Letting go is never easy; except for those rare times when it is. We all have those moments in life when we know moving on is the best thing for us and we have no problem making that decision and following through. But what about all of the other times when, though we know moving on would be the best thing for us, we just can’t seem to commit? Or what about when someone else in our lives makes the decision to move on and leaves us without a choice? Whether it’s people or things, truly letting go can, oftentimes, seem insurmountable and some of these burdens we carry around with us for so long that we tend to forget what our lives were like before we allowed them in. They sort of become this oppressive, invisible friend with whom we’ve developed an unhealthy and co-dependent relationship.
In life, we sometimes, unwittingly, find ourselves connected to various negative and harmful people and things which are damaging to our mental, physical, emotional or spiritual health. We know these people or things aren’t good for us, but we continually allow them to have more influence over us than we would really like, and they slowly weigh us down like anchors. These adversarial anchors manifest themselves in various forms: other people and relationships, commitments and obligations, past events and experiences, ideals and expectations, addictions and bad habits, prejudices and misconceptions, distractions, opinions and more. Adversarial anchors are anything in your life that takes you further away from the real you and the person you, deep down, really want to become. They have the ability to keep you from reaching your goals; to steal your peace and happiness; to slowly destroy your health; to create doubt and worry; to waste your valuable time and to tell you lies and make you anxious.
What we fail to realize is that virtually any and all of these nasty things only ever gained power over us because we allowed them to. No one, in their right mind, has ever desired to be abused by, controlled by or addicted to anyone or anything, but, unfortunately, these things still happen to good and well-meaning people. It would be best if we could simply avoid such conditions and circumstances in the first place, but, for some reason, we don’t always succeed.
Spend a few moments thinking of where you currently are in your life and consider what it is that you’ve been allowing to hold you back, steal your joy or destroy your health. This could be anything from regularly consuming a poor diet to relinquishing control of your life to another individual. If you’re sincerely honest with yourself, you’ll easily identify what it is that you’re, unintentionally, tolerating, dwelling on or even repeating – even though you know you shouldn’t. In order to move past all of this, you must make some changes in your life; possibly some drastic ones – which won’t be easy – and you’ll need a plan. As stated in my post, How to Be the Very Best Version of You, “Develop a vision of what you’d like for your life to be – this vision then becomes your goal.” You have to know what you want your life to be like in order to make the necessary adjustments to get there. Usually, this means you’ll have to let go of, and give up, some of things you’ve grown accustomed to having in your life.
If you’re struggling with letting go of any type of addiction, the thought of quitting may seem impossible and hopeless; you may have even failed many times before. However, there are many resources available for people looking to end their addiction to smoking, alcohol, drugs, overeating, accruing debt or pretty much anything else. One promising resource is Allen Carr’s Easyway® method which requires no willpower or medication and has a 90% success rate based on their 3 month money-back guarantee. Some very well-known people have used the program with much success (Chrissie Hynde – The Pretenders, Richard Branson – Virgin, Anthony Hopkins – Actor, James Spader – Actor, Ashton Kutcher – Actor & Model, Ellen De Generes – Comedian & Talk Show Host and many more). If you feel like you’ve exhausted your attempts to quit an addiction, this method may very well be worth your time checking into.
Outside of addictions, many of the other adversarial anchors (as listed above) can get in the way of the life we really want to live. But, remember, we have way more control over them than we lead ourselves to believe. It takes discipline. We have to be firm with ourselves and, possibly, others and make the tough choice to change and then stick with it. Others may not like it, because people tend to resist change, but it’s in our best interest to do so. They may also fear how the new you will affect the existing relationship. Or, they may be jealous that you’re actually doing something different, making changes and pursuing what you desire when they’ve yet to figure out how to do it themselves. They’d much rather you stay down closer to their level. Sometimes, we simply have to make the difficult decision to remove someone from our lives due to their negative or harmful influence on us. They may have a controlling or manipulative personality; be verbally or physically abusive; exhibit extreme jealousy; have trust issues; struggle with substance abuse or anything else that could be damaging to our own wellbeing. If we don’t remove them from our lives, we will, likely, revert back to our old ways and never come any closer to our goals.
When it comes to others letting go of us, regardless of the reason, we may still allow them to become one of our emotional anchors; and they may not even realize it. If someone has made up their minds to move on from us, we really don’t have much choice but to let them go. We may not like it and we may even attempt to fight to keep them in our lives, but once that switch has flipped within someone else, we only push them further away the more we try to keep them around; which breeds bitterness and hostility for both parties, and probably even more so for them. Before you spend too much time pining for someone who has intentionally walked out of your life, flip the script in your mind and imagine yourself leaving someone else you no longer wanted to be connected with, only to have them refuse to let you go and act a fool in the process; it’s a rather pathetic image. It may not feel like it at first, but no matter how much you may have cared, you’re better off without them. You don’t want anyone staying around because you guilted them into it, that would only cause you to worry, constantly, about their level of happiness and to fear the possibility of when they might choose to leave you again; not an emotionally healthy way to go about living your life. In his book, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and it’s all small stuff, Dr. Richard Carlson, basically, states that we should hold on tightly, but we should also let go lightly. Though we may really try hard and care about something (or someone), we must be willing to let it (or them) go if the situation is, otherwise, out of our control; allowing us the emotional freedom we need to keep from attaching ourselves to yet another anchor.
It’s easy to feel scorned and rejected when someone decides to remove you from their life, but never resort to seeking revenge. When you seek revenge you aren’t tending to the healing of your wounds, but, rather, you’re aggravating them and keeping them fresh and raw – which only serves to inflict even more harm on yourself. Even if you feel you weren’t at fault, the better course of action is to forgive and go on about living your very best life. As George Herbert once said, “Living well is the best revenge.” Plus, to forgive someone is the epitome of truly letting go.
There are also those negative day-to-day occurrences that have a tendency to pop-up out of nowhere when we least expect them; taking us off-guard and placing a damper on our mood for the remainder of the day, or longer. It could be your boss berating you; having a fight with your spouse or significant other; finding out that someone close to you was talking bad about you behind your back, or realizing that you, unintentionally, hurt someone by not thinking through your actions, beforehand. Whatever the case may be, if you’re unable to let them go, these things can consume your thoughts and emotions in an adverse way.
For example, one cold, dark and wet Friday night during the holiday season, I had to stop by the grocery store to grab a few items on my way home from work. In addition to the elements, the parking lot was inadequately lit, decreasing the night’s visibility even more than usual. The parking lot was packed and finding a decent parking spot appeared to be out of the question. However, on my way down one row I noticed an open space on the next row over that was relatively close to the store’s main entrance. Not wanting to miss out, I sped up a bit to zip over and snag the spot before anyone else could beat me to it. As I turned the corner at the end of the row, a man and his daughter suddenly appeared within the bright, illuminated cones of my headlights. The little girl jumped back and I immediately slammed on the brakes, coming to an abrupt stop. It was really not that close, but in the dimly lit parking lot, at night, in the misting rain, glaring into the headlights of a large truck barreling down on you, I can only imagine how close and startling it may have seemed to them. Regardless, the entire incident was my fault and I knew it. The father proceeded to berate me from outside my vehicle – arms waving and yelling profanities at me (all in front of his daughter). I rolled my window down and told him, repeatedly, that I was sorry.
Now, I felt bad enough, already, due to the incident being my fault, but I was also thankful nothing bad had actually happened, as in me hitting one or both of them with my vehicle. But, the more this guy kept on at me, the more my remorse towards the overall situation gave way to an ever-increasing anger aimed squarely at the father. I could understand his passion, to a point, but after I had apologized several times, I knew of nothing more I could do, and yet, still, on he went spewing hostile assertions my way. It was as if the more I tried to apologize, the more emboldened he became, and, therefore, the more he continued on with his tirade toward me. As my blood pressure rose, I felt the overwhelming urge to ditch my apologies, and, instead, begin spouting a barrage of expletives back at him (my reasoning abilities were quickly waning). And If things were to continue escalating, be ready to vacate my truck and come to blows with this man, if necessary (as if two grown men beating each other up in a parking lot wouldn’t be a bit juvenile). Instead, I kept my composure and refrained from saying or doing anything to further intensify the situation. As I eased away, the belligerent man and his, noticeably uncomfortable, daughter made their way into the store and I was able to park my truck (amazingly, in the very space I had hoped for). When I went into the store, our paths crossed and we walked right past each other, but no eye contact was made and we both went about our business shopping; which was probably the best of outcomes, all things considered.
As uncomfortable as that event was at the time, it was all of the afterthoughts that kept coming to my mind that made it more difficult for me to let the whole thing go. Due to what I considered to be the man’s over-the-top behavior toward me, I couldn’t stop replaying the incident within my mind on a continual loop for the remainder of the night and frequently throughout the entire weekend. I should’ve done this, I thought, or, I should’ve said that. I imagined all of the ways I could’ve handled things differently; mostly, more aggressively. All I was doing, was subconsciously, playing out various forms of revenge within my mind. I nearly allowed it to ruin my weekend until I realized that none of the constant ruminating was doing me any good, whatsoever. I wasn’t inflicting punishment on anyone but myself. I really didn’t care anything about what that guy had said to me or what he may have been thinking about me; none of it was true, anyway. If he felt justified in his actions, then so be it. He had the right to think and feel however he wanted. And, just as my thoughts and feelings weren’t affecting him, neither should I be allowing his to affect me. The most important thing was that no one got hurt. What happened, happened…and nothing I thought or did could change that in any way, shape or form. So, my only logical choice was to let it go.
Our pain and suffering can be caused by someone else or they can be self-inflicted; either way, it is vital to our wellbeing that we no longer allow the abuse. As I stated at the onset of this post, letting go is usually a difficult thing to do, but when people or things (or even thoughts) become toxic to our health in one way or another, letting go is our single best option. The alternative has the potential of leading us down a path of self-inflicted torment, and we deserve so much better.
At least that’s my opinion.
[If you enjoyed this post, please feel free to share on Twitter, Facebook or other media!]
Leave a Reply