learn to let go

This is slowly happening, but I’m a long way off marking this as done yet. I can tell I haven’t let go because I’m still very much attached to other people’s opinions of me, their praise, their criticism… It is most apparent in tai chi classes, as this is an ideal environment for me to relax and just do without worrying about your ego. It’s then that I realise I’m not doing these things as well as I could be!

This is a practice I have done whilst learning tai chi and it is a practice which involves letting go. It doesn’t work properly unless you do and it feels fantastic if you can achieve it. 8 postures are held whilst standing for 5 minutes each, totalling 40 minutes, and the body will naturally shake as a result. You only end up shaking if you let your body shake, but because it can feel a little strange, stopping it from happening doesn’t allow you to get the best from the practice. Strange as it sounds, it’s wonderful for literally shaking off tension until you’re really relaxed :)

I have come to the realisation that from my list of goals, this is probably the most fundamentally important goal for me.

If I could learn to do this, so many problems in my life would disappear, and yet I continue to hold onto things desperately. This one goal is vital to my ability to move on and I would improve drastically if this was the only thing I actually did about my life. It is so simple and yet so bloody elusive!

I need to try harder!! :)

I’m going to practise letting go on a small scale and see if I can work up to bigger and more important things in my life. Related to Buddhism, I remembered that Buddhist monks would create elaborate mandalas and then after they had finished, destroy them, to teach them how to let go and become less attached.

I thought I would get some blank mandalas to colour in and then do similar. I will spend the time colouring them and concentrate on that task, which will be a meditative activity in itself and then when I have finished, rip the paper and throw it away. This seems a fairly pointless thing, but I’m aiming to undo a bad habit from the bottom up, so trivial it may seem, it’s a starting point for bigger and more difficult tasks.

I have one printed off, so I’ll give that a go this afternoon.

It seems that it may be possible to make my life so much easier by letting go of all the baggage I’ve been carrying around – yet, how this is meant to happen, I have no idea. I have decided that this is probably one of my most important goals, as I think if I could master this, I would be well on my way to being in control of the mess which is my life.

So much of how life affects a person comes from within – changing your perspective can change your life dramatically. It’s just that the coping mechanisms we use suit one situation and then we carry that habit through permanently, not realising how inappropriate it is to a new situation, but stubbornly holding onto it. Thus perpetuating the problem.

I need to learn to accept those things which are my responsibility and that I can do something about, and to feel empathy about, but not feel responsible for those things which are other’s choices and responsibilities and for which I have no solution to offer.

I am going to make a list for myself of the things which I regularly stress about and decide whose responsibility it is and whether I should be letting it take over my life.

By the way, the picture is not mine – it comes from this website: http://fc01.deviantart.com/fs11/i/2006/259/4/7/Letting_Go_by_FaerieNymph.jpg