Let’s talk about letting go! This topic would make me cringe all the way to my core just a short while ago. I was hard set about how everything in my life ‘’ought to be’’. I saw any type of bending this kind of thinking as weakness or defeat. Rigid much?! 

Any thought of change in a significant part of my life would launch me into a sweaty-palmed panic and bouts of insomnia. I’d roll my eyes at my sister as she called out my resistance to letting go. I wasn’t resistant! Of course, I was!

Sound familiar? We find comfort and safety in things staying the same and it can be to our detriment. This will make sense if you’re in a relationship that has run its course or if you’re at a job that doesn’t bring you joy anymore. It once did, so what we do is end up romanticizing the past. Our minds stay fixated there as if by focusing there we can resuscitate it. But holding on to an idea of how something should cause us to feel dissatisfied, and painfully so. That feeling of dissatisfaction is a wonderful indicator that our holding on is not congruent with our inner being. 

When we are holding on so tightly, we narrow our focus and lose sight of the bigger picture. It takes a lot of effort and energy to hold on so tightly. Not only does it tire us out, but it also stops us from growing. You can’t be open to exploring new versions of yourself and new experiences if you’re hell-bent on holding on to the old, can you?

It is at that moment that we must go in a different direction and travel the path of least resistance. And what we experience as we drop the oars and allow our boat to be guided by the current of the stream, is a feeling of deep TRUST and RELIEF. Relief in knowing that we are not in control of every aspect of our existence and trust in the natural course of our life’s flow. 

There is grace in the act of surrender. A softening of who we think we should be, how we think others should be, and how we think situations should be. Accept that life is a series of evolution over time and that everyone and everything is always in this state of evolution.

Then you take a deep sigh of relief! You don’t have to carry all that heavy glass of water around all the time, you can set it down. You can lean into your life’s natural flow and in doing that you can inspire everyone else to do the same. That is not only surrendering but implicitly, trust too. 

And what about safety? We begin to change our relationship to change. We may begin to widen our lens on this too. What if we no longer mentally defined change by danger and unsafety but by the delicious adventure of life instead? What if we see it as a crack in the seams of life that is ushering in new possibilities? What if the change we experience is the doorway to more fulfilling opportunities on the road of life?