My Inner Delete Button – 7 Things I’m Trashing from My Life

Delighted to Delete

Lately I’ve become aware that I’m slowly developing what I call an inner delete button, a little voice that tells me when I’m wasting my time.

I guess it’s more than just a little voice. It’s more like an overall sense of having my energy drained, and when I feel it, I start searching for the source with the intention of eliminating it.

Sometimes I discover the source is a negative thought I’ve been having, a limiting belief I’ve been holding, or a needless and exhausting rule I’ve been following. At other times, I dig around and uncover an old fear that’s been holding me back. And sadly, sometimes I discover the source is a person who seems intent on bringing themselves and everyone around them down a little, if not completely.

It’s an Energy Thing

It wasn’t easy at first, but I think I’m getting used to hitting that delete button without feeling too much guilt. It hasn’t always been that way.

You see, I’m a pretty nice guy most of the time. I like being a nice guy. I’d never make it as a hard ass and no one would buy it anyway. But I used to be nice at the expense of my own soul and I’ve kind of lost my patience with that. Maybe I just don’t have the energy.

In any event, I guess you could say I’ve started sending a few things in my life to the trash and, to be quite honest, I don’t seem to miss them all that much.

My List of Things to Undo

Here’s a list of some of the things I’ve started deleting from my life:

1) Putting up with disrespect.

I don’t allow people to insult or belittle me. I don’t get hostile; I just walk away.

If you leave a nasty comment on my blog, I delete it. You can disagree with me, but you have to do so respectfully if you want your comment to be treated with any respect.

If you repeatedly insult or belittle me on Facebook, I remove you from my friends’ list. Who needs friends like that?

If you send me ugly emails, I earmark your future letters for the spam folder.

If you’ve consistently proven yourself to be hostile to my well being, I wish you a good life and go my merry way.

Life is just too short to spend your energy on people who have no regard for you.

2) Debating anyone over their right to be unhappy.

Sometimes people ask for help with a problem. I do my best to help them solve it, but if at some point I realize they’re more devoted to hanging onto the problem than finding a solution, I excuse myself.

Why waste time arguing with someone over their right to be unhappy? Of course they have that right. And I have the right to choose happiness, which is how I’d rather spend my time.

3) Listening to a list of reasons why I shouldn’t enjoy something or love someone.

Every now and then I’m enjoying a dish and someone across the table from me starts rattling on and on about how horrible it is. I ask them to stop eating it and let me enjoy it. What’s the point?

At other times, people seem intent on telling me how stupid the things I enjoy doing really are. I just shrug my shoulders and find a reason to excuse myself. Let me know when there’s something to celebrate.

And worst of all is when someone finds it necessary to “warn” me about a friend or someone I admire. They start giving me a list of reasons why that person is not as wonderful as I might think. To be honest, this really pisses me off.

The longer their list of grievances becomes, the smaller they become in my mind. I can literally see them shrinking. It’s a disappointing thing to experience.

Why on earth, I wonder, would they want to decrease the amount of love someone has for another human being? Do they think the problem with the world is that there’s too much love and respect floating about, or do they think there’s not enough to go around? In any case, I try to not to listen before they shrink any further.

4) Interacting with people who are constantly selling me something.

I have no problem with someone trying to sell me something they truly believe I could use, but there’s a time and a place for everything.

I’ve encountered people on the internet who have some really great products to sell, but everything they say is a sales pitch. It’s boring, it’s exhausting, and it’s insulting. I want to shout out, “Hello! Is there a human being in there?” It’s as if they’ve turned into an out of control salesbot with no off switch.

Just last night, I chose to end my subscription to a membership site, not because it wasn’t useful but because the constant barrage of sales letters they were emailing me had become just too annoying.

I’m a person. If you want me to do business with you, treat me like one, not like a psychological trigger you can constantly pull.

5) Listening to sales pitches based on scarcity.

I haven’t just started deleting messages from people who never stop selling. I’ve also begun to tune out sales pitches designed to frighten me by telling me I could be missing out on my last chance ever to know true happiness.

Yes, I know they’re effective. Yes, I know that people are more motivated to avoid pain than they are to seek rewards. Yes, I know at some point I’ll probably be motivated to make a purchase based on this principle, but every time I do I feel yucky.

I feel much better when I purchase something because a friend told me how great it was. I like being excited. I don’t like being scared.

Stop trying to scare me. Keep it up and sooner or later you’re going to wind up in my trash folder. I hope that frightens you.

6) The belief that I must know precisely what I’m doing before I start doing it.

I understand the value of preparation and planning, but my experience has been that there’s only so much that can be perfected on paper. You find out how to do things as you’re doing them and discovering all the ways they can’t be done.

It took Thomas Edison thousands of attempts to find the right filament to create a working light bulb, but he saw each failure as a new discovery of what wouldn’t work which brought him one step closer to the thing that would. This didn’t happen on paper. Edison made the light bulb and then he made it better again and again and again until he made it work.

This is how I’m beginning to live my life and tackle my dreams. My former way wasn’t working, so I’m deleting it.

7) The belief that I don’t deserve success.

This belief used to keep me from even trying. I’d ask myself who I thought I was. Now I ask myself who I think I’m not and why.

When I created a fan page on Facebook, I felt a little embarrassed until someone said they didn’t feel comfortable being my fan. They’d rather just be my “friend”. I don’t know what it was, but there was something about hearing that person express out loud what I’d been failing to hear myself saying. Who do I think I am to create a fan page? Why would anyone want to be my fan?

Now I ask why not. Now I ask why would anyone not want to be my fan? What’s wrong with being someone’s fan?

I’m a fan of many people. I’m a fan of many musicians, artists, entrepreneurs, writers, actors, humanitarians and so forth. But I’m also a big, big fan of my wife and my children and all of my friends. That’s why I love them. I’m a fan of who they are. Why is it wrong for someone to be mine?

Having said all of that, I do intend to create a fan page for Mildly Creative and eventually phase out the one for me, but not because I think I don’t deserve to have any fans. It’s just too confusing for me to see my name on both a home page and a fan page. I’m assuming it’s confusing for my friends (and fans) too.

But I’m glad I first tried it the way I did, because I learned a valuable lesson. I can be a fan and I can have fans, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

What Are You Deleting from Your Life?

I’m sure if I thought about it, I could come up with a host of other things to delete, but I’m more interested in hearing about what you’ve been deleting from yours or at least thinking about deleting. What is your inner delete button telling you to trash?

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Tagged as: making small changes, Mindfulness