It will ALL make sense

4 practical ways to let go of what doesn’t serve you right now

Nov 09, 2020

ATTENTION: Hey real quick…so some of you have been giving me great feedback & I thank you so much. I listened & this is what I came up with—

As you scroll through this weeks email, you will notice some changes in the way that it’s structured. Every week from here on out, I’ll be sticking with this new method, which will still be providing you with the mindfulness & meditation insights & practices as usual, ONLY this time, without all the extra stuff. So basically, it’s being redesigned to give you what you actually need.

I hope that this new approach serves you well. Please continue to provide me with your feedback & suggestions because… I do this for you. ❤️

ALSO—If you are new here, or if you missed any of the past emails, you can take a look at all of the ones from previous weeks in the archives section. You can find it by clicking the link below.

Letting Go with Mindfulness

A key principle of Mindfulness is ‘letting go.’

Learning how to let go, & sit with the present moment is at the core what it means to live mindfully.

Letting go, whether it be letting go of old beliefs, thoughts, behaviors, habits, a person, worry, or whatever it is keeping you from living a fulfilled & joyful life, is what freedom feels like.

But many of us struggle with letting go. We hold on to all sorts of things. Our minds just cling on to something, we hold onto it tightly, & rarely is it helpful. Examples include—

I am right, the other person is wrong
That person is living their life in the wrong way, they should change
My perspective is the best way, others are wrong
This is the thing I want, I don’t want anything else
I should have that person in my life, loving me
I shouldn’t be alone, shouldn’t be overweight, shouldn’t be however I am, shouldn’t have this life…

In all these examples, we are attached to what we want & what we don’t want. Our minds are set on a certain fixed perspective; keeping us from being able to expand on other more self serving possibilities.

And then when things don’t go the way we see it in our minds, we come across conflict. This leads to stress or worry, unhappiness, anger, anxiety, being judgmental, distancing ourselves from others.

It’s our attachment to things (thoughts, feelings, beliefs, ideas, ppl) that make it so challenging for us to let go. Practicing non attachment, or mindfulness is the very practice we need to help us overcome any hurdles when it comes to releasing all that doesn’t serve us.

The mindfulness attitude of letting go is not so much of a foreign experience. We all have the ability to let go. We do it already, every night when we go to sleep. We lie down, most likely on a bed, with the lights out, in a quiet place, & we let go of our mind & body to fall asleep. If we don’t let go, we don’t ever fall asleep.

Same applies to our breath. If we’re alive & breathing, we’re letting go. Because when we breathe in air, we cannot keep that air. Eventually we have to breathe out. We let it go to make room for the next breath of air.

So we know how to let go. It’s just applying that same idea, like when we go to sleep and breathe, to other areas of our life.

And so if you’d like to work on letting go, here are 4 practical steps that help me, that may also help you to get started right now—

1) Notice The Mind:

The human mind is complicated. It can be our best friend of worst enemy. It all depends on our relationship with it. Having the power to let go, starts there.

We can control the mind, by working with it and not against it. This is accomplished by making an intentional choice to no longer let what doesn’t serve us (worries, regrets, anger, judgement, control) control the mind anymore, which can break the grip of attachment to things that it once had.

“The more we can simply watch our thoughts come and go without attaching our identity to them, the easier letting go becomes.”

For me, when I let my mind go down a dark path of painful memories/experiences, or thoughts of what I think will happen in the future, I notice that I start to feed it; I hold on to it, create a story around it to make it believable. The more I allow my mind to think down this dark path, the more my mind creates space to allow negative feelings to arise, which eventually ruins my mood.

While I’m still a work in progress, the key here is to constantly observe our thoughts, as they arise, without attaching ourselves to whatever it is we’re thinking.

The more we can simply watch our thoughts come and go without attaching our identity to them, the easier letting go becomes.

Thoughts are nothing more than thoughts. What we decide to do with them is what can either make or break us.

2) : Reel it, Feel it, Understand it

To really let go of something (a worry, a thought, a painful memory, the past, an outcome), we need to know why we’re holding on in the first place.

We can do this by allowing or welcoming our feelings when they arise, rather than resisting or suppressing them.

For me, just 12 days ago, I experienced the painful loss of my grandfather. And the knowing of him being gone brought up much negative emotions within me. I noticed resistance; a part of me did not want to accept his death as true. A part of me, didn’t want to think about it or give it attention.

But I knew that in order to let go of the pain I was feeling, I had to let the pain in. I had to feel my feelings.

And yes it was painful to sit with, but after doing a little introspection, I was able to understand why — I had an emotional love felt attachment to my grandfather that I didn’t want to let go off. And so I honored those feelings so that I can set myself free.

We need to work through what it is we’re experiencing, otherwise the feelings accumulate inside of our heart, making it even more difficult to let things go. When this happens, it’s important that we seek extra support like therapy to ensure our wellbeing & safety.

3) Be Okay with Not Being Okay

Not knowing why something happened the way it did, or not having a sense of closure sucks.

We believe that we deserve the right to receive answers for questions we have. But the painful truth is, sometimes we just don’t ever get an answer to why things happen as they do or did. And that’s just the way it is.

Fully accepting a situation as it is without constantly wishing it would be different is really the only way to getting on the road to being okay.

And as a side note, this isn’t only about accepting situations. We have to start accepting people for who they are as well and believing them when they show us their true character. Because they aren’t lying.

4) Be Present, Right Here & Now

I believe one of the key benefits of meditation is learning how to live in the present moment.

With all the chatter that goes on in our minds all day, meditation helps to quiet it down.

And since attachment comes from our mind, when there’s no noise, then there’s no attachment. So if we can learn to hush the mind, we learn to just be, to live in the present moment, as it is, watching as our attachment disappears; we begin to easily let things go.

Try This—

Here’s a short guided “Letting Go” meditation led by yours truly 🥰 See if you can practice along this session. Try it first thing in the morning or before bed or really whenever you want. For best results, listen to it everyday for 7 days. ✨✨ Let me know what you think❤️

Want More?

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https://www.iamzenrn.com

~I’m here to hold space for you because you deserve it.~

Victor Padilla

ZenRn

Zen Moments

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