Letting go of people, places and things, hurts, grudges and feuds is one of the greatest challenges you will ever face in your life. Why? Because in some shape or form your needs, wants and desires have been minimized and then trampled into nothingness and that doesn’t sit well with you. So, you do the “work” necessary to support you in your process of letting go. Diligently, you do the affirmations, positive thinking, and the stern self-talk. You’ve created your very own pep rally and finally you tell yourself you’re done, and over it. And life feels normal again. And then voilà, along comes a button pusher to check you, letting you know you are still firmly in “its” grasp. With that comes an emotional tsunami that adds additional layers and questions as to why can’t I just get over it? And a vicious cycle has begun.
So why can’t you just get over it? Why can’t you just let it go? The answer to that question is simple or perhaps simply complexed. You are not done with the situation yet. And be under no illusion the situation isn’t done with you either. Whatever it is, the event has created feelings of deep and profound loss, that then trigger a cascade of emotions. Please bear in mind the word emotion is a derivative of the word emote, which means to show. So, your emotions are showing you something about yourself and the situation that you find yourself in. One of the things not letting it go is showing you, is that at a core or soul level you KNOW that you are worthy of more and that you want more for self. And that is normal.
As I was researching for this blog and podcast, I came across so many blogs giving advice on “how to just let it go.” Authors quoting anything from the biblical passages to Napoleon Hill and Prentiss Mulford author of, “Thoughts Are Things.” They were suggesting that by quoting words of wisdom from past masters you’ll magically, “let it go!” One author suggested that the solution for letting go is nowhere near the problem, which you know I vehemently disagree with. The solution is ALWAYS found within the problem, it can be no other way. It’s a bit like a vaccine, it’s created from the very illness it cures. Another went on to say that letting go and holding on, are not, different sides of the same coin. Really!?
When you’re talking about letting go and moving on, or becoming unstuck and or getting out of your rut or wherever it is that you feel that you are, the reality is you are speaking about invoking the Universal Laws of Polarity and Opposites. What does that mean?
The Universal law of polarity: Speaks to symbiotic relationships found at the ends of each spectrum i.e. happy or sad or white and black. True Black is the presence of all color and true white is the absence of all color. Bearing in mind that you cannot have one without the other, yet each has a different vibration, feel, texture and tonal value. One is positively charged and the other negatively charged; one is hot and dry and the other is cold and wet. One attracts the other repels and so it is with life and the situations that you have chosen to experience.
The Universal Law of Opposites: Speaks to the extremes in your life and the need for these extremes. Abject sadness to unbound happiness, love and hate, rage and calm etc. Opposites provide a contrasting measurement to show you that you’ve moved in a direction and quantify it by showing you how far. Without having a quantifiable opposing marker, you’ll never know that you have moved. Or how far you’ve come for that matter.
These Laws help you to understand that you haven’t let go nor gotten over whatever passed event you are trying to leave behind. You know this because you will feel stuck or someone will come along and push an emotional button that takes you right back into the situation. You fall so hard and so deep that it feels real again. Literally you keep on reliving parts of the event that trigger you emotionally. Your reaction allows you to quantify where you are at in your process of getting over it!
What Can I Do?
Can reflecting on your passed help you to let go? While I believe that reflecting on your past can be beneficial, it turns into something detrimental and serves no purpose if reflection is ONLY to understand “why” what happen has happened. It also allows you not to take ownership, accountability and responsibility for your choices and actions. It’s my professional opinion and experience that most people actually know why the event and situation has occurred. What they don’t know is, what the inability to let go is showing them. And believe me it is showing you something.
It’s easy to get caught up in the wash of focusing on “I have to let this go” and not get anywhere with that process, because beyond the thought of letting go you haven’t define what you want to fill that space with. You haven’t got clarity around where you want to be, what it feels like to be there or even sounds like. So, two, three, five, ten years or more later you are still focusing on putting a painful event where it needs to be so you can move on with your life. You are stuck!
One of the strongest reasons that is preventing you from letting go, is simply that you haven’t had your say! You haven’t been able to express how you feel, because of what “they” did to you. And at some level, which is overshadowing everything else, you want them to experience, your version of what it feels like to be minimized and trampled into nothingness too! You want them to get their just desert. Chances are, you may get to have your say, but for “them” to experience what you have experienced because of their actions is never going to happen. Why? Because we are all individuals and we all emote and express ourselves differently. As a result of that our experiences will always be different.
How do you get over something? Depending on what the situation is you may need to weave it into the fabric of your life. Like the death of someone you hold dear to your heart. You don’t get over that, or at least that is my personal belief. And learning to live with it brings its own brand of problems. You’ll have to find where to put it, so it doesn’t intrude. Like the first time after their transition, you laugh until you get a stitch in your side and then in a sobering flash it comes flooding back, their gone, their dead and you are alive and now you feel guilty for you moment of happiness. You’ll need to figure out how to live alongside their death, integrating it into every aspect of your life. Doing that is painful. That is hard. And it’s traumatic. I suggest using your experience of your loved one’s transition to support you in your personal growth, in being of service to others, and as a way to continuously add enrichment to your life. To help facilitate this process of weaving their death into your life, ask yourself the following questions.
- What is the singular greatest words of wisdom they taught you?
- What is the funniest thing that happened between you – the thing that can still make you laugh until you cry?
- How has knowing them changed your life for the better?
Once you’ve answered these questions, use the knowledge to live by. Use the wisdom to support others knowing that their lives maybe changed for the better and yours will change too. You can’t unknow anything, therefore you cannot unknow your loved one. Use the experience of knowing them to continue to enrich your life in small or large ways.
Getting over a break up or something of that nature will require a different approach to the death of a loved one. You can use the same approach, but I have found that it is only after a period of time, and a long period at that, that many people are able to see how their Ex’s have contributed to their personal growth and enrichment. Below are another series of questions to ask yourself. Each question is intrinsic. This means that you are going to have to search your heart for a true and honest answer.
The first question to ask yourself
- Am I ready to address this situation?
- As I look beyond the situation, what am I wanting for myself in this moment. In the NOW! From there you can start a forward momentum dialog with self.
- What does it feel like to be free of this situation?
- What is this situation showing me about me?
By honestly answering these questions, you begin the process of finding your clarity, thereby giving yourself a different focus. Having a new focus will allow you to explore way of getting over it, because you now have something new to fill the space where hurt, anger, resentment, grudges and feuds where living.
Remember, the Universal Law of Space states, that no two things can occupy the same space at the same time. It’s impossible. Make room for what you want to happen in your life, by clearing out what you don’t want. Is all of this easy? No! Is all of this doable? Yes: Without a doubt.