Life is a crazy trip. We have no clue what’s going on. So let go. Relax.
This is simple, but the most powerful way to change your life.
So how do you let go? Well it’s similar to falling asleep. You need a cold room and beef liver…Okay wait wrong article.
It’s similar to falling asleep in that the only way to let it happen is to not resist and allow your ego fall away.
When the fruit is just ripe enough, it falls from the tree..
Every time you let go of your limited, small, egoic emotions, you raise your consciousness and become a better person.
Most people will live their entire lives at a low vibrational state and never do any of this.
Because you were never equipped with the proper toolkit to process your emotions in the past, you’ve stored them all. This is the cause for 99% of your hardships in life.
See, it’s not external events that cause you trouble. It’s the internal emotions that external things trigger.
Most people’s lives are an elaborate struggle to escape inner fears and feelings. To find true freedom, you need to learn to let them go.
Here are some tips how:
#1. Start Meditating
This is the most important thing to start doing immediately. It will allow you to witness your emotions from a deeper awareness and to most importantly see that you are not your emotions…because the real you is witnessing them. Being able to drop back into this deeper awareness is critical to letting go.
#2. When emotions arise during meditation, be with them without resisting.
Feel where they arise in your body. For instance, annoyance may bubble up to the surface. You’re annoyed at your boss.
You’re annoyed that you’re here sitting doing nothing.
But think of this like a pimple…it’s only when it comes to the surface that you can detoxify it and let it go.
When it arises, feel exactly where it shows up in your body. Is it in your stomach? Your chest? Your neck. Feel it with your attention. Go into it deeply. Get to know it. And this is the key: do not try to change it. Trying to change it or get rid of it is a form of resistance. And resistance adds fuel to it. Over time, it will naturally subside and you can go back to meditating.
#3. Be very attentive to your day to day experience and watch when any lower emotions arise
Repressed emotions will find a way to come out. One of the main ways is through external circumstances.
Carl Jung believed all of life is an unconscious search to become whole. Part of the way our unconscious does so is by projecting emotions onto external things and creating circumstances so that it can express emotions you’ve been holding onto.
This is part of the reason why you need to do hard things and the things you’re most afraid of.
It’s only when you face some challenge that you’re given the incredible opportunity to mentally grow.
When this happens your first inclination will be to find a distraction. Maybe boredom comes up and you want to reach for your phone. Or you’re angry and want to eat some junk food to distract you from it.
Instead, do the opposite. Do what you did when you were meditating. Feel the emotion very closely.
It has limited energy and the more you feel it, the more it will subside. You’ll come to the brilliant realization that these emotions cannot and do not control you once you stop feeding them energy. They are just sensations…nothing more.
#4. Re-examine the glamour around your desires
Say it’s a desire you have. You’ve likely glamorized it. “When I get that job promotion everyone will love me and I’ll finally be happy’. “When I get that woman / man…”. Etc etc.
You’ve added all these mental pictures and images to it that put the event on a pedestal.
And this is usually why when people get something external they’re disappointed…because it never lives up to their rosy expectations.
See through this.
Re examine this and try to remove the glamour. You’re okay without it. It may happen. It may not. But you need to get to the point where you’re fairly indifferent. This will allow you to release the craving and desire.
#5 Change the meaning you’re giving past events
The same thing happens with events and traumas in your past. Most people spend their lives regretting the past and fearing the future. It’s time to change that.
One of the best ways to deal with past traumas is to reframe the events and see the hidden gift in them.
This is what Viktor Frankl uncovered while in a concentration camp. He found that the only people who were able to survive the hardships were the ones who found some meaning in the struggle.
“Everything can be taken from a man except one thing: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances”
The best way to let go of past traumas that you’re holding onto is to inquire deeply into them and reframe every negative feeling you have.
For instance, maybe that time you got laid off doesn’t make you a lesser person. But instead it was your boss freeing you from the 9 to 5 chains to read books, get some sun and pursue something you’re passionate about.
Maybe that last relationship you got out of wasn’t with your soul mate, but instead was an opportunity to work on your self and find someone that you’re truly compatible with.
You get the gist.
Every single negative experience — yes, even the most traumatic — have a hidden gift.
And every time you acknowledge that gift, you heal yourself.
