I know one thing: it can be scary to let things go.
If you let go of a job, what if another one doesn’t come?
What if you reject someone who could be “the one”?
Or leave something that’s not healthy and wind up alone?
What if you need that dress for a party a year from now and, even though it’s loaded with bad memories, you will need to buy another one?
Letting go of things that aren’t right can be this negotiation with yourself, wrestling between self-worth (I know I deserve better than this…) and practicality (I should make the best of what I have…) and this puzzling other factor of wishing (Maybe I can make this right… if something changes…) that amount to total confusion.
If you feel smaller, less acknowledged or less worthy than perhaps you know you should feel right now, you may need to let some stuff go. Breaking free of the dance between your value, what you feel obligated to do and what you magically hope to transform can be the most liberating way to actually and finally get what you are looking for!
For fun in some free time before an event I was hosting, I let a tarot reader pull some cards for me. “Your standards,” he said in this very pithy way, ” are so high that no person on the planet could ever equal what you expect from them.”
I laughed. He was 100% wrong, so much for tarot, but I laughed because that’s the old me he was speaking to.
A want to have nothing but perfection around me was my great big old habit. A fear habit. It consumed me.
Have you done it? Are you doing it now?
After all, I did not want to get dragged down by someone else, I didn’t want to be restricted by commitment, I didn’t need vampire people or other people’s problems… I didn’t want to waste my time…
So, subtly, I distanced myself from everything that was less-than-perfect (IE: everything). And I wound up spending a lot of time in a luxurious isolation. I did everything that made me feel great and yet, I knew in my heart I was not going to be able to sustain what I was doing.
If you are out in the world living, chances are you’ll pick up some things and people that you’ll need to let go of. You’ll buy things you’ll need to give away. You’ll say yes when maybe it should be no.
The idea of making mistakes or needing to declutter life isn’t something “bad”… in fact, its something really amazing. I can’t count how many sages have said in some way that “mistakes are proof that you’re living” or that sometimes you have to “let go of the things you’ve outgrown.” It’s all part of de-cluttering life. Just like cleaning out a closet isn’t a one-time thing, clearing out bad ideas, bad jobs and wrong relationships of all kinds is a life-long process.
Why is it so hard to let go of things that make us feel smaller, confused, stuck, less-than-worthy…?
I have only one phrase that springs to mind:
“What if I don’t find another…?”
Which amounts to one word:
Scarcity.
Letting things go can be terrifying if you think you are out of options!
You can either isolate yourself and hide from life and not engage in things at all unless they are “perfect” or you will likely go through life picking up things from time to time that aren’t the best for you.
And, it’s likely that you’ll have to confront the idea at one point that perhaps there won’t be another person who loves you if you leave the one you are with who makes you feel bad or perhaps you’ll never have another job that pays you, even though the one you have is sickening, overly-stressful or just plain wrong for you.
The fear that another one of anything won’t ever come is a powerful fear.
The dance between self-worth, practicality and wishing for a miracle begins as soon as the idea pops up that maybe there won’t be another one. Maybe this is all there is. Maybe there will be a miraculous change.
But, if you want to stop negotiating against your own best interests, especially if you are feeling really terrible about yourself, you may want to break free of the idea that there’s not enough to go around.
I see people who are in this dance all the time. Often people come to me in a panic about needing to make a change but not sure how to let things go.
All I can do is relate to what I’ve seen over and again. When you let go of the bad, you make space for the good. It’s never failed me.
Back when I couldn’t let anything go and my life was a mess of clutter and people who sucked the life out of me, I reached a point where I would rather have no friends than the friends I had. I would rather be jobless and perhaps on the brink of crisis than work for someone who had me in tears every day.
Dramatically I decided I had to- I just had to- let everything go that I knew was wrong.
Strangely, I had a flood of amazing people enter my life days after walking away from that mess I was in… And, I had a new job within days of another that had me in a shambles…
You may not need to let everything go all at once like I did that very dramatic time in my life!
It’s now not as dramatic but I still need to do it from time to time.
Letting things go is a big deal.
If you are in this struggle within yourself during every day between feeling trapped and making it OK to be trapped in your circumstances, you might want to try sitting down and imagining all the amazing things you can experience if you feel fantastic about yourself. See all the possibilities. Really look at how big, bright and happy you could be…. all you could give… experience… adventure…
From that place of abundance you can make decisions and take actions and see things so much more clearly. When you can sense that you have real options, you aren’t inclined to settle for what makes you feel bad just because it’s sitting there in front of you.
Would you take the ice cream you don’t like just because it’s in front of you when you can find your favorite flavor if you do a little searching?
If you believe you deserve what you love, and that it exists, you won’t settle for the bowl of ice cream you don’t want to eat.
There’s no lack of love, money, happiness, wellness, energy…
If you need to let go of things that are making you feel this drought of goodness is a real and lasting condition, start by getting really clear that there’s enough of everything you’ll ever need everywhere around you.
It may take weeks or months or however long it takes of imagining better for yourself and writing in journals and even talking to therapists or coaches or doing healing homeopathy or yoga or meditation to get to the place where you don’t just think there’s an abundance but you know there is.
It’s worth doing what it takes to get to that place… because from that place you’ll be able to let go of anything that makes you feel terrible.
Without being weighed down with the toxic and diminishing, you glow much more. And… you’ll be able to risk, to dare, to create and to love everyone and everything in a far wider, deeper and more inspired way.
xoxo Dana
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So honest & real & brilliant & INSPIRING 🙂 I adore your writing & philosophy on life!
Thanks Dana!!!
This was just what I needed:). I’ve been doing that dance with myself, looking at what is sitting in front of me and thinking what if this is all there is for me. Thank you for reminding me that abundance and better is all around me and I don’t have to settle for less than what I love!