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.

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The Wonderful World of Podcasts

I get really excited when I talk about podcasts.  I cannot get enough of them.  I share my enthusiasm with podcasts much like I imagine Ralphie does in “A Christmas Story” when he listens to the Little Orphan Annie radio show.  Ralphie and his little brother Randy turn on the radio, snuggle down into the carpet, and begin listening with their eyes aglow, and you can see their minds awash in active imagination.  That is where my brain is while I am immersed in a podcast.

Podcasts, the 21st century version of radio, are definitely having a moment, with Americans listening to more than 21 millions hours of recorded shows.  While this is by no means a threat to television or movies, the ever-growing audience of podcast listeners reveals the best parts of the medium that cannot be ignored.  For starters, you can carve out plenty of time in your day to listen to a podcast – a work commute being the top listening time.  Working out, cleaning the house, and walking the dog are all optimum opportunities to put in your ear buds or headphones, and get transported to magical places.  With over 200,000 podcasts available, there is something for everyone.

What I think makes podcasts such a great sell is the magic of having to listen without seeing – it grips the human imagination like no other and enriches the experience.  Everything tends to come across bigger than life.  Your mind remains open for any possibilities – not like watching television where you watch the action, or even reading a book, where you ARE the action.  Radio is relevant and still thriving in 2017 because of these wonderful qualities that podcasts possess.

apple-podcasts-app-iconWith smart phones and computers, podcast accessibility is just a click away. iPhone and iPad users can select the pre-loaded app “Podcasts”and Android/tablet users the pre-loaded “Play Music”.  Use the search button to find podcasts that appeal to you.  You can subscribe to a podcast just like a magazine and you will get notifications on your mobile device when a new episode is available.   A word of warning about storage however.  Apple’s Podcasts app automatically downloads new episodes of podcasts you subscribe to, storing them on your device. That’s convenient, but it can strain all those 16GB iPhones and iPads. I access the “manage storage” on my iPhone weekly to delete the latest downloads of podcasts to keep my storage space in better shape.  You can also hook up a portable media player to your computer, and your podcast software will automatically load your new shows into it. That way, you don’t have to keep checking the podcast’s website to see if there are new shows, and you always have the freshest shows on your listening device.  In addition, almost every podcast has their own website to visit and learn more about individual episodes.

I have a few recommendations for you if you are searching for interesting podcasts to listen to:

You Must Remember This

This is my favorite podcast.  Written and produced by Karina Longworth, the content dials up the “secret and forgotten history of 20th Century Hollywood”.  Whether you like 20th century Hollywood or not, listeners get sucked into this podcast merely by the format.  There are no sponsorship acknowledgements midway through the show, no guests hosts or other interviewers – it’s just Karina – speaking for sometimes up to an hour, weaving  spellbinding true tales about the lives of celebrities and the times they lived in.  It is Hollywood’s dirt at its finest. My favorite season was the 2015 season “Charles Manson’s Hollywood”, which explored the murders in 1969 by Charles Manson’s cult followers, and the ties he had with the Hollywood music and movie scene.  She followed up that riveting year with a brief 6 part podcast in the summer of 2016 called “Six Degrees of Joan Crawford” – a detailed biography and somewhat disturbing foray into the life of Joan Crawford.   This is a podcast to definitely check out.

Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin

Host Alec Baldwin conducts a series of intimate and honest conversations with artists, policy makers and performers.  The listener can enjoy hearing about people’s lives with details not available from a tabloid.  There is a brief sponsor acknowledgement halfway through the podcast, but overall it is in-depth dialogue that is very revealing.

Ted Radio Hour

This podcast offers a lot of variety.  Each podcast includes parts of two or three Ted talks, and the Ted Radio Hour host, Guy Raz, takes you on a journey through the world of ideas that are bound together with a common theme.  Some of my favorites are The Hero’s Journey, Cities, Anthropocene, and The Unknown Brain.

Criminal

To lift from their website “Criminal is a podcast about crime. Stories of people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle”.  Narrated by Phoebe Judge, the criminality of each episode is explained or overcome by the people who have been associated with it.  The stories are truly fascinating, from the couple who printed money, to the man who robbed banks, to the neighbor who solved a crime from a newspaper article.  Most episodes are under 30 minutes so that is just enough time for most to get to work.  The New York Times says it the best:

“No matter how strange or ghastly the crime, the voice of the host Phoebe Judge somehow remains implacable and oddly soothing.”

Death, Sex & Money

This podcast is hosted by Anna Sale about the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.  It’s the three things that people don’t want to talk about – death, sex and money.  There is a little bit of something for everyone on this podcast and exploring taboo subjects creates a daring listening atmosphere.

Not on my top five but definitely a few others to check out:

Stuff You Should Know
There is no need to say more – this podcast is about how stuff works, from how watersheds work to how porta-potties work.  Check it out.

How I Built This
Guy Raz, the host of the Ted Radio Hour, interviews innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists about how they built some of the world’s best known companies.  Some good episodes include Kate Spade, Sara Blakely (Spanx), Tony Hsieh (Zappo’s) and Airbnb (Joe Grebbia).

Happy listening to everyone!

 

Being Mindful

We hear this all the time – be mindful, be present, and as Ram Dass says “Be Here Now”.
I practice yoga religiously and this seems to be the mantra I hear over and over again.
While I think I understand this philosophy, I need to put it in practice.  To “be here now” takes discipline of thought and quite a bit of hard work.  The results though, are worth it.  There is a direct correlation between being in the present, and happiness!

I recently heard a podcast on happiness and the scientific data behind it.  Over 70% of subjects studied definitely did “wander” in their minds while doing most any task – conversing, commuting to work, watching TV, exercising, and even during sex.  This rather large percentage of “mind wanderers” are being robbed of their current experience, transporting themselves to situations that have not happened, concerns and worries that might not ever happen, or situations that happened in the past.  Our minds are being invaded with the non present and at a great emotional cost.  How often your mind wonders is key in predicting your own personal happiness.

Why does being mindful, or being in the present moment, increase happiness?  Because being in the here now leaves no room for all the things that you cannot control, things down the road or things in the past.  These wandering thoughts are cancerous to all the energy that it takes to be in the now and robs you of the enjoyment of it.

The key to being mindful is the practice of it and that can be challenging.  This is what works for me.  I like to visualize wandering thoughts as objects that are contained in a room within my brain, similar to compartmentalization.  I actively visualize “shutting” the door on all these worries and concerns, and keeping it closed until that room needs to be cleaned – and by that I mean, dealt with.  If I’m dreading going back to work after an extended vacation, instead of letting that dread take away from enjoying my time off, I keep those thoughts about work in the spare bedroom and lock it.  The day when I return to work, I will have to open that door and deal with that issue, but not now.

Try this exercise as it really helps – if you are looking forward to having dinner with a friend you have not seen for a while, or if you are planning a nice long walk with a loved one, actively take all your concerns and worries and lock them up so you can just be here now!  It sounds so simple but it is very effective and the joy you receive from doing this actively and on an ongoing basis will be tenfold.

This is my resolution for 2017 – be mindful, be present, be here now.  Do not rob yourself of enjoying every last-minute of every day – stop poisoning your mind and your experiences of living in the present because as Ram Dass says “later never exists.”
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