We make plans in life for what we want to do. We aspire to achieve things and give ourselves and others around us a good quality of life. Our success depends not just on what we start doing, but also on what we stop doing. This clarity not only keeps us motivated while moving ahead, but it also keeps us grounded to live with awareness and responsibility.

We need to stop wasting time. Our mind loves slipping into areas of fanciful thinking and distractions, taking us away from our work at hand. As a great master said – ‘our mind should be where our hands are.’

We need to stop taking on too much at a time in the fear of losing out. When we plan our work and systematically work out our plans, not only do we enjoy what we do, we end up achieving a lot more than we expected.

We need to stop taking our well-being for granted. This does not mean we should live with the fear that what we have will one day necessarily go away. It just means that when things are going well for us, we need to keep doing the things that got us to our state of well-being. The healthiest plant will wither away if it is not watered regularly.

We need to stop worrying. Of course there will be challenges and the future may well be an uphill climb. Worrying doesn’t help, in fact it inhibits our ability to give our best.

We need to stop looking for someone to blame when things go wrong and when we are under pressure. It’s at our lowest point that we need the highest sense of responsibility and focus. Our future is not steeped in what didn’t go right, but in what we need to do to set things right.

There are several things about ourselves that only we know we need to stop doing. The world will appreciate and admire us for what we achieve. Deep down in our heart we know that what we have done and achieved, is built on the discipline and commitment of what we decided to stop doing.