Who said letting go is difficult? The first time you plan to let go, is a bit hard. The second time something happens, its less harder. The third time you let go of that same thing, it will be so much easier!
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times” – Bruce Lee
Yes, this quote sounds a bit weird for an article like this. But, if you were to let go 10,000 times, then you become strong, why? because you are now used to it.
I am a Buddhist, and according to Buddhism, we must let go of attachment and desires if we are to experience happiness. However, letting go doesn’t mean you don’t care about anyone and anything. It actually means you can experience life and love fully and openly without clinging to it for your survival. It doesn’t matter, if you have to let go of your past that’s haunting you, if you are still clinging on to it or if it hurts your inner peace even after 10 years.
Letting go doesn’t have to be of just your past relationships, friendships, career downfall or even you losing someone/something that you loved dearly. It is more than that. Imagine you save 10 years to buy a car, and you love that car more than anything in this world. According to Buddhism, that there is sorrow, because you are holding to it, thinking you are happy every time you drive it or just by been inside the car. But over the years you realize that everything in this universe has an expiry date. There is nothing permanent in this life, except ‘change’.
So if “change” is the only permanent thing in this life, shouldn’t you change is something is hurting you?
I sound like a pro in letting go of things. I wasn’t and still I am not. Because we all are human and we aren’t cold-blooded. So here are 4 steps that helped me, to overcome everything that’s bringing me down. I hope these 4 steps will help you remove all negative energy that’s piled up inside of you!
Step 1:
You need to physically let go of everything before you start doing it mentally. If you have something/someone which constantly remind of you of that failure, you need to let go of it. It’s so easy to let go of physical things compared to letting go of mental/phycological things. If you failed at something & still thinking about it, you need to let everything that remind of it (physical things) away from your life.
Step 2:
You cannot just simply delete what you’re trying to remove from your brain and move it to the recycle bin. Life isn’t a machine. Well, is it not? Every-time your computer becomes slow, you right click and refresh the desktop right? Every-time your browser doesn’t load, you refresh right? Refreshing the computer will clean the loaded sector in the computer memory. So should you! You need to refresh by doing something new!
A million dollars or an airplane to jump out to do sky diving to do something new is not something that I am implying. You can do something so simple as drinking a diet coke, if you drink a regular coke, take a different route to work, if you use the same route, try a new menu in a restaurant or try a new drink or hang around with a new friend. A simple change can change your entire life, unknowingly. Trust me, it works!
Step 3:
Starting to realize how great your life is – at this stage, you have tried something new & you can easily understand that your life is just amazing! Once you start changing yourself to be who you are & to understand what makes you happy, you bring in positive energy. Once you have positive energy or as others call it ‘positive vibe’ inside you, you won’t have enough space for negative energy.
At this stage only you need to listen to your brain and adhere to the change you’ve made over the past few weeks.
Step 4:
Making change consistent – well, just because you tried something new today just doesn’t mean you should doing something new everyday! Excitement in life will make you happy (good excitement) – “When you feel excited about something, we feel joy in our bodies because of the release of dopamine and serotonin, two types of neurotransmitters in the brain. Both of these chemicals are heavily associated with happiness (in fact, people with clinical depression often have lower levels of serotonin) – Source: www.healthline.com”.
Different people have different ways of learning how to self improve and let go of things in life. But at the end of the day, it all depends on how you understand yourself and everything/everyone around you. The 4 steps I’ve mentioned above helped me to move on from so much of failures in my life and I am happy today because I helped myself improve and be a better person. There is so much of new things out there, that you can experience. Don’t GOOGLE search what excites you, but take a day off, think about something that you always wanted to do but you couldn’t. Take a day off and do it anyway!
When a reporter asked Selena Gomez, “what advice would you give your 15 year old-self?”. she replied “Go & do it, because you’re going to do it anyway”.
Well isn’t it true? Aren’t we all the mistakes of what we have done over the past few years? Didn’t we take the best option we had at that point where we made a mistake? Like what I said, we are all human and we are to make mistakes. But the biggest mistake we would ever make, is holding on to that mistake!
I hope this article helped you & you can reach out to me, if you need help! as always!
PS: I am happy and that’s what success to me is all about!
[…] If letting go of something is difficult for you and you’re still holding on to that one thing that’s killing you, read this article that I’ve written on “the art of letting go” […]