You are going to get an insight and can relate to what I just said here or you can assess your own life as well as figuring out which bad characteristics you are willing to let go of.

1. Unforgiveness

Unforgiveness is detrimental to our health. It leads to bitterness and resentment. It kills joy and peace. Examine your life today, is there anyone in particular that you haven’t forgiven as of yet? You might say, “How can I forgive when this person has hurt me?” I am not saying that you keep inviting them into your life even if they’ve hurt you time and time again, that’s where healthy boundaries must be in place. You can love these people or persons far from afar or you can put healthy boundaries.

Forgiveness, however; is not about letting those people who hurt you off the hook, but it’s simply freeing yourself. It always comes down to you. It is for your own benefit. You can just say wherever you are with the simple words, “I let go of any resentment I have with this person”, name the person and I forgive him or her. Pray for them and wish them well. Don’t ponder on the past and learn to let go and move on. Remember what Jesus said on the cross, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they’re doing.”

Jesus eventually did not find them after He resurrected from the dead. He just basically asked the Father in heaven to let go so that He could move forward and continue going to be resurrected. Can you imagine, if Jesus was harboring the resentment and unforgiveness, I don’t think He’ll be able to resurrect from the dead.

2. Pride

Pride gets in the way when you are in the process of forgiving someone. Just a few years or months ago, a family member of mine was something that God specifically said that you have to let it go. Call him out and just say “I forgive you of what you have done wrong to me.” It took some time until we have settled our issues, and it went on for many months. Then there was a part of me that I want to just not let go of my pride. Pride is something that’s why Lucifer was kicked out of heaven.

Pride is one of the things that C.S. Lewis said,
” It is the enemy between God and man, man and man.”

mere christianity book

So, pride is something that you think to yourself that you do not need God. I can do this myself. I am my own God. I’ll be the creator of my life and that is a very risky mindset because all of us need God one way or another. Perhaps, today you don’t need God but somewhere down the road. you will find yourself and there is no one else to turn to. No one else is there, who are you going to turn to? Pride is also changing this idea of instead of putting God on the pedestal. You’re putting yourself on the pedestal or celebrities on the pedestal.

Anything that you put above God, it is a pride. It might be your career, your relationship your money, these are the signs of prideful ways that God hates god said “I resist the proud but I give grace to the humble.” Pride is something that we have to always check in our hearts. We have to think whether or not we truly have pride. Because pride again is something that God does not tolerate.

3. Self-pity

If you have been here many times before I have talked about self-pity party and how we
just perpetuate self-pitiness. I used to get so addicted to my pity party many years ago. Whenever I was in an argument with anybody in my life, I would go into my bedroom wallow in self-pity and hide under the covers and then I will just ruin the whole day. I would not be motivated. I will not be able to just do something that is productive that day because I would just ponder and ruminate about the bad things that happened or what he said or what she didn’t say or what I could have said. So, these are the things. Self-pity party, I would be such a drama queen about it.

Joyce Meyer once said, “You can either be pitiful or powerful.”

Of course, we all want to be powerful. Thankfully I am much better now than I used to be. I realized that the self-pity party is playing the victim mindset. This one is something that we definitely have to be careful because this is how Satan drags us back to the victim mindset.
Do you know how those people always want to use some kind of color of their skin, their circumstances, the woe is me, poor mentality. Those are the kind of people we have to watch out for they do not look at themselves in the mirror.

They always blame everybody else and anyone else except themselves. They’re not willing to take accountability and these are the kind of individuals that have a limited mindset and they will always going to have this kind of negativity wherever you take them. It doesn’t matter if it’s raining.

They’re going to blame it on the weather. It doesn’t matter if it’s sunny outside, there’s always going to be something for them to complain about and so this is about the paradigm. It’s the perspective that you see on your situation. It is a lot easier to have this kind of mindset, the self-pity party especially when people have victimized you. Especially, when you have been done wrong by people. It is easy to play the victim because many people leverage on those kinds of stories. We can see that in celebrities and other people who have leveraged their victimization to make money, to gain some, I don’t know sympathy from people. I’m not saying that we should not sympathize or empathize with people who have been through pain.

However, we cannot use that as a weapon or to leverage that so that we can gain something other than fame or money because I think that is a very dishonest way of doing things.

4. Easily Offended

I should have put this one on the top of my list because this one is truly something that I’m still working on. Offense is a trap from the devil. So, I have learned that when we are offended, we’re actually giving away our power. I never really thought that when you are offended is actually a trap of the devil, himself. Because offense really is something that we cannot control. We cannot avoid it. It is something that Jesus even said, “In this life, you will be offended and that’s why when Peter asked, “How many times should we forgive the person Lord?” Because Jesus perceived that as a human being people are going to disappoint you. People are going to betray you. Although betrayal is something that we should not tolerate. If somebody betrays you. Maybe you should cut them out of your life completely. Like Jesus cut off Judas’s and therefore Judas could not live with himself so he killed himself.

So anyhow, when it comes to offense though, there are people out there. There are narcissists. As I always, talk on my channel, if you have been here before I have discussed so many times the narcissistic people who will send you some triggers. They will give you this arsenal. To make you push your buttons. These are the offenses. These are the things that I have just learned from the, “Seven Habits of a Highly Effective People” that says that there are stimuli or stimulus that are always trying to make us pissed off. Maybe the bad weather, traffic, our children, our spouse, our in-laws, our mother, our parents, our sisters, our brothers our co-workers, our friends, money, health, anything! There are so many certain things that we cannot control of. These are the stimulus or the stimuli that constantly bombarding us trying to make us pissed off.

And it is about the response and I love what the book says that says,” It’s responsibility is the response plus the ability.” It is your ability to choose not to react on the circumstances whatever
people are going to do or say. I know it’s easier said than done. It took me a long time to realize that it takes discipline. It takes self-awareness and it’s it takes a lot of practice not to be irritated or not to be pissed off by people when they are triggering you. As I have said unless you deal with the root cause of your triggers, you will not be able to pass through that because unfortunately words are triggering. Words are something that can trigger and ignite something in us. That’s what the Bible is clear, your words is like a weapon. When the words comes on at you, you will take it as an attack and if you are going to just going to internalize every word of what the person say. Then eventually you’re going to be offended and you’re going to grow in bitterness and let’s not linger there.

6. Gossip

People gossip about your problems and what is happening in your life. I used to love to gossip incessantly and share my problems with my family. It was an addiction. Gossip is an addiction. It’s like a slander. You just love people to be on your side, you know that people’s main objective to gossip and to spread rumors that is not true is. Because they want to have a smear campaign which is not even relevant. Or it doesn’t even add up value to them. Do not get what I’m not saying here. Of course, we have to tell our family or your friends or anybody in your family, if you’re going through some hardships in life. I’’m not saying that you shouldn’t ask for help or advice from people or share your problems because we do need each other to lean on and to have someone that we can cry on. But I’m saying about the people that are gossipers who love to just ruin your reputation for the sake of making them look like they’re the good ones and you’re the villain.

These are the kind of women, usually women who love to gossip and some men too that they will spread some rumors that have no validity in them. They just want to have a smear campaign. To make you look like you’re the bad one and there’s nothing that you ever do good in this life. So, these are the kind of women that are insecure. Gossipers women that are slanderers are insecure. They have no self-worth. They have no self-esteem so they feel better when they will drag people down. Or they will make you look bad and them good because these are the kind of individuals that we have to watch out for. These are the jealous type of women and the women that are again, are insecure unless, they will drag you down to a minimum and diminish your light.

7. The fear of speaking up

I grew up not being able to express my opinion. It was culturally not allowed to have that liberty to share how I truly felt. Most of emotions were suppressed growing up but when I became an adult when I had the freedom to speak up. I did the extreme opposite. I would explode. I didn’t know how to communicate. For much of my childhood, I never learned to communicate effectively that I would just bottled everything inside that eventually led to a disaster. So, there is a problem, when you let people suppress your emotion. You will fester it until one day, you will just explode like a volcano and therefore I used to have those explosion. I get so angry all of a sudden.

This outburst of anger because all of my life, I was told not to speak. Be quiet, your opinion do not matter and it’s like right now I’m a bubbling brook, unstoppable. I have all this opinion that I have a reservoir and I now have all these things that I thought that I don’t have and now I can just share whatever I want to share. However, it comes with a balance.

It comes with a territory and self-awareness that sometimes there is a time to speak and there’s a time to be silent. Therefore, when you allow children to share their opinion, you’re giving them the autonomy to share what they’re thinking about and we should allow them to speak their mind. As long as they’re respectful and courteous, of course, and polite about it. But there are certain times that we just have to ignore the things and we should not talk when we don’t need to talk. There are certain people that we should not engage in that we should have a minimum engagement. These are the toxic people that have no value that they can give us into our lives. So, fear of speaking up is something that I have to really learn.

Unfortunately, we are not taught how to communicate effectively. I wish that we would have spent much of our time going to school about emotional intelligence and communication skills. I have finally realized the disconnect in our education system. We send children to school.

I went to school in elementary, to high school and college and there was nowhere in the curriculum or subject that talks about communication skills unless you will major in communication or journalism. There was nowhere in this curriculum or subject that focuses on emotional intelligence, how to regulate your emotion, and how to become an emotional stable person which is something that is missing. Because when you think about it, majority of our problems arises because we don’t communicate properly.

Majority of us have conflict because we don’t know what communication looks like. And here we are, being taughton how to be intellectually, memorizing certain historical events or dates. But these things actually do not matter as much as developing emotional intelligence. That’s why marriages falls apart. That’s why divorce rate is high. That’s why relationships falls apart because we failed to teach our children or we’ve been failed including myself. I was not taught how to communicate effectively. I wasn’t taught that listening skills is part of communication skills. Therefore, when we grow up we are just so devoid of that kind of emotional intelligence and that’s why we don’t know what is a good and healthy relationship looks like.

8. Perfectionist

Perfectionism is also something that we should not tolerate. One of the reasons why I have deleted some of my videos for the first time I attempted to do my videos on YouTube is due to perfectionism. The negative dialogue would replay in my head saying, “You look fat, you sound weird, you look awkward, your voice sucks and these were the kind of narrative that I have just was able to silence and drowned out the noise. Because looking yourself in the camera for the first time is awkward. It it sounds like you are just someone else when you look at yourself for the first time in the camera and when you’re editing it. It looks kind of strange and weird and I have to learn to drown out the negative voice s that asks, “Who do you think you are for doing this attempting to do something else?”

I overcame it by spending tim alone, soul searching and trying to understand why I felt that way about myself. As it turns out, when I had to look my fear in the face and because perfectionism was something that I was I have adapted from someone else. It was a taught behavior and it was something that was imposed on me. It was something that I was told as a child that you can’t go there because of the false sense of protection. It was somebody else’s fear. I was taught that you cannot try something else because they’re afraid that what if you fail so perfectionist is something that people will tell you not to try because you might fail perfectionist.

People are afraid of trying because they’re afraid of failure that a kind of a perfectionist individual is something that we should not look up to. We should challenge them all the time because in my own self-reflection now that I’m an adult I it’s actually something that I have discovered it’s not my fear. It was somebody else’s fear that I was able to impose in my own self. I told myself that if even if I fail even if I might not be successful in what I do at least I have given it a try. At least I have taken the time to get out of my comfort zone and rather than staying in the status quo and just staying stagnant and static.

Because that’s not what living is about. Living is about trying things that you have not tried before. But perfectionist people though they will analyze things. They get stuck in the analysis paralysis. They will ponder about it what if it fails. What what would people talk about me? What if they will say that I suck or they are very external. They always think about what people might think or say about them and that is a very crippling idea. So, you don’t want to just stuck to be in that kind of state of mind.

9. Walking around with guilt

If you have been brought in a religious environment, you know how hard it is to authentically be. When there are parameters in place. Like you can’t wear certain clothing, makeup is forbidden so on and so forth. I tried so hard to be perfect and follow these rules and so these are the kind of things that we have been imposed to as a child. Walking with guilt especially when you have been victimized or you have been going through some childhood traumas in your life. You are going to constantly think about what are the things that happened to you. So, these are the guilt that you make you feel ashamed. You feel shameful of your past. This is why it’s important that you surrender your past to God. Give it to Jesus and say “God take this guilt, this shame away from me because it’s eating me up.” When you’re living in guilt and shame you’re going to just have full of insecurity because when Adam and Eve were caught in the Garden of Eden when God said “Where are you Adam?”

They were hiding not because they were uh trying to see if God is going to find them or not. It was because of their guilt. Because of their shame. That’s why the moment you confess your sin and you ask God for forgiveness that guilt and the amount of guilt that you’ve been carrying for so long. Because maybe somebody done you wrong or maybe you have done something wrong to yourself and you have been debilitated by this kind of mindset that you’re a bad person. I’m not good enough so these are the kind of guilt maybe because somebody told you of the things the lies that you have that you’ve been told as a child.

So, these are the things that you have to again get to the root cause of the issue of why you are guilty. Or why you are ashamed. So this is the thing that you have to be a responsible human being. As I said, the only way for you to go get through the pain is to face and not to shove it under the rug. Last but not the least.

10. Living with someone else’s standards.

Most of us one way or another live by someone else’s standards. Unfortunately, we can’t choose
the family or place we grew up in. Our behavior is learned and adapted from our parents, caretakers, teachers that we don’t always live with our true self. I grew up in fear. Growing up with my parents, my mom was overly protective. Whenever I wanted to do something like swimming, singing in public, the answer would always be no. So, therefore when you’re trying to live with anyone else’s standard, you’re going to miss out on your greatest potential in life and when you become an adult of course that when you have a choice to do so.

Of course when you’re a child, you can’t really choose for yourself. You need your parents parental guidance. However, when you become an adult, there are certain standards that you must not tolerate. For instance, if your family are majority of them are nurses or doctors or lawyers and they will tell you then you must be one as well. Because everybody in the family are doctors and lawyers and dentists and whatever it is. It doesn’t mean that you have to live up with their standard when that’s not how God created you to be. That’s not the calling of your life.
Unfortunately, there are people out there who is going to impose the standard on you and how you should live.

And another one is that the only way for you to be happy is when you live in the nicest neighborhood, big car, a nice car, a nice mansion. These are the standards that society family upbringing culture have imposed on us. These are the standard that we have to really make sure whether. It aligns with our truth. Does it align with me? Do I believe in this kind of
principle or not? Unfortunately, we do have different standards that we have to live depending on your morals and values. It all comes down to your choices. It all comes down to your perspective in life but do not allow people to tell you and dictate to you how you should live your life and what’s best for you.