Do you find yourself ‘holding on’ when you could be ‘letting go’?
In many of our workshops, especially those related to stress and resilient thinking, we introduce the concept of ‘letting go’ as a wonderful solution. Many people tend to ‘hold on’ to anger, fear, guilt, worry, needing to win, needing to parent [their parents], wanting too much, bad habits etc. etc. Sadly the ‘hold on’ list is long. The good news is that when we are ‘self aware’ of what we’re ‘holding on’ to we can then figure our a way to act to ‘let go’ which reduces our stress.
The road to ‘self awareness’ is monitoring when you are feeling stressed, looking for a hot button. That could be a knot in the stomach, an ache, unclear thinking, being angry or sad with too little provocation or too many random thoughts high jacking your brain.
So for example you might conclude something like this. “I’m not volunteering the ideas I have because I’m ‘holding on’ to my fear of criticism.” A good antidote to ‘holding on’ and a way to ‘let go’ is to determine what part of the situation you do have control over and focus your efforts there.
In the example, volunteering ideas is something you control. While it runs the risk of inviting criticism [not under your control] it [a] lets go of fear and [b] initiates the possibility of appreciation, the combination of which makes it a winning strategy.
Here’s a little exercise that you can apply in many situations.
• What if I let go of [whatever you’re holding on to] ?
• Would I be at risk in some way?
• Would I be better off if I took some action?
People have a tendency to exaggerate the potential consequences. That’s because our ego, which is very powerful, wants to keep us safe. So when we can get around our safety mechanism we can ‘let go’ more often.
