What if I told you that letting go was the fastest way to gain. What if I told you that that which you hold is often that which holds you back.
What if you could unlearn all that you have learned that is not so. What if you could awaken tomorrow morning knowing that up until now you only slept in your life.
What if you could discover the truth of all that is by burying all that you no longer need.
I know, it sounds like I’ve been watching far too many B-list martial arts movies.
But truthfully, the greatest things that hold us back in life are often the beliefs that we have about something that we are unwilling or currently unable to let go of. We often have so many ideas around our identity and who we wish to be, who we strive to be. I have seen people struggle time after time because they are unwilling to let go of an identity which they have spent so long creating, that they cannot understand or see a future in which they are not that persona.
So they invest so much of their time and energy into desperately trying to be that which they are not.
And why do they do that? It’s because they can’t imagine what they will be, or how they will survive, if they give up an identity that they have spent years crafting, and one which defines so much of their life. We become so comfortable in the skin that we have grown over ourselves that we are unable to realize that without this persona, this identity, this carefully crafted opinion of who we think we are, we are in fact enough just being ourselves.
But letting go and giving up is very scary.
A friend of mine recently approached me and asked me how I made a very difficult decision recently, one that changed my life in a very significant way. As we talked, I could see that my friend was struggling deeply. They had recently come to understand something about that was going to change the very core of how they defined themselves.
And I could tell that letting go of the person they believe they were was terrifying.
Which, let’s be honest, is really terrifying. Suppose I told you that you were going to wake up tomorrow morning and realize that a significant portion of the way you have lived your life was based on a lie. That kind of betrayal, that kind of shift of the very nature of your understanding of reality doesn’t come easy. It makes you question everything and sometimes everyone.
But the longer we study, the more we realize that the only things we have to give up are the things that are not really true.
Yet we fear that, because we often believe that without “that which makes us… us” we will be less than. The loss of a lie doesn’t make us less, it actually makes us more. The more that we understand who we really are, the more we are able to move through the world from a place of peace and calm. The less lies we believe about ourselves, the more truly we understand who we really are.
And truly, being you, is enough.
Sure your bank account may be less than somebody else’s, and your car may be a few years older. Your house may be smaller, and you may not have the “perfect relationships” you believe that they have.
In my world, if you have the desire to be kind, and the honesty, courage and determination to know yourself, you are far more successful and far more “wealthy” than those who build their lives on a lie, and reinforce their beliefs of themselves with rumor, speculation and arrogance.
I’m here to tell you today that you at your core, without all of the trappings of the world in which we live, are enough.
The more you can let go of your need to be, the more you will find peace in who you truly are.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings