There’s a belief in some parts of contemporary personal development culture that life should be easy. The basic logic that leads to this belief, which is based on the Law of Attraction, is roughly this:
Our experience is the result of what we have attracted to ourselves, by virtue of our beliefs, thoughts and behaviour.
Therefore, if we’re experiencing something unpleasant then all we need to do is change our beliefs, thoughts and behaviour.
Bad experience is the result of bad thinking.
The deep flaw in this idea is the assumption that any one individual can control ALL of her/his experience. This so palpably untrue – at least for the vast majority of us - that I’m not going to waste your time here explaining it.
I hope it will suffice to state that one common reality of life is that we all have to deal with crap at some point!
Fortunately, crap can sometimes be exactly what we need. Pain can be the best teacher; how else would we know to take our hand out of the flame? We need crap, we need difficulty, probably just as much as we need ease and happiness, if we’re going to learn and evolve.
And sometimes the crap we have to deal with has to be of our own choosing. Sometimes we need to make difficult decisions, we need to do difficult things in order to improve. Sometimes the solution to our problem lies precisely in the need to deal with something difficult.
In the wake of separation and other kinds of loss, letting go of precious objects, items filled with associations of what we’ve lost, can be a very difficult task.
When we’ve experienced loss of any kind, but especially the loss of love, then at some point we need to take a deep breath and let go of the past. We can do this bit-by-bit or we can do it in one fell swoop; our individual needs and circumstances will shape what’s possible in this respect.
But let go we must. We need to recognise and accept, consciously and without hope of alleviation, that our reality has changed. The person who has gone no longer has, at the very least, the same involvement in our everyday experience as once was the case.
Material objects can often provide a strong connection to our past. Things convey memories. Sometimes they carry the very aroma of a person who’s gone. If those memories are fond and precious, then it’s natural to want to keep these things close to us.
But attachment to objects can become so strong that it’s almost as if they’re a part of the person who’s left us. We become chained to them. We can start to feel that if we lose or break or throw out such an object then it’s tantamount to disrespecting the person we’ve lost.
This kind of attachment slows down our recovery from loss, and, if unchecked, can seriously damage our hopes for a balanced, satisfying life going forward.
So we have to take the difficult decision to remove (throw away, sell, store, give away etc.) the object. We have to do this for our own well-being.
In order to feel better in the long-term, we need to experience the pain of letting go those objects that carry the past into our present.
And when we do, then we have more freedom to process our emotions. And that’s the greatest letting go of all.
Without letting go of objects, we run the terrible risk of never allowing our hearts and minds to be properly liberated, to be properly restored.
If you have any issues with letting go – and you’re certainly not alone if you do! – click here to book your FREE Introductory Consultation and let’s see how I can help.
