28/12/2017 15 Things You Should Give Up to Be Happy Summary | Luminita D.

Saviuc

Book
15 Things You Should Give Up
to Be Happy Life has love at its core. Embrace
love, and choose to experience joy.
An Inspiring Guide to Discovering Effortless Joy
Luminita D. Saviuc
Perigee, 2016
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Rating  Recommendation

8
8 Applicability Human nature has love at its core. Despite incidents when you have been harmed in
8 Innovation your mind or body, you can start over. Luminita D. Saviuc draws on her experiences to
suggest that you embrace love, let bygones be bygones and make every new day the
8 Style
first of a new life. getAbstract recommends her overly earnest but fundamentally
sound manual to those looking for ways to improve their life.

In this summary, you will learn

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28/12/2017 15 Things You Should Give Up to Be Happy Summary | Luminita D. Saviuc

• What 15 things you must give up to become happier and

• Why you need to discard fear to experience joy.

Take-Aways
• You must give up 15 things to find happiness. Start with giving up the past, your
fears, limiting beliefs, excuses, resistance to change, blaming, complaining and
criticizing.
• And then relinquish other people’s expectations, defeatist self-talk, control, being
right, impressing or labeling others, and clinging to attachments.
• Once you conclude that you have had enough pain and suffering, you can have a
more fulfilling and fruitful life.
• Forgive what lies behind you, and appreciate what lies ahead.
• The person who gets most out of forgiving is the forgiver.
• Complaining encourages the illusion that your life cannot change unless the
outside world changes significantly.
• Wanting life to turn out exactly as you wish creates the potential for unhappiness.
• Happiness requires you to stop fixating on the past.
• The way you think and what you believe shapes your life.
• If you think positively, no matter how poorly life treats you, you can use every
opportunity to elevate yourself.

Summary

A Horrifying Experience
“The only salvation I

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28/12/2017 15 Things You Should Give Up to Be Happy Summary | Luminita D. Saviuc

ever needed was from Luminita D. Saviuc had a dreadful experience as a child. She confessed to her father
my own toxic thoughts that she had stolen some sweets – though she had not done so and was confessing only
and from my own self.” to shield her siblings. Her father put paper between her toes, doused it with gasoline
and set it on fire. She couldn’t walk properly for months.

“It’s never too late to
start all over. It’s never
too late to claim your
right to life and to
happiness.”
“Who you are
underneath it all knows
no limits, no fear and no
limitations.”
She decided to recount this incident for one reason: For many years before she revealed
what she had endured, people told her that her ideas for helping others wouldn’t work
for people who’d suffered a troubled childhood.
She wanted to show that her ideas were effective for her despite her traumatic history.
She lived with an alcoholic, abusive father for more than a decade. She never received
“love and nourishment” as a child. She had no confidence because she believed “self-
worth” came from wealth, which she lacked. She lived in badly maintained,
overcrowded orphanages with negligent supervisors. She faced ridicule as a teenager.
Saviuc isn’t seeking sympathy. She wants to show that an awful past doesn’t determine
your future. She says the past is the first of the 15 things you must give up to be happy.
Here’s the list:

1. “Give Up the Past”

“Whenever you choose to
use all kinds of excuses
for why you can’t be, do
or have something, you
are…moving away from
your true power.”
Saviuc and her family feared her father. She often took shelter under a blanket and
beseeched God to protect her. She was treated badly at school, and her neighbors
disliked her and her family. Saviuc believed many of the unkind things people told her
about herself. She felt that because of her flaws, she would lead a sad life. She used
pejorative language to categorize herself. When she was 12, her father died. Even then,
she clung to the memories and pain of the first 12 years of her life. She let the past keep
her prisoner.

The moment you conclude – as Saviuc did – that you’ve had enough pain and suffering,
you can begin working toward a more fulfilling, fruitful life. Learn to let go. Commit to
“Happiness can never
come from attachment forgiving what lies behind you and appreciating what lies ahead. You can work toward

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to transitory things. It great happiness if you make a promise to yourself to stop fixating on the past. Instead,
can only come from make the most of the present.
letting go.”
If you push to make life to turn out exactly as you wish, you are creating the potential
for unhappiness. Learn to think in ways that enliven you and don’t bring you down. If
life was painful in the past, use your energy to try to heal yourself. Try to accept what
“We are creatures of happened and what you confront in the present. Only with acceptance can you create a
habit. Most of us live our new, hopeful tomorrow.
lives on autopilot,
allowing our old People think that the moment you choose to forgive someone who harmed you, that
programming, our past person gains from your generosity. In actual practice, the person who gets most out of
fears, excuses and forgiveness is the forgiver. Forgiveness allows you to achieve peace and
limitations, to run, craft
tranquility.
and shape our lives.”
Don’t concentrate only on what went wrong. Seek what you can learn from your
experiences. Look for the positive instead of the negative. Feel gratitude toward those
who treated you shabbily. They have shown you how not to act. When you start
“We have around acknowledging life without reservation, life in turn will accept you.
60,000 thoughts per day
and…most of these
thoughts are negative.” 2. “Give Up Your Fears”
To experience joy and embrace your life, discard fear. You have a limited amount of
time to live. Just before you die, you will realize what you really value. You will
recognize that only love matters and that fear has no substance. But you don’t need to
“There is no peace in wait until death to gain this insight. Every day, you can leave behind yesterday’s
pointing the finger and fantasies and create a more vibrant life. You can abandon the things you feared and fill
making others your life with affection and happiness. You can give up what no longer benefits you and
responsible for how you reaffirm your ability to love. Strive to see the world as a child does. Examine the world
feel and for what your with curiosity and affection. You will find that fear exists only in the future or in the
life looks like.” past. Stay in the present.

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“Complaining, just like
blaming and criticizing,
sucks us dry. It…
continues to feed this
false idea that our lives
will never get better
until outside circum-
stances start to change.”
“The use of labels creates
a veil in front of our
eyes, impairing our
sight and causing us to
see the world as either
black or white, good or
bad, rich or poor,
worthy or unworthy,
and then treat everyone
according to the values
we give to each label.
“We cling to the past
because the past gives us
a sense of identity; it
makes us who we are, or
at least that’s what we
think.”
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15 Things You Should Give Up to Be Happy Summary | Luminita D. Saviuc
Legendary musician John Lennon said that life has two “basic motivating forces, fear
and love.” All other feelings are subcategories of those two emotions. With love, you
experience happiness, delight, satisfaction and peace. With fear, you feel anxious, sad,
depressed and tired. Love and fear can’t coexist. Discard fear and use love to navigate
your life.
3. “Give Up Your Limiting Beliefs”
You shape your life based on the way you think and what you believe. If pessimism and
despair dominate your mind-set, your life will follow a similar pattern. If you believe
yourself unworthy of better things, life will treat you accordingly. You fashion your life
as it exists with your thoughts. You can change your life using the same technique. By
altering your patterns of thinking and what you choose to say, you can change aspects
of your life.
4. “Give Up Your Excuses”
You might find that instead of doing things you want to do, you look for reasons why
you shouldn’t try them. Are you sure these perceptions about yourself and your
capabilities are valid? Examine why you think you can’t do something. Replace those
reasons with arguments that will help you concentrate on why you can achieve a goal.
Do something every day to help you move toward your objective. Don’t agonize about
the exact steps to take. Concentrate on your destination and why getting there is
important. Leave the rest to life itself.
5. “Give Up Your Resistance to Change”
You exist for a reason, and you have something special to offer. Discard your
opposition to change to find your special path. You could fail, but life offers you the
ability to evolve. Everything you encounter and everything you’ve suffered helps you
understand yourself.
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“Your past doesn’t have
to equal your future,
unless you want it to.”
“People grow together
with love and apprecia-
tion, not blame,
judgment and criticism.”
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15 Things You Should Give Up to Be Happy Summary | Luminita D. Saviuc
Being alive requires change. If you fight change, you won’t experience life. Understand
yourself and then you can appreciate yourself. Strive to comprehend how you see
change and why you try to avoid it. Consider the benefits you gain from embracing
change, rather than thinking about potential bad outcomes. Suffering comes from
resisting change, rather than from change itself.
6. “Give Up Blaming”
Only you can choose the kind of life you want. If you persist in blaming, you will lose
your sense of vitality. If you abandon blame and accept that you alone have fashioned
the kind of life you have, you will gain the ability to do remarkable things.
Make a list of all the things for which you’d like other people to accept responsibility
and the reasons why. Pardon them all for their failures, and start doing what you want.
Make space in your heart for affection and tranquility.
7. “Give Up Complaining”
Complaining makes you feel deprived. It encourages the illusion that your life can’t
change unless the outside world changes significantly. Trust that your perception of the
world depends on how you feel internally. Try to understand why you need to
complain. Once you have that insight, you can abandon complaining and move to a
state of inner contentment.
8. “Give Up the Luxury of Criticism”
You fashion your life and select the people with whom you associate depending on how
you think and what you believe. If you feel troubled and unhappy, you could project
those feelings onto the world. You might attract people and incidents that reinforce
your negative perceptions.
Instead, bring your energy to the effort to add tranquility to your life. That will build
your ability to forgive the people, incidents and places that have brought you pain.
When you stop evaluating yourself negatively, you gain the ability to see the rest of
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your life positively.

9. “Give Up Living Your Life According to Other People’s Expectations”

Don’t let other people’s opinions hinder you from going down the road you think you
should travel. Choose the life you want even if it aggravates other people. You can offer
others only as much as you give yourself. If you don’t feel peace within yourself, you
won’t be able to experience peace with others. Strive to make yourself joyous and to see
your life as important. Work wholeheartedly at what you think matters.

10. “Give Up Your Self-Defeating Self-Talk”

If you think positively no matter how poorly life treats you, you gain the opportunity to
elevate yourself. Conversely, if you think negatively, any bad experience will make you
feel worse. Pay attention to how you feel. If you feel harmonious, your thoughts are
coming from a place of peace and honesty. If you feel that others don’t love you or don’t
consider you worthwhile, your thoughts could be coming from an internal feeling of
fear.

11. “Give Up Control”

You will almost certainly feel apprehensive if you believe you have to fight life by
yourself. This feeling will intensify if you believe you have to struggle to achieve
contentment. Then, you’ll try to maintain control over every aspect of your life. The
more you do so, the less in control you will actually feel.

Instead, trust in life’s wisdom to give you what you need. Don’t accept every dark
possibility that comes to mind. Look to your inner wisdom. Tend yourself as you’d take
care of a plant in your garden. Consider your goals as if they are seeds. Spread them
widely, provide the right moisture and leave the rest to life. Do what you need to do,
and let life take its own course.

12. “Give Up the Need to Always Be Right”

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If you always push to prove the superiority of your viewpoint, you can harm your
friendships and undermine the way others feel about themselves. Try to view
everything in its proper perspective.

13. “Give Up the Need to Impress Others”

You probably learned over time that you must work to impress others. Set this lesson
aside. Actually put yourself first – ahead of other people and things. Don’t accept the
idea that you lack anything other people have. Don’t feel you need to make an
impression on other people. Live in ways that make you honor and respect yourself.

14. “Give Up Labels”

Most people construct their identities using different classifications to separate
themselves from other people. They value others and themselves based on their career
choices. They prioritize people according to their looks, beliefs and social status. Your
internal essence has so much more richness than the typical classifications people use
to look at one another.

The Earth belongs to you and everyone else on it. No one has any special merit that
entitles him or her to more than anyone else. Some people may know more than others.
Some have more wealth. That doesn’t mean you should treat them in a special way. It
just means that they have lived in different environments and have faced different
circumstances. Stop categorizing. Treat everyone equally.

15. “Give Up Attachment”

Saviuc had only one happy memory of her father. She remembered a beautiful day
when she was walking with him. He could see she wanted an ice cream treat, and he
bought her one. She recognizes the paradox of human behavior. She could cling to
painful memories of her father and other negative experiences, but because she felt

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these thoughts harmed her, she turned her back on them. Today, she no longer fights
the past. She made peace with it so she could open herself to the promise of the
present.

Human nature has love at its core. As you age, you add layers of “societal conditioning”
that mask your identity. You begin to experience life through a prism that highlights
fear and gloom. Despite incidents during which you have been harmed either in mind
or body, you can choose to start over. Embrace love, let bygones be bygones, and
choose to experience joy once again.

About the Author

Luminita D. Saviuc created the blog PurposeFairy.com. Her book is based on a post she wrote with the same title
that drew more than 1.3 million views and shares. She is the former product development lead at Mindvalley, a large
online publisher of personal development content.

This document is restricted to the personal use of Kohinoor Roy (ratnaroy2901@gmail.com)

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