phrase, “You are the sum total of the 5 people you spend the most time with”. Right now in today’s climate this is glaringly obvious. The other one that my Mum used to say all the time is “birds of a feather flock together.” This is true, so if you are flocking around with birds with shitty attitudes you will begin to give off that vibe, and maybe even start to think much like them and you will attract other birds with shitty attitudes. 

You often see this with teenagers. They start hanging out with a new group of friends or even one friend and all of a sudden they are talking a bit like them and thinking like them and maybe even engaging in activities that these new friends do. That can either be really great, or very destructive.

#5 – Stop drinking so much 

I think a lot of people medicate with alcohol, I want to differentiate between people being diagnosed or undiagnosed alcoholics first of all, because that’s of course a no brainer there needs to be treatment and maybe intervention and medical assessment etc. That’s a real and difficult addiction to handle but people do it and do well with it. The 12 step AA program works for a reason, it’s very effective when followed. 

I”m really talking about those of us that maybe drink regularly and know and maybe you don’t know that you are drinking for stress relief, medication and because of that you are pushing down feelings, thoughts and not processing or having any healthy ways to process stress, and other bad feelings. I decided to quit drinking alcohol for a year. I’m almost 10 months into that journey. And I have learned SO much about how I process and how little you have to use alcohol to even be using it as a replacement for dealing with the feelings. I am going to do a full podcast about the full 12 months and the things I learned about myself but also about others and the social settings we live in and how it contributes to you not being able to learn how to effectively deal with your feelings. 

#6 – Stop telling yourself you should have done better.

Fixating on the past is never good unless you are truly using it to better yourself and your thoughts. I hear a lot from people and I used to do this to myself constantly. “I should be further ahead by now.” “I shouldn’t have screwed and spent that money.” “I should have more money in the bank.” “I’m a loser because of where I am at.”
You cannot change the past so fixating on the past is futile and useless, unless you are specifically saying that project, that idea, or that event wasn’t great but I think I know what I learned from it and how to use that going forward. 

In coaching I prefer to stay in the present and the future. I will ask people about their past only if it’s relevant to programming that they are struggling to overcome today. The only way that you overcome programming is to start doing new things or quit doing old things. 

#7 – Quit saying “I don’t have time”

Time is very relative to what you think about it. Most people spend more time saying they don’t have time than actually following through or executing on a task. Tasks and projects often take much less time than we’ve created them to make in our own minds.

#8 – Quit saying “I don’t have the money.”

I’ve said this many times before, if I gave you all a million dollars only a small % of you would be ready to use it effectively or know what to do with it. Many of you will say oh no I’d go out and record an entire album and spend $100000 marketing it and get the best publicist. But then I ask you, are all those amazing songs written then? And no they aren’t. You’re not ready to even have the money. So many of us who say they don’t have the money, don’t have everything else in place either.

#9 – Quit quitting so early!

I have a philosophy that I try to work by. I don’t always succeed at it, but even the maybe 75-80% of the time that I do it really helps move me forward and to follow through. Adopt fast, quit slow. I try to execute with some amount of speed on a new idea, topic or thought, and I try to stick with it for a good amount of time. I often give 12 months to bigger projects. People will usually quit things very early, maybe right before the project was just about to take off, you’ll never know because you quit. Many will quit because the immediate results aren’t there, so they immediately start to think “it’s not working.” Perhaps it hasn’t even been given the chance to work. Many will even quit due to fear, what fear sounds like is usually a bunch or what the person believes are really logical ‘what-if’ reasons to not continue and they may sound very convincing. But what they really mean is “I”m afraid that this will happen.” But we can’t possibly know what is going to happen in the future. So quit quitting so early. Adopt fast, quit slow.

Never quit when you’re having a bad day. Always give that a rest for at least 24 hrs before you make a decision on something. When you put space between your negative emotions caused by fear you often start to think more logically and will realize the facts aren’t nearly as dramatic as you worked them up to be while in that very heightened state of fear and anxiety.

#10 – Quit letting your EGO talk

Some of the things included in the past 9 things I mentioned are actually your EGO talking. Comparing yourself, and thinking YOU should be much further ahead by now might be your EGO talking. Often we get into thinking we are right, that’s your EGO. When you are beginning to criticize others and judge others, that’s your EGO talking. When you are talking way too much and not listening, that’s usually your EGO. So listen in on your thoughts, and the way you speak and decide for yourself this week if your EGO might need to remember to take a back seat again. 

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