The art of letting-go…

…and my struggles with it

I consider myself a pretty much happy-go-lucky person; not letting things bother me much. Yet, I recently discovered that something does bother me — happy-go-lucky family members who also don’t let things bother them much; like fixed meal-times and clearing up the kitchen after them or not sleeping in crazily during the weekends.

While, mostly the life was pretty much regulated, the Lockdown brought about too many changes in the daily routine. Over a period of time, the family started getting lax about their routine… and completely understandable… motivation was not at its peak during the 4th and the 5th month of non-stop WFH and SFH.
But funnily, Lockdown was the precise reason I discovered how incredibly anal I could get about morning routines, meal and bed-time regulations and “cleaning the house MY way”; mostly because I did everything from top to bottom and soon started thinking nobody else can do it better than me. Oh, how that ego creeps in so quickly!
Now, a year later, with life wanting us to move on, and work from outside demanding my attention and time; I find myself resisting the change of stepping out — whether to have a cup of coffee with a friend or to go away for a few days to look after my parents. Mostly on the pretext of ‘my kids and husband have busy schedules.. and if I don’t monitor the kids’ HW and study AND their free time, no one will’.

Not true. Not healthy. Not with kids growing up and trying to spread their wings soon. Because, hey, I look like I am desperately trying to ‘hold-on’ to the familiar. But also, hey, ‘holding-on’ doesn’t help anybody; it’s the sugar of mental health — slow poison that sits in crevices, destroying the system from within.
I know that, yet, something deep inside me wants to hold-on; wants to keep doing/living the familiar… and it is not just about kids and home or the material, physical things I mean here. When I really scratch the surface, or peel the layers, I see myself holding on to people, customs, rituals, thoughts, ideas and most importantly, memories and the past. And I am not an exception! Look around me and I see everyone holding-on to stuff so zealously; resisting change like a bitter fruit.

Why do we do that? What is it that makes letting-go so difficult?

I don’t have an answer to that…all I do know is that letting go of things is the best way to be happy, peaceful and content with the self.
So here are a few things I do in an attempt to help me let-go..

Have faith
First lesson in letting-go is to learn to have faith — in the other person’s ability and method of doing things; they are a different person and hence, are allowed to do things differently.

Slow down
Following the advice of a very dear and a very evolved friend, I decided to slow down. Slow down everything — my daily activities, right from brushing my teeth to household chores to typing a series of messages on WhatsApp, and anything else in between that was a part of my routine. In the process, I started being mindful of my actions, my thoughts…soon, I started taking a step back every time I was tempted to act impulsively.

I feel that this simple exercise is a great beginning in the process of letting-go. Because as steadily as being mindful starts setting in, we tend to lose interest in spending our energies in unnecessary thoughts and events.

Play a mental game of “what can I carry”

This I came up with myself…being an extremely dramatic person with a vivid imagination…It’s a simple exercise really, all I do is try to imagine we have some calamity/emergency and have to move to a camp somewhere in 30 minutes. What are the most essential items that I can carry with me there?

Amazing, when it comes to the bare necessities, how little we actually require; yet, it is interesting to see how much we hoard and acquire.

Learning to not take things personally
Very tough! We live in a very sensitive era; more than ever before. Especially with places like Twitter and FB.. and are always under the impression that ‘that post was about me’, or ‘they just wanted to be one up over me’. No, it isn’t! Everyone’s trying their best to be their best; and, we are NOT the center of the Universe.

And that applies to the offline life too! People are busy living their lives just like me. Also, people are battling with their own issues to actually plan out a strategy to bring me down. That’s just too much of self-importance here; too much of a ridiculous idea when we actually sit down and think back.
Yet, the same becomes difficult when, in return, we are surrounded by extremely sensitive and blistering people who are taking everything you do personally. So, the trick is to break that cycle by …

… zealously guarding my boundaries!

We all have our boundaries and we all have had them violated by none other than close friends and family members. Somehow, the concept of ‘my space, my time, my opinion’ is not respected in our society.
Funnily, if I were to look carefully, I am a part of the problem myself! So, the solution probably could be — identify and protect my own boundaries, hence helping me identify and respect others’.
Another positive outcome of keeping boundaries is, I have now become acutely aware of others’ energies — whose build me up and whose bring me down. Clarity here makes it easier to understand the other person and hence not takes things personally, in turn, paving the road for ‘letting-go’.

Try hard to not be judgy; work hard at not having any expectations

We live in a society where everyone has a perfect opinion on what others can do best. In simple words, everyone has expectations from the opposite person and everyone is brutally judging the other person. Non-stop. Constantly. Imagine what that’s doing to us collectively!
Well, the buck stops with me.
It is the hardest thing to do; since childhood, we’ve been fed with just generous doses of expectations and judgmental attitude towards us that, before we realize it, we are reflecting it back into the world.
It’s time to consciously stop doing it.
And while we stop judging others; we also need to focus within and stop judging us harshly. In my journey towards ‘letting-go’, I have come to realize that I am far too harsher towards me, making me roam in the same dangerous eddy of negativity.

Pick up a hobby that keeps you physically and mentally challenged and occupied
Being busy/occupied is a good solution. It is also advisable to divert our physical and mental energies to different locations than our job at hand. Don’t get me wrong; am not asking you to ignore the job at hand; just keep a healthy hobby or two handy, that not only challenges you mentally, but also physically. I have realized that keeping myself busy with hobbies and having more goals to achieve, controls my being obsessed with holding on to quite a few things.

By no means have I managed to let-go. But am fortunate enough to have noticed the signs of what holding on can lead to and that in itself is the first step.
This blog is a simple attempt at sharing my feeble attempts at something that most of us struggle with.