If You Let Go You’ll Be the Best Version of Yourself

A lot of us are attached to certain things, and I think it’s fine, at the end of the day, we are human beings, and it’s in our nature to want to have the feeling of owning something very important to our lives, it can be a person, an object, a status, etc. The feeling of ownership it’s something inevitable for people, but the problem comes down when what we think “correspond” to us becomes such an integral part of our own identity, that we think that this person or situation will last forever, that we can’t let it go, that if one day that thing is missing in our lives, our whole world falls apart.

When you adopt this mindset, you stop depending on yourself, and by doing this, you are saying goodbye to being free by your means. You are depending on that the exterior circumstances affect and dictate how you will feel. All of this that I just mentioned sounds like an appealing life to you? A life that you want to live? Absolutely not, but again, we are human beings, having this necessity of wanting things is completely human, but when you learn to let things go, to let them be, to accept the inescapable losses that life presents to us, you can shape the curve of your life totally.

What is the first step?

There is a very common process that is used by psychologists and philosophers, and I would like to mention an explanation in specific, given by a Mexican speaker, Diego Dreyfus, about this process of letting go:

“There are 5 steps for the duel, and there is first of all the denial, then comes the negotiation, afterward comes the anger, the depression, and the acceptance finally… Try the duel process again and again until you land in acceptance once more”.

From all the interpretations that this process has had over the years, this is the only one that truly makes an impact on me, specifically for what’s stated at the end of the quote: we have to repeat this procedure as many times as necessary because most people get overwhelmed when suddenly they take a step backward, and they start to believe that since a mistake was made, there is no turning back, when in reality, that was part of the process, to form a habit. And what does it take to incorporate a new habit into our lives? Repetition.

Stage 1: The Denial

This is the stage where we can’t believe that the situation has happened, and we want to attach ourselves to what we had already taken for granted. This is a very natural phase, and completely normal and understandable, but at the same time, it’s very dangerous. If we decide to stay in this stage for a long time, we could stay in there for years to come, living a reality that isn’t what it is anymore, practically we lose the compass of our own lives.

That’s why we have to establish the denial period to be as short as possible, and the duration will be based on a self-analysis about how we truly feel about the situation. Because that’s another thing, if we decide to exit immediately from the problem, ignoring completely how we feel, either if it’s sadness, anger, anxiety, depression, confusion, we will enter a cycle where there are going to be days that we want to keep progressing, and there will be other days that the only thing we want to do is to lay in bed and do nothing, so listening to your body and your feelings, it’s a key part to overcome the bad situations that come with this experience called life.

Stage 2 and 3: Negotiation and Anger

These are the stages where we want to solve the problem, even though deep inside of ourselves we know that things will never be the same. Then, because things aren’t going our way, we get mad with the situation or the other person, and it is here when personal growth starts to take form.

When we are in the anger period, we start to see things from a completely different perspective. We start to see that the person, or the job, or the status, also had its negative aspects. It had that part that didn’t let us evolve and grow, but because our anger emotion is so strong and predominant, we can’t realize that this stage of the process is a very crucial facet for our personal development.

Stage 4: Depression

This is the moment where you realize that you tried to build something that sadly was never going to remain sustainable. These are the harshest times of them all. But what a lot of people do is that, when they are in the depression stage, they don’t allow themselves to be sad, and they go back in the search for solutions to the situation, in other words, they are returning to the negotiation phase, basically taking steps backward. And this is entirely normal, at the end of the day this is a repetition process like I said before, but unfortunately, this has a very high chance of making things worse, moving away from the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is also the time that lasts longer with the person, and the key to getting out of this is trusting in yourself and accepting that this is just temporary, that this state of being doesn’t define who you are, that you are going to get out of it.

When you do this properly, what you are saying to yourself, is that you are going to allow and give the time that is necessary for you to be sad. This is one of the most healthy things you can do in your life, accept and confront your emotions, and let yourself feel whatever you truly feel.

Just as soon as you start implementing this, you get to know yourself in ways you couldn’t see before. You are starting to realize what exactly provokes those emotions and what are the reasons for them to be there. You start to comprehend that you are in this position for a cause that you don’t fully understand, but eventually, you will, and when you finally embrace yourself, you slowly begin to understand everything, because you are telling your own body that is being heard.

This release of emotions commences to clear your mind, as it’s stated in the Gray-LaViolette Theory:

“It’s the accumulated pressure of the feelings that provoke the thoughts”.

Ultimately, this comprehension will guide you to the last stage, which is the most beautiful and liberating of all: acceptance.

Stage 5: Acceptance

When you get to this last phase, after going through such radical change, you can finally be grateful for what happened. You can accept that what happened had to have happened for you to become the version that you are now, and there is no doubt that is even better than it was before. You also start to have a new perspective of the world, and it is here where you begin to get out of your comfort zone. You stop being attached to that person, thing, or situation that had you so lost, and you start having new experiences, that will help you flourish and accomplish the goals that you left behind.

All of this is a process that requires so much work, but there is a way of making it even easier when it inevitably arrives, and that is by letting go at the beginning, where everything seems alright. And this doesn’t mean that the things don’t matter to us or we are narcissistic, it means that if you let go at the start subconsciously, you are telling yourself that you don’t need anything from the exterior to make you happy, you can be just as happy from what you have internally, it means that you are being 100% authentic all the time, it means that you are still going to love yourself no matter what. So, in the case that something doesn’t go as planned, it’s not going to affect you in a big way, because you already fully love yourself, you are enough by yourself, you understand that life presented you this situation for you to learn from it and be better in the future.

When you let go, that’s the ultimate sign of abundance, and that’s why letting go is one of the best things you can do for yourself in your life.