Here is a list of 15 things which, if you give up on them, will make your life a lot easier and much, much happier. We hold on to so many things that cause us a great deal of pain, stress and suffering – and instead of letting them all go, instead of allowing ourselves to be stress free and happy – we cling on to them. Not anymore. Starting today we will give up on all those things that no longer serve us, and we will embrace change. Ready? Here we go:
1. Give up your need to always be right. There are so many of us who can’t stand the idea of being wrong – wanting to always be right – even at the risk of ending great relationships or causing a great deal of stress and pain, for us and for others. It’s just not worth it. Whenever you feel the ‘urgent’ need to jump into a fight over who is right and who is wrong, ask yourself this question: “Would I rather be right, or would I rather be kind?” Wayne Dyer. What difference will that make? Is your ego really that big? This suggestion completely ignores how often other people are wrong, and sometimes their being wrong has consequences for the "not wrong" people.  

2. Give up your need for control. Be willing to give up your need to always control everything that happens to you and around you – situations, events, people, etc. Whether they are loved ones, coworkers, or just strangers you meet on the street – just allow them to be. Allow everything and everyone to be just as they are and you will see how much better will that make you feel. 
“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond winning.” Lao Tzu
Real life proves this wrong in so many ways. (See how I've already failed at #1?) "By letting it go it all gets done..." is just fine, if you don't really have anything to get done. However, those of us who are paid for completing tasks and projects can't just let it all go. Then nothing gets done and we get fired. 
3. Give up on blame. Give up on your need to blame others for what you have or don’t have, for what you feel or don’t feel. Stop giving your powers away and start taking responsibility for your life. From now on I will only blame others for the stupid things they do to themselves.
4. Give up your self-defeating self-talk. Oh my. How many people are hurting themselves because of their negative, polluted and repetitive self-defeating mindset? Don’t believe everything that your mind is telling you – especially if it’s negative and self-defeating. You are better than that. 
“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.” Eckhart Tolle
So my brain, the most powerful organ in the body (according to the brain) isn't smart enough to know when it's hurting itself. I need to use my mind to trick my mind into not listening to itself because the mind is unreliable and works against itself. 
5. Give up your limiting beliefs about what you can or cannot do, about what is possible or impossible. From now on, you are no longer going to allow your limiting beliefs to keep you stuck in the wrong place. Spread your wings and fly! 
“A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the mind” Elly Roselle
Danger, Will Robinson! You cannot fly, and pretending you have wings won't help. I find that knowing your own limitations is quite helpful in life. I've been injured -- physically and emotionally -- by my own distorted views of my capabilities. We hurt our children when we tell them they can "be anything they want to be." 
6. Give up complaining. Give up your constant need to complain about those many, many, maaany things – people, situations, events that make you unhappy, sad and depressed. Nobody can make you unhappy, no situation can make you sad or miserable unless you allow it to. It’s not the situation that triggers those feelings in you, but how you choose to look at it. Never underestimate the power of positive thinking. Let me see if I get this straight -- we should hyperthink our emotional responses so that we control them. Situations don't trigger emotional responses. I call bullshit on this one, and I hate when people call on the "power of positive thinking". If you want to live an authentic life it won't all be positive, and applying positive thinking to everything sucks the life out of life. We learn by being unhappy and delving into the deep thoughts that arise from those moments, not from perpetually stopping ourselves from being unhappy. 
7. Give up the luxury of criticism. Give up your need to criticize things, events or people that are different than you. We are all different, yet we are all the same. We all want to be happy, we all want to love and be loved and we all want to be understood. We all want something, and something is wished by us all. So much fail on my part here, I agree that we all tend to criticize too much, and that high horse is remarkably easy to hop onto sometimes, but "the luxury of criticism" is important in the world of ideas. 
8. Give up your need to impress others. Stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not just to make others like you. It doesn’t work this way. The moment you stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not, the moment you take of all your masks, the moment you accept and embrace the real you, you will find people will be drawn to you, effortlessly. Meh.
9. Give up your resistance to change. Change is good. Change will help you move from A to B. Change will help you make improvements in your life and also the lives of those around you. Follow your bliss, embrace change – don’t resist it.

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls” Joseph Campbell
There are two separate ideas here: Follow your bliss, and change is good. First, following your bliss is for the privilege of the privileged. I'll argue this point in more depth some other time, but suffice it to say that someone needs to bankroll the bliss finding. 
Change is not always good, and making people feel guilty about being resistant to change, or disappointed after it happens, is just silly. We've all been through "bad" changes in our lives. Deaths, moves, jobs, relationships ending. Sometimes change downright sucks. 
10. Give up labels. Stop labeling those things, people or events that you don’t understand as being weird or different and try opening your mind, little by little. Minds only work when open. “The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.” Wayne Dyer
This only goes so far, this opening your mind to things that are different from you -- Westboro Baptist Church is way different from me. Mind still closed.
11. Give up on your fears. Fear is just an illusion, it doesn’t exist – you created it. It’s all in your mind. Correct the inside and the outside will fall into place.
“The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt
If fear is an illusion so is happiness and your entire article is invalid. Just sayin'.
12. Give up your excuses. Send them packing and tell them they’re fired. You no longer need them. A lot of times we limit ourselves because of the many excuses we use. Instead of growing and working on improving ourselves and our lives, we get stuck, lying to ourselves, using all kind of excuses – excuses that 99.9% of the time are not even real.
I can think of a few good excuses for not responding to #12.
13. Give up the past. I know, I know. It’s hard. Especially when the past looks so much better than the present and the future looks so frightening, but you have to take into consideration the fact that the present moment is all you have and all you will ever have. The past you are now longing for – the past that you are now dreaming about – was ignored by you when it was present. Stop deluding yourself. Be present in everything you do and enjoy life. After all life is a journey not a destination. Have a clear vision for the future, prepare yourself, but always be present in the now.
First, there's no need to be so condescending. I'm sure every history scholar in the world would bristle at this item. If the past is so unimportant, why study it? In some ways, our pasts -- even more than our nows -- are all we have. My 40 years of experience on this planet is one of the best sources of information I have about myself, my friends, my children, my capabilities (an inabilities), and the rest of it. Being present doesn't mean ignoring the past, it requires integrating it.
14. Give up attachment. This is a concept that, for most of us is so hard to grasp and I have to tell you that it was for me too, (it still is) but it’s not something impossible. You get better and better at with time and practice. The moment you detach yourself from all things, (and that doesn’t mean you give up your love for them – because love and attachment have nothing to do with one another,  attachment comes from a place of fear, while love… well, real love is pure, kind, and self less, where there is love there can’t be fear, and because of that, attachment and love cannot coexist) you become so peaceful, so tolerant, so kind, and so serene. You will get to a place where you will be able to understand all things without even trying. A state beyond words.
I have such a hard time latching on to any concrete ideas in the above paragraph that I'm having trouble formulating a response. First, there is no state beyond words if you're good enough with words -- that's a shout-out to all my poet friends. Work harder at describing it so the rest of us know what you're talking about. Second, I think most of us know that love doesn't always work like this in the real world. I don't see the value in a truly selfless love where the love-er takes no self-interest. I'm also skeptical because the happiest people I know are not always peaceful, kind, tolerant and serene. If this is happiness, I don't think I want to sign up. Happiness and monkishness aren't equal in my book. (Although, to be fair, some monks do appear yo be very happy.) 
15. Give up living your life to other people’s expectations. Way too many people are living a life that is not theirs to live. They live their lives according to what others think is best for them, they live their lives according to what their parents think is best for them, to what their friends, their enemies and their teachers, their government and the media think is best for them. They ignore their inner voice, that inner calling. They are so busy with pleasing everybody, with living up to other people’s expectations, that they lose control over their lives. They forget what makes them happy, what they want, what they need….and eventually they forget about themselves.  You have one life – this one right now – you must live it, own it, and especially don’t let other people’s opinions distract you from your path.
I'm not sure how many people are living up to other people's expectations as much as they are living to meet their responsibilities. As I said above about "following your bliss," following your inner calling is often reserved for the privileged. I would absolutely love, introvert that I am, to go and spend 3 months out of the year in a cabin in the woods with nothing but a stocked e-reader, a good wi-fi connection and this laptop. And a guitar. I would write, play music, sing out loud. 
But there are other people to whom I am beholden, and it's not their expectations of my that make that connection -- it's my responsibilities to them as part of a family. To buy food, pay the mortgage, provide medical and dental care, buy clothing, etc. Following my bliss would be irresponsible and selfish -- and this is the real crux of my irritation with this article. We don't live our lives in isolation; we are part of many overlapping families and communities, and that they have expectations of us is not unreasonable. We also have expectations of them -- also reasonable. 
There is too much "me, me, me" in this article. Believe me, as a mom working full-time, I get the need for "me time" and as an introvert I really understand the need to direct focus inward. And I sure do like the idea of happiness and being happy, but not as a life goal, and certainly not at the expense of a full-spectrum life. 
Bliss...bah.