Author Jane Straus Ten Steps to Creating Your Extraordinary Life Excerpted from Enough Is Enough: Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life

Endure No More: Five Ways to Say “Enough Is Enough”
and Create an Extraordinary Life

If your life has become an exercise in survival or sameness, it’s time to stop enduring.

In her new book, Jane Straus explains how to stop enduring and start thriving.

Life can and should be an adventure in joy, excitement, and inspiration. But too many people drag through the day in a mild (or even severe) state of boredom, anxiety, or depression. Perhaps you’re one of them. Well, you may be thinking, I would be happier if I didn’t have to keep this job, but without my high salary we couldn’t afford our house. Or, I would love to go back to work, but my husband insists that our kids need a full-time mom. Or, it’s too late for me to __________ (fill in the blank).

If you can relate to any of these scenarios—or more to the point, the dismal feelings related to them—you’re not really living, says seminar leader and personal coach Jane Straus. What you’re doing is enduring.

“Endurance is not the same as perseverance.

We persevere when we have a higher goal in mind.

Our spirit is engaged when we are persevering. On the other hand, we endure when we think we don’t have the right to whatever we feel or the right to choose an extraordinary life,” writes Straus in her book Enough Is Enough!: Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life.

“Most of us succumb to a life of endurance with little, if any, resistance because we do not believe we are worthy of more. If we wake up most mornings feeling anxious, bored, or numb, looking toward some imagined future time when we will feel happier, then we are enduring.”

“When we are enduring, we try to convince ourselves that surviving is the same as thriving,” she adds. “We tell ourselves that it should be enough that we made it through another day, earned our daily bread, performed our duties, and possibly helped others. But when we are merely surviving, we feel resigned, not inspired, exhausted, but not accomplished. We know that something is missing, but we don’t know exactly what or how to go about finding it.”

In Enough Is Enough!, Straus illuminates the suffering created by self-judgments and inattention to our deeper truths and inspires readers with the courage and conviction to embrace their inherent value and dreams with joy, self-respect, and compassion. Citing examples from the lives of her clients and seminar participants—and sharing some poignant stories from her own life—she clarifies the chain reaction of emotional, spiritual, and physical suffering triggered the moment one chooses endurance. In the process, she helps readers overcome their fears, break their destructive patterns, and become true to themselves.