Photo by H. Hutchinson
The past does not equal the future unless you live there. – Tony Robbins
Since 50% of us will make resolutions for the New Year, and 90% of us who make them will break them, according to Dr. Gregory Ramey, I have decided to continue with the theme of letting go.
This month, I want to focus on the how rather than the why, with these 5 big tips on exactly how you practice letting go. This practice can stop you from beating yourself up when you fail to live up to your own aspirations. It’s not that aspirations are bad: I actually believe they serve a very important purpose in helping us create our own ideal life, one that is good for those around us, too. However, I have realized that without creating the space for myself to think and contemplate, I will wear myself out and produce little of actual long-term value, and I am practicing what I preach by letting myself let old stuff go as part of the my 2015 game plan.
That said, here are the best 5 BIG tips I know on how to let go:
- Appreciate abundance: Too often, people think of abundance in financial terms. Are you rich in love and joy? I am extraordinarily rich in terms of familial and friend relationships. Where are the areas in your life where you are rich? Sometimes I get caught in my own rhetoric of scarcity, and thinking that I will never do enough, be enough, have enough, etc., etc., but the truth is all around us in the natural world. Walks in nature continuously surprise me with joy. Nature is abundant: witness this huge mass of shells in the photo above along Edisto Beach. Nature produces such abundance precisely to make sure there is enough, knowing that not every seed will sprout or egg will hatch. You have to try many different things as they won’t all succeed and that means letting go of the ones that are not working.
- Take small actions: There are plenty of things you cannot control, like the weather and the world economy. But that shouldn’t stop you from doing whatever you can do to change your own life. We have far more control over our daily actions than nearly any other creature on earth. And many of us have far more control than we realize over how we make a living. You can reach out for an informational interview, research a different organization, and apply for a new job. Who knows, you might even get it!
- Live in the moment: What is in front of you, right now? Meditate or do yoga to help you stay in the present, instead of dwelling on old hurts or failures. One technique for this is to visualize a box in your head labeled “Expectations.”Whenever you start dwelling on how things should be or should have been, stuff that thought into this box. You can create a real box, too. A friend of mine calls it her “God Box” to remind herself to “let God handle it.” If that sounds too religious to you, just adapt the name to “Let Go.” If you are worrying about how to get a new client or finish that big project, write down your worry, and put in the box. Then take that big worry, and go back to Tip #2, and start taking small actions.
- Fully experience emotion: A psychologist friend of mine likes to say that the word “emotion” contains the word “motion” in it. You don’t get over something without moving through it. Try giving yourself “a rant window” or a “grief time” to fully experience whatever emotion is keeping you from letting go of something or someone, maybe 15 minutes or so a day for a week or a month. After venting or sorrowing for a specific amount of time, stop! If you do something too much, you create neuronal pathways, like ruts deepening from wagon wheels, getting harder and harder to jump out of over time.
- Express your feelings creatively: Draw your feelings, free write in a journal, play a musical instrument to express your anger, happiness, frustration, joy, whatever emotion is currently ruling your life. Once you’ve finished, remind yourself that you have now released those emotions. You might even want to burn that picture, throw away those journal pages, or pound out some scales to move on.
Bonus tip:
- Be who you are now: If an old love, teacher, parent, child, friend, or anyone else in your life, has a way of describing you as “Good old loyal so-and-so, s/he’s always there to clean up the mess,” is that still descriptive of who you are now? Is there an old voice telling saying “You can’t?” You might need to let go of a pre-conceived notion of who you are, to get to a new version of yourself. You can still be loyal, but no need to be a doormat or a punching bag. Start 2015 by respecting yourself. The new you can let go of the old self that was being hurt or abused by others. Your new self may even enjoy life more.
Tags: letting go
