The art of letting go

Who hasn’t been hurt by the actions or words of another? Perhaps a parent constantly criticized us growing up, a colleague sabotaged a project or our partner had an affair. Or maybe we had a traumatic experience, such as being physically or emotionally abused by someone close to us. These wounds can leave lasting feelings of resentment, bitterness and anger - sometimes even hatred. But if we hold on to that pain, we might be the ones who pay most dearly. By embracing forgiveness, we also embrace peace and hope. Forgiveness can lead us down the path of physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.

When someone we care about hurts us, we have two choices: hold on to anger and resentment or embrace forgiveness and move forward. Oftentimes we don’t even realize we’re blocking our own present blessings by holding on to everything so tightly. Letting go is not giving up. Letting go is surrendering any obsessive attachments to particular outcomes and situations. Surrender means showing up in your life with the intention to be your best, and to do the best you know how, without expecting life to always go your way. Have goals, have dreams, take purposeful action, and build solid relationships, but detach from what life must look like every step of the way.

We often struggle to let some people go especially when they made that decision. We question the universe; we question ourselves and we question everyone around us but we never truly get our answers. Letting someone go takes time, patience and commitment to actively stop ourselves from relapsing and thinking about that person again. Letting go helps us understand why, how and when we should let someone go so that we can move on and never look back.

Letting go may be really hard, especially when we have to let go of something we really want, whether it’s a great opportunity, someone we really liked or loved or even any expectations we had about something. When we can’t let go of grudges and emotional burdens, we become stuck in the past, unable to fully move forward with our lives. According to Greg McKeown, the author of Effortless, the first step to letting go of grudges is to ask ourselves what emotional need our grudges are fulfilling. If we can better understand why we’re holding a grudge, it will be easier to accept it and let it go. There are no definite ways to completely let go or not fall back from time to time if they do, but there are certainly ways to make it easier for us to let go when we don’t want to let go.

“What is destined will reach you, even if it be underneath two mountains. What is not destined, will not reach you, even if it be between your two lips” (Proverb) Anything that feels forced or harder than it should be or causes you pain and distress is not meant for you. Having this mentality or faith will help you overcome the reluctance that comes with making a decision of whether or not you should let go. Things that are meant for you have a way of flowing smoothly into your life. The more you fight for something that is not meant for you, the more it will fight you. You may get what you want in the end, but it may not last and you may not feel at ease with it. The beauty of things that are meant for you is that they just happen; against all odds. We are just programmed to complicate life sometimes.

“The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.” (Elizabeth Gilbert) Letting go is really painful when you feel “stuck” and it can sometimes seem impossible to do, but the truth is if you reach this point, it means that you’ve been trying so hard to make this thing work in your favor, or reach your goal, and it sometimes feel like we’ve tried so hard or come a long way that if we let go now, it will feel like a waste of time given the time and effort we invested in it. But nothing is ever a waste of time, even if it feels like it is, we are here to make mistakes and learn lessons to grow as individuals, if we keep holding on to toxic situations or toxic people because we’ve already done too much or it’s too late to change things, we are only setting ourselves up for a miserable life. There is power in letting go, a power that brings more peace and serenity than being stuck in situations that make your heart a bit heavier each and every day.

“If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.” (Paulo Coelho) This outlook really helps you move on and let go faster. Same notion that when one door closes another opens. Life opens new doors for you all the time; imagine you are a key to multiple doors and you just think you can only open one door. We have so much potential, so many talents, so many kind things to give back to the world. We have so many keys to open so many doors. When you leave one door behind and lock that door, you will be surprised by the number of doors that were waiting to be opened by you and only you. Some endings are not bad; sometimes they are not even endings — just bridges to new beginnings.

“I think part of the reason we hold on to something so tight is because we fear something so great won’t happen twice.” (Anonymous) Here’s another reason why we hold on to things or people longer than we should. We convince ourselves that good things won’t happen twice; we will not be able to find someone who is that great again or who makes us feel this way again. Or we won’t be able to find a job like that again, or something we are that passionate about again. The truth is, you will always find something or someone that makes you feel this way again, new passions will emerge and good things will happen twice and as many times as they want, and will probably be a better and more convenient fit for you. If you look back on your life, you will find yourself laughing at certain situations when you thought you would never move on from someone, or how you held on to something so tightly only to realize later that it was wrong for you. Great things happen to us all the time in different shapes or forms; we just like to focus on the things that are not so great. Holding on to something out of fear that it will never happen again, is the definition of fear. We have to be fearless in letting go.

“See it for what is, not what you want it to be.” (Anonymous) The truth is that if you reach a point where letting go is the only option, it usually means that this thing or someone already let you go. You are trying to stay in a place where you are not welcome anymore. The mind has a funny way of tricking us into believing certain things to make it less painful for us, or put it in a way that doesn’t really hurt our pride or break our heart, but we have to look at it the way it is, the way it is being portrayed to us, not the way we want to see it. This is not an optical illusion, this is reality, and in reality what you see is what you get. If an opportunity passed you by, it didn’t really want to stop at your station, if someone let you go, they didn’t really want to stay, if someone else got what you were praying for, this blessing was not written for you to begin with and you will be blessed in another way.

As you keep learning the art of letting go, let go of your fear, of your past, of your mistakes, of your insecurities, of your failures, of your self-doubt. Forgive yourself enough to let go of the parts of you that dim your light.

Bhushan Lal Razdan, formerly of the Indian Revenue Service, retired as Director General of Income Tax (Investigation), Chandigarh.