In a world that is becoming more and more chaotic in both the personal and global sphere, learning how to let go is a skill and an art that could very well save your life.
But how do you actually let go?
There are a multitude of blog posts and methods shared by the Internet’s self-proclaimed experts, but do any of them work?
Maybe you tried a few for a couple of days, saw zero results and then forgot about them entirely.
In this blog post, we’re going to share the ONLY method you need to help you let go with every breath so you can flow with the currents of life.
Table of Contents
What does it Mean to Let Go
Before we dive in, it’s important to understand what it means to let go.
Letting go is not simply letting a person or object leave your life – if you continue thinking about that person or object, you have not fully let go.
Letting go of something completely means letting go of it on all levels – on the physical level and the emotional level.
What does that look like?
Here are some examples:
- After a break up, seeing and interacting with the other party no longer hurts you.
- After being in a car accident, you have healed your body and are no longer afraid or anxious to drive. Thinking about the cost of the accident (emotional or financial) or interacting with the same situations or types of drivers that may have been part of the accident does not make you angry or anxious anymore.
- Losing your favourite sweater no longer makes you upset.
What you can Learn to Let Go of
Above, we shared a few examples of things that you can let go of.
In fact, there are many other things in life that we tend to hold onto as humans.
What are those?
Events
Often, things happen that either hurt us or make us very happy. By remembering those things (in the past), over and over again, we are preventing ourselves from living fully in the moment and being able to experience new things to the fullest. Memory of those events create sadness in us by either remembering past pain or becoming sad and nostalgic that past happy moments are now over.
Expectations
We have certain ideas of how we want things to be and how we want our lives to go. Thinking about those expectations creates anxiety and again prevents us from living fully in the present moment. If those expectations are not met and life takes a different turn, we become sad.
Expectations of people and how they should behave creates disturbances in our mind because we’re not able to accept a person for how they are. We go on trying to fix them or change them and make them into the version of them that we want to see.
Childhood traumas
These things live deep down in our consciousness as outdated belief systems. They show up as negative behavioural patterns and negative thought patterns and affect our life in the present.
For example, if you have a belief that the world is a negative place and there are no good people in the world, even if someone is generous, you will question their behaviour and wonder about what their motive is and what they want in return.
Emotions – anger, resentment, jealousy, hatred, heartbreak, hurt, etc.
Some people hold grudges for decades. You can go on thinking about something that someone did and every time anger comes up. The other person has completely forgotten about the event and is happily going about their lives while you are boiling inside. That very anger will destroy your health over time and reduce your quality of life. The same goes for any other strong negative emotion that lingers.
Ego
Ego is not only thinking you are too good for something, it is also thinking that you are not good enough. Holding onto your ideas of good and bad, right and wrong, above you and below you will keep you stuck in a rigid and arbitrary structure in your life. By not letting go of your preconceived notions that ultimately become self-limiting beliefs and patterns, you are limiting your ability to enjoy the richness that life has to offer.
Criticism and compliments
Holding onto both good things and bad things that people say about you can create havoc in your life. Both will feed either an inferiority complex or a superiority complex and ultimately strengthen an idea of who you are (ego) that does not serve you.
Situations
Like people, situations are always changing. By holding onto a certain phase of your life that gave you the appearance of stability, you will not be able to act fully in the present and create the best situation for yourself in the changing world of today. You will be stuck in a version of yourself that has not grown and changed with time.
Why you should learn How to Let Go
There is a concept in the Patanjali Yoga Sutras called aparigraha or non-accumulation.
Aparigraha
Aparigraha is one of the five yamas or social ethics of yoga.
To give you a little bit of context, when I say yoga, I don’t just mean the asanas or posture practice that happens in yoga studios across the world – I mean yoga in the ancient sense. The word yoga comes from the Sanskrit word yuj and that means union – union between the body, breath and mind.
When these 3 layers of your existence (see panchakosha) come into harmony you are able to embody the highest or best version of yourself.
The 8 limbs of yoga, starting with the five yamas, help you to attain yoga or union between the body, breath and mind.
The Value of Aparigraha – Why you should learn How to Let Go
The purpose of aparigraha (non-accumulation) is to allow you to move with the currents of life.
The reality is that time is always moving forward, countless events happen every single day. If you were to hold on to each and every single event that happened in your life, you would be unable to function in the present moment.
For this reason, you should learn how to let go.
By learning how to let go, you will experience inner freedom. You will learn how to live in the present moment and experience all that life has to offer.
Minimalism
Minimalism is the contemporary equivalent of the ancient concept of aparigraha. By keeping your physical possessions to a minimum and decluttering your environment, you are also able to declutter your mind and keep it light and free.
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What Happens if you don’t learn How to Let Go
If you never learn how to let go of things, you will hold onto them forever.
Just like childhood traumas get stored deep in your consciousness in the form of self-limiting beliefs, everything that you hold onto compounds over time and becomes a deeply-rooted belief.
This belief begins to affect the way that you think and behave in the external world.
It will ultimately affect your
- self-care routine
- ability to regulate your emotions
- relationships
- physical health
- mental health
and more.
Beyond that, if you think in a certain way, you will always respond to certain stressors in the same way and this will invite the same types of situations and emotions into your life over and over again. This recurring action or karma will only drive your self-limiting beliefs deeper into the consciousness and make them harder to release.
Why many Methods of Letting Go don’t fully Work
Many methods of letting go may not fully work because they don’t work on your deeper levels of consciousness. Things like creating rituals, reflecting and focussing on the positive are surface level activities that won’t focus on the roots of why you’re not able to let go in the first place.
How to Let Go Authentically
The one method that you need to learn how to let go authentically is yoga.
Again, when I say yoga here, I don’t just mean the physical practice, I mean yoga as a whole – including pranayama (breath work), asana (posture practice), dhyana (meditation) and the other limbs of yoga.
The physical asana practice helps to release stress stored in the body, breath work helps release toxins and meditation works directly on your consciousness to help you recharge, reset and get deep rest.
Altogether, the 8 limbs of yoga work together to help you let go of everything that no longer serves you so you can live fully in the present moment.
The magic of the 8 limbs of yoga is that they are like the legs of a chair. When you pull one leg of a chair, the entire chair moves toward you. In the same way, when you practice yoga with a qualified instructor, all 8 limbs will start to become a part of your life.
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