Letting go: New Age fashion or reality?
Hello …. How are you today?
This week I’d like to invite you to examine the overused term "letting go". Let’s remove the ideas about this concept that confuse us so that we can enjoy what it really means
You can listen to the podcast with this player, or if you prefer reading you have a written version below. Enjoy it!
I'd like to start by making a mega personal confession. A very long time ago, I wanted to launch a project. I went about the idea over and over again but I was scared and I didn’t find the courage to start. On the other hand, I was dying to make it happen. I timidly started working on my project until I became obsessed with it and all I was thinking about was succeeding at it. One day my therapist said to me
“Let go, let the forces that are greater than you do their work”
Her comment made me feel disconcerted. How was I going to let go if I had a lot to do? What forces was she referring to? I remember I concluded saying to myself "she's a Buddhist that's why". Here comes the part where I confess that since I didn’t get the “let go” issue, I did the opposite, I went on and on until I collapsed. What did I do? Insecure and exhausted, I gave up. Many years later, having learned about Mindfulness, meditating daily, and diving into Transpersonal Psychology, I understood the idea of letting go. To this day, I appreciate the freedom I feel when I practice it in my everyday life.
Letting go in Transpersonal Psychology
From a Transpersonal Psychology perspective, letting go means detaching. The opposite of this is attaching or clinging, it’s staying stuck to a fixed idea of how things should turn out, it’s sticking to people who we must let go to preserve our health, it’s clinging to situations that make us suffer. Of course, if someone tells us "let go, turn over a new leaf" it’s challenging for us, especially if we have a tendency to stick to the way things should be or to certain people. Detachment can’t be practiced in the blink of an eye. We must learn to change our emotional habits to live more healthily. S.O.S how? We usually have a trigger, we create a routine based on it and we wait for our reward. For example, we have an exam, we apply to it hard, we are glad because we get high grades. Another example, we start a relationship, we work hard to make it work, we feel loved and needed.
The Reward
The idea of letting go is related to detaching from the reward, that is to say, the last stage in our habitual way behaving. For example, I’d like to start my business, I plan my actions and carry them out but I release my expectations of how everything has to turn out. I enjoy the peace of mind that doing my best brings me. Letting go has nothing to do with apathy and much less with giving up, it’s about acting from a place of calm, mindfully and aware of my circumstances. That way of facing life gives me confidence. There’s something even more important to take into account when we “don’t let go". If I get trapped in the satisfaction I get from external rewards - from my teachers, bosses, partner, society, a salary, how I look, and so on and so forth - I stop believing in myself because I need external validation. I lose contact with my deepest wisdom. For example: If I love you, I do it because I want the best for you, I know my worth and I don't need to be the center of your universe for you to confirm it.
Perfectionism & Control
In addition to the above, two personality traits make it difficult to let go. One is perfectionism, the internal need to act without making the slightest mistake or killing myself in the attempt to keep everything flawless. When I do things from that place, I’m not relaxed, I’m holding tightly to how everything should be. That is so tense and rigid that I lose my joy in the process and I’m disoriented about my initial vision. I become so obsessed that I don’t make progress for the sake of perfection. What are we going to do then, stick to perfectionism or let go and move forward? The other trait that makes letting go difficult is trying to control everything. The need to have everything under control gives us the illusion that those we love and we are safe. We work like maniacs because it gives us the feeling that in that way we are going to achieve what we want; we don’t trust others or life or the forces greater than one that my therapist was talking about. Our brain is as stiff as a tight fist. We get in the way of our children, partner, and even friends because we think that they won’t be able to do things by themselves. The result? We end up feeling exhausted, sad, empty and anxious. I gave you my own example at the beginning of this blog, letting go in that state is an alien word.
Let go of the idea of letting go
There is hope though. If the idea of letting go is incomprehensible to you, let go of it completely. We can’t force ourselves to "let go", this has to be natural. If we do it from a place that resists the idea and that isn’t authentic, what we want to let go will just backfire. The key is to ask ourselves why we can’t let go. We’ll normally find there’s fear of suffering: "if I don't do it perfectly, they’ll discover who I am"; "I do it because I don't trust others." Fear, anxiety, nervousness, rage and all the strong emotions that don’t allow us to surrender are pointing to places within us that need our attention to heal. The process of removing veils until you get to the root cause of the issue is very personal but with the right help it can be done.
“Not being able to surrender is normally connected to the fear of the unknown and our need for certainty.”
I’ll only say here that not being able to surrender is normally connected to the fear of the unknown and our need for certainty. You might want to see how this manifests in your life. I assure you from my own experience and by helping others that when we loosen our fist and relax our chest, we create the necessary space to see that I can do it, that I am going to do my best and that I can relax about the result. By meditating, exercising, and spending time in nature, I’ll find the confidence that makes letting go possible.
A big hug ❤