Learning How to Let Go: A Technique for a More Fulfilling Life

Since I can remember, I have always been a sentimental girl. Holding tightly to any possessions which reminded me of childhood memories, holding tightly to people I have met in my teens, even though I no longer felt any meaningful connection other than shared memories. The nostalgia seemed to follow me wherever I went. I hardly felt settled. By longing for the past, I have been missing out on the present.

I believe things, people, and events meet us precisely when we are ready to receive them. I did not look for it. The practice found me.

Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender, by dr. David R. Hawkins is the book that detached me from nostalgia, pain, resentment, and conditional perception of life.

Being controlled by your emotions, automatic reactions is exhausting, needless to say, unproductive.

I have never given the thought of being a spiritual person. Neither have I contemplated the notion of spirituality until I have come across Maya Angelou's definition of it: a surrender.

Once you let go, you become bolder.

I used to believe letting go was for cowards.

“Why should I quit and give up all attempts at trying to exercise my way? I will not be a pushover!” That was my egoistic mind talking. I was fighting upstream. However, the blunter you become to life's signals, the more bruised you come out of the crusade.

Ironically, letting go presents you with strength, peace of mind, and victory. Letting go is about choosing your battles. When you become aware that mind is only a tool, you get to use it in the way it serves you, not controls your reactions.

Letting go is the opposite of not caring. It speaks volumes about honoring your emotions.

Emotional awareness: the key to healthy living.

When faced with fear, we tend to:

• suppress it (consciously trying to get rid of the feeling)
• repress it (unconsciously stifling emotions)
• express it (ranting about it, with complaining, you feed the emotion with the constant attention. Therefore, it resurfaces anew, stronger than before)
• escape it (drinking, playing video games, distractions in forms of addictions, numbing ourselves)

Emotions accumulated throughout the years trigger millions of thoughts. They become the momentum governing our lives.

We barely face emotions, even when we are experiencing pleasure. We cringe at the embarrassing memory, only to brush the uncomfortable symptoms away. We miss enjoying life to its fullest, chasing another venture, distant gratification. While not diving in it, we tiptoe around life.

Yet, how we feel and what we think infuses how we see the world.

Escapism constitutes our modern living.

From the very beginning, our day is flooded with messages, emails, comparisons, the latest news, complaining, searching for power, striving for claps, and likes. Those are all factors that get us hooked on acceptance from others. We are in constant fight or flight mode, as fitting in becomes linked to survival.

Ask yourself questions: why am I reaching for it? What am I trying to escape?

You shouldn't feel bad because you want to have fun and have a drink with your friends. The issue arises when you want to hide discomfort or trauma behind the facade of staying busy or following the crowd.

As long as we run away from our emotions, we tender to sickness in our minds. The disease, later on, is translated onto our bodies, influencing relationships with people and the world:

Suppressing emotions is associated with high rates of heart disease, as well as autoimmune disorders, ulcers, IBS, and gastrointestinal health complications. Studies show that holding in feelings has a correlation to high cortisol - the hormone released in response to stress - and that cortisol leads to lower immunity and toxic thinking patterns. Over time, untreated or unrecognized stress can lead to an increased risk of diabetes, problems with memory, aggression, anxiety, and depression. - MBGHealth

To dissolve any emotions is to become aware of them. That is all there is. Accept the fear. Shed a light on the jealousy. Invite doubt onto the scene.

Letting go is the answer to manifesting your dreams.

We tend to believe that what we fear we attract, and righteously so. As for the negativity to influence our experience, we need to first accept it and fuel it with our attention. Since we excel at manifesting what we fear, our minds have also the great capacity to make our wildest dream come true.

When we desire something immensely, we exert pressure on it. You can almost feel the discomfort and longing inside your body. Whenever we want somebody to act a certain way, we exude this pressure through our energetic cords connecting us with that person. The desperation becomes tangible. The more we try, the more they oppose. The pressure is nothing more than emotional blackmail. We deprive somebody of free will by demanding a different response. We want things to go our way or no way.

Our burning desire becomes the resistance to fulfilling it. We always get what we want once we stop demanding it.

So far, letting go sounds pretty beneficial to me.

Once you let go of the anger, you invite kindness into your life.

Where anger resides, there is no room for love, gratitude, or any positive emotions, which are fundamental in manifesting positive experiences.

What we gain from negative emotions is fleeting. The satisfaction from petty remarks does not stay with us for long. Egoistic drives do not generate fulfilment. They imitate a forced compliment. No depth. No grandeur.

You will always harvest what you sow. Winning by jealousy, bullying, or intrigue can be temporary, but satisfaction from kindness and understanding will last forever because of the karmic consequences you approach later on.

You need to face it to erase it.

Yoga, meditation, various forms of relaxing techniques bring about temporary relief, a distraction from what bubbles underneath. They are great tools to strengthen awareness. However, the key lies in facing emotions that surface during states of meditation or heightened consciousness. After all, you will need to confront your demons.

To observe our emotions and responses, we need to get honest with ourselves. No judgment. No blame for feeling a particular way. Remember, where the judgment resides, there is no place for unconditional love in which we thrive best.

Greatness is the courage to overcome obstacles.

― David R. Hawkins

How to let go?

The author of the book encourages us to question, dig deeper. As long as you pose uncomfortable questions, you will be bold enough to design your truth by following your soul's purpose.

What does it mean, "to become more conscious"? To begin with, becoming more conscious means to start looking for the truth for ourselves, instead of blindly allowing ourselves to be programmed, whether from without or by an inner voice within the mind, which seeks to diminish and invalidate, focusing on all that is weak and helpless. To get out of it, we have to accept the responsibility that we have bought into the negativity and have been willing to believe it. The way out of this, then, is to start questioning everything.

― David R. Hawkins, Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender

In the chaos of everyday life, you cannot give your emotions the attention they need to be released and healed.

Silence is required. You need to quiet your mind to go honestly within. To take a look at your feelings which will come up. Silence your phone. Close the door. Make room for your emotions. It shows respect for yourself and the past you want to release.

Feel your body “from the inside”. With closed eyes, draw your attention inward. You can do it with mindful and intentional breathing. Start counting your breaths.

• Think about the experience which made you feel uncomfortable, unsafe. It can be a trivial incident or an extremely emotional event.
• What memories haunt you? Were you mocked in high school?
• How did it make you feel? Bored? Angry? Jealous? Lonely?

Sit with it. Meditate on it. Emotions manifest in your body.

Embrace the feeling. Observe the emotion and how it makes you feel. Do not analyse what has caused it.

Letting go involves being aware of a feeling, letting it come up, staying with it, and letting it run its course without wanting to make it different or do anything about it.

Do not focus on how the situation has played out, who has hurt you, why the incident happened. For now, this is not important. Triggers are irrelevant. Feelings are on the pedestal.

The mind will want to push it out. The ego will want to jump onto the next thing. You will meet ignorance and shame. You will want to quit by mocking the technique. That is ego fencing itself out from uncomfortable emotions.

The key is to descent from the mind and dive into emotions and feelings prevailing on the level of your heart, gut, back pain, the tension in the muscles.

You will encounter resistance. You might cry. Don't brush it aside. Don't argue with your thoughts. Let them come up. It is part of the process. Become aware of the resistance. Shift the focus back to the observation. Watch your sensations. No judgment. No labels.

Just be.

Breathe deeply.

By paying attention to the emotion, you deprive it of its negative energy. It no longer controls you, as now you can see them. You are pulling each emotion out of the rubbish pile you have accumulated throughout the years.

The greatest lessons.

We tend to have insane conversations with our thoughts. We judge. We complain. We negotiate. Stop and observe your thought patterns. Notice them. Do not justify why you think a certain way. Accept the reasoning and let the thoughts go.

Yes, we are presented with a myriad of experiences that we cannot possibly control. However, what we coin the information given is solely up to our will.

Yes, we chase external factors in the search for happiness. However, as long as we look for fulfilment in the outside world, we are going to linger in the state of relentless pursuit with no satisfaction.

The mindful process of letting go reveals that control of your well-being lies in you, not the external world. You are no longer a martyr of the life happening to you; assuming that you wish to free yourself of the victim narrative, many people would rather stay in their comfort zone, no matter how unproductive it may get.

Since applying this technique, my health transformed immensely. I practice it in the morning, or before going to bed. Sometimes it takes 20 minutes, other times an hour before I feel the ease.

My eczema disappeared completely. My body is no longer as picky about food as it used to be. I am no longer controlled by fear. Whenever an unpleasant situation comes up, I can feel emotions in my body; a tight grasp in the stomach, a heavy burden in my chest.

I encourage you to remove the biggest obstacle to living a fulfilling life: your assumptions about negative emotions.

They are our precious navigational system. And the body is a blessed messenger.

We can all learn to let go and let in new opportunities, restored health, and improved conditions into our lives.