On the path to defining your own version of success, what you stop doing is just as important as the things you start doing. Read that twice, please. Because this concept could change everything for you — if you let it.

Stop and… liberate.

What you stop doing is just as important as the things you start doing.

Everybody needs a Stop Doing List. Even a marketing genius, prolific author, vegan, philanthropist and all ’round smarty pants like Seth Godin. I asked Seth to get on the stop doing band wagon with us. He obliged:

I will stop:

1. Keeping score in games I don’t need to win

2. Keeping score in games I can’t win

3. Wasting time on people I can’t please

4. Ignoring the side effects of my personal choices

5. Giving into the resistance without realizing I was

6. Reading my Amazon reviews

7. Letting other people decide if I was doing a good job

8. Trying so hard when it came to persuading other people to change their minds

9. Making lists like this one. Except now

10. Cleaning industrial dough mixers

11. Walking into glass doors

12. Biking without a helmet

13. Cutting large blocks of Styrofoam while barefoot

14. Working for jerks

“Here’s my latest personal Stop Doing List:”

I will stop:

1. Staying up too late when the truth is, I want to get up before sunrise and start loving the day.

2. Doing the laundry simply because it’s there. Write first, laundry can wait.

3. Acting like I love to garden and going all kale crazy. I don’t really love to garden. I just love snap peas and edible flowers. Simplify.

4. Picking a fight with snarly security officials at airports. They need love. And a lot of it. (I should generally go easier on people in uniforms. This will take some willpower.)

5. Bringing my nicest clothes to consignment stores, it’s so not worth it. And it’s much more fun to make my friends happy with a bag o’ style.

What will you stop doing? Like, right away.

Use these questions to create your new no’s:

1. Are you deeply passionate about it?

2. Do you feel you’re ‘made to do’ it?

3. Can you make a living at it?

If the answers come up meh, just kinda, and … no to – then you might want stop doing it. Shut ‘er down. Take it off your plate. Let it die. Cease. And exhale a sigh of relief. Now you can move with more velocity toward your dreams. That’s how this works.

Team D knows how to Stop Doing!