Taking Control of Your Future
The Extraordinary Benefits of Letting Go
We’re very much the creatures of our past. Have you ever heard that expression before? It’s quite a familiar concept in our culture. It suggests that we’re the products of whatever’s occurred in our lives. That we’re shaped by past events and by the emotional legacy that continues to shape our thoughts and feelings. Perhaps this is why the past has the ability to cast its long shadow into the present and exercise a surprising degree of influence into the future.
As well as being the creation of our past, we are also creatures of habit. Have you noticed how often we tend to do things in the same old familiar ways, regardless of the results we achieve? It’s one of the many contradictory aspects of human nature. We prefer to think and feel along predictable lines of expression even when we lapse into unproductive and unhelpful behaviours that hinder our progress. We follow patterns that resist change and keep us well within the boundaries of our personal comfort zone.
You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy. So, let them go, let go of them. I tie no weights to my ankles.
― C. JoyBell C
The old quotation about the definition of insanity – that you keep doing the same things but somehow expect a different result – offers a useful insight into the connection between changing what we do in order to create new outcomes in our lives. If we insist on thinking, feeling and behaving in the same old ways, we can never realistically expect anything to change in our lives. And much of our behaviour is rooted in the past. More particularly, it’s rooted in the emotionally-charged events that shaped our attitudes.
A well-recognised example can be drawn from the first time we experience the pain of rejection. This usually occurs - without any deliberate or intended negative consequences - at the hands of our parents and it happens at a very early age. The acute discomfort prompts us to make an emotional declaration that we won’t put ourselves in a position where we can be exposed to this kind of emotional distress again.
This behavioural shift can leave a legacy that continues to influence our behaviour for the rest of our lives. One of the consequences is that we may find it uncomfortable to allow anyone to get too close to us. Even including partners and children. It only begins to make any kind of sense when we realise that we’re following a set of emotional responses that were laid down when we were young children. Now, it might’ve made sense in its own unique way when we were four years old but it can’t serve our best interests when we pass into adulthood and still maintain the same protective defence systems from our kindergarten years! Something has to change.
Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward. If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.
― Roy T. Bennett
The same kind of phenomenon often shows up in our pre-adolescence years when we feel rejection or embarrassment from our peers. It usually happens at school or at a social event when we’re exposed to some form of ridicule and learn to feel the awful weight of our insecurity. These are the long-forgotten moments when we react to the pain of our embarrassment by making those life-changing emotional declarations that are intended to protect us from any future risk of a repetition of these kinds of situations. And we create another layer of protection that aims to hide our vulnerability but effectively keeps people at a safer distance.
The next stage in the formation of our personal defences usually happens when we break up with our first meaningful relationship and suffer the pangs of heartbreak. It feels like the end of the world and it can be emotionally devastating. And that’s why the defence system builds another layer of protection to make sure no one can ever break our hearts again.
Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don't.
― Steve Maraboli
These may seem to be simple examples but they’re common enough to most people. Of course, there are plenty of other events that can leave their mark on our hearts and on our behavioural frameworks. The important factor in these scenarios is the fact that emotionally-charged events can drive our future behaviours. The past continues to inform the present. And the future.
The answer to this fascinating aspect of human nature is to learn to let go. Not with your conscious mind. It isn’t a talent that the conscious mind is equipped to handle successfully. It’s a question of learning to recognise the physical tensions in your body that accompany these deeply-seated emotional reactions. You can learn to relax your head, neck and shoulders. You can breathe more slowly and more deeply. You can learn to remove your layers of personal amour and discover what happens when you open your life to the opportunities and relationships that most of us have avoided since early childhood. Unclenching the jaw muscles. Relaxing hands and back muscles. Learning to feel more open.
Once you realise you deserve a bright future,
letting go of your dark past is the best choice you will ever make.
― Roy T. Bennett
Meditation is a wonderful way to gain insights into your inner nature, shining a light on elements of the past that caused you pain – and letting them go. Releasing the past is a direct way to set yourself free. By letting go of the negative events to which you’ve become so deeply attached, you attain a new freedom. The shadows of what happened before no longer reach into the present. They lose their power to touch and influence your life. You discover that you’re free to choose a much brighter, happier and more successful future for yourself.
If you seek the wondrous gift of self-fulfillment, you must let go of the past and all the emotional baggage that’s been tied to your life since early childhood. You’ll feel lighter. Stronger. More confident and more capable. You might even feel you can fly. When you let go of the past, it’s like gaining your wings and then there’s nothing behind you that can hold you back anymore.
Last night I lost the world, and gained the universe.
― C. JoyBell C
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Greg Parry created The Wellness Foundation and the Cognitive Empowerment Programs specifically to help people master their stress, overcome their limitations and explore the power of their true potential.
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