Letting Go

Letting go is a phrase we all hear and it has gotten to be rather cliché, being forever immortalized in Disney’s “Frozen” along with the popularized colloquial expression “let it go girl”.  Easier said than done.  These three little words contain such a deeper meaning than what we think and are a crucial part, if not a necessary part, of maintaining a mentally healthy life.

Letting go is single-handedly one of the most important things we humans need to do. However, it is just not that simple.  How do you let something go that isn’t physically attached to you but rather embedded in your psyche and in your deepest thoughts – where do we begin?  We all have our stories that define us – our achievements, disappointments, our battle scars and dysfunctions.  We cling to these as definitions of who we are – a lover, a fighter, a passive aggressor, a wounded and scared basket case. There is some type of comfort having these labels and they provide us with an identity that oddly enough makes us feel secure.  Security is the name of the game, so we hang on to these labels and allow them to indulge our thoughts, control our behavior, and identify us as a human being.

Letting go leaves us vulnerable, and being vulnerable is scary.  Letting go would allow us to operate both socially and mentally with a blank slate.  Letting go would leave us with nothing but a wide open space to move around in and create something new and different. The reality of it sounds pretty wonderful doesn’t it?  Then why don’t we do it?  I think by not having some type of dysfunction or drama to identify with might make us feel ordinary and boring.

Imagine letting go of tons of emotional baggage that has been accumulating over the years.  Picture this baggage as dozens of rotting potatoes hanging from you with string.  These rotting potatoes weigh you down, and represent all the stories that have somehow defined you, given you comfort, given you pain and most importantly have collectively created the person that you decided you are.  Imagine all these strings being cut, and all the rotting potatoes falling to the ground. The benefits could be amazing.

For the first time in a long time,  you are standing up straight.  There is nothing to define you outwardly  and you have nothing you feel is worthy of even divulging to anyone you meet.  For the first time, it is YOU with absolutely no strings attached.  Standing up straight allows you to get more oxygen in your lungs.  You can freely tilt your head back to feel the sun on your face.  Lower back pain slowly disappears since nothing is weighing you down. You start to relax which creates a more calming personality that people respond to positively.  The absolute freedom you feel is communicated to everyone you meet which makes you more interesting and more of a person people want to be around. The shedding of all this fear translates into courage, and having courage makes you stronger.  Strength is a positive base to more forward from. This is where you want to be.  Ordinary and boring?  I think not.

This can be all of us.  I strive for this emotional freedom and I work on it everyday.  It takes discipline and is ongoing.  Something will always come up that we will want to identify with and latch on to – the list goes on and on.   A clean slate gives us room to grow with no exceptions and labels.  Freeing ourselves up to truly live with no chains gives us room to grow.