As you grow as a person and progress through your life, you’ll enter different stages that will require you to embrace new variations of yourself. While this is a completely natural part of life, it can feel difficult and uncomfortable. As we ask more of ourselves to generate growth and development, we also enter an area that requires us to close certain doors behind us as we ascend to the new version. To do this we must a learn new skill. It’s called learning to let go.
Let Go Of The Past
There are all kinds of things you’ll be asked to let go of during your life. Some of them will be easier than others. There comes a point where you need to make a choice. To move into the next version of yourself some things need to stay behind with the old version of you.
Learning to let go can be a difficult concept to accept but the sooner you accept it, the sooner you’ll start learning to let go. It takes courage to step into the unknown and there may be heartbreak when saying goodbye to familiar, much-loved aspects of your life. But when you’re able to recognise the things that are holding you back, you’ll feel empowered to let them go and move on to your new direction free from the past.
Recognise When Old Trauma Resurfaces
I recently had my own experience of learning to let go. Something came up for me that I thought had been dealt with long ago. Because it happened so long ago, it wasn’t something I even thought of lately. So, I was surprised when I realised this trauma from my past was resurfacing.
At first it seemed odd to me that this would still be taking up space in my mind. But when I asked myself why this was coming up now, I realised that it was showing up because I had never dealt with it all those years ago. It was hard to accept that I had been ignoring it all this time, but I knew that if I didn’t face it now, I couldn’t transform into the next version of me.
This long-buried trauma was the thing that had been holding me back for years and if I was to fully embrace the next version of myself, this old unresolved issue needed to be healed and released. If this wasn’t addressed now, I’d be stuck between my past and my future forever.
Accept What Is
The feelings I’d had about this event must have been so painful that at the time I had pushed them down, so I didn’t have to face them. After so many years of repressing them, they were back and the power they held over me was a bit of a shock. However, due to the time that had elapsed, I knew I had grown enough as a person to know that I can overcome obstacles. So, I committed to learning to let go of this unresolved trauma.
The first thing I did was to sit with the feelings I was having. I didn’t try to push them away or ignore them. It wasn’t easy but accepting that they exist felt like a step in the right direction. They weren’t there all the time. They would come and go intermittently. When I felt them rising, I would go with it and be present with them. The more I did this, I started to become more accustomed to those feelings.
Feel Your Emotions
Over time, I was able to identify what I was feeling and when I could do that, it was easier to accept that I was choosing to feel this way. When I resisted the feelings, they continued in a cycle that got worse and never went away. But when I accepted them and felt them, they seemed to dissipate little by little.
When I felt them and agreed with them, they loosened their grip on me. It was no longer a fight between us. When I experienced the feelings that should’ve been felt all those years ago, I was slowly able to work through them until it was no longer so painful.
By the time I felt I had fully accepted all the emotions, I knew I was able to start letting them go. I was excited and scared at the same time. Excited to move on and leave this part of my life in the past, but scared because even though I hadn’t realised it, this trauma had been part of my life for almost thirty years and the fear of living my life without it was acute.
Change Is Hard
Change of any kind is hard, even when it’s for your own good. Holding on to negative experiences is a common occurrence. Mainly because the unknown is intimidating. When we don’t know what’s next, the familiar can seem preferable, even if it’s harmful.
The only way I could see the get around this was to decide what I wanted to replace the trauma with and focus on that instead. By claiming the new future I desired and letting that enter my life, it would naturally take the place of that which I chose to let go of.
Invite A New Reality
I carried on feeling the emotions when they came up, so I wasn’t pushing them away but, in the spaces when they subsided, I concentrated my full attention on the new reality I had decided to create for myself. It was in my thoughts constantly. I imagined myself living that new life and felt the feelings of what it would be like when I achieved that future and became the new version of me.
I wrote about it in my journal. Started work on a new book. I wrote everyday about my new identity, and slowly but surely the feelings I was learning to let go of, started to become a part of my past. During this process I grew in confidence, and I knew that if anything like this came up again in the future, I would have a tried and tested method of how to deal with it at the time instead of letting it build up for decades behind the scenes.
Final Thoughts
You can also use this process should you need to. If you’ve struggled to let go of something. Whether it be limiting beliefs, mistakes, guilt, past relationships, or grief. You can turn it around and learn how to let go of it all.
Start by accepting what is and acknowledging the feelings you’re having. When you recognise them, they lose a little of their power.
Next, don’t resist them. Feel them fully when they arise. This is the hard part but it’s also where the magic happens.
Lastly, decide what you want for yourself instead. Focus on what you want instead of what you want to let go of.
When you focus on the life you want to create, you’ll realise that eventually, what you were trying to let go of has already left.
If you need help to identify what is holding you back, you can apply for our coaching intensive here
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