People stay in dead-end jobs, loveless marriages
never leaving the boundaries of their hometowns. Why is it so hard to let go of
things that no longer work? The devil you know is better than the one you don’t
know. People are willing to live a mediocre life for the safety it provides.
But what if you were guaranteed a positive outcome how would you live your life
differently? What kind of choices would you make knowing each one would turn
out OK? If you can imagine this different life then envision another life
where you are still free to make choices but are unsure of the outcome. Except
now you accept the consequences of your choices knowing they could be either
bad or good. In this life, you feel fear but take chances anyway. Every day we
make a choice. You want to lose weight but eat ice cream. You buy a new sweater
knowing the money could go towards paying off a painful debt. Today’s choices
may seem wrong, but tomorrow is the opportunity for new ones. Choosing means
letting go of the other possibility and what it could bring. ION’s president,
James O’Dea in the September-November edition of Shift magazine says this about
choice, “Each step has consequences that will secure the status quo, create a
new roadmap, or possibly transform old ways in a manner that defies our
rational understanding.”
“The harder you fight to hold on to
specific assumptions, the more likely there's gold in letting go of
them.” ~John Seely Brown, Fast Company
Assumptions: We have assumptions about everything. We
live and die by them. My friends and I have had heated conversations about the
current political arena. Who hasn’t? We stand strong in our various viewpoints.
What surprised me most was one friend. He did not know some really basic facts
about the candidate he was opposed to. When asked, he said he didn’t care to
know anything. Yet, he had made some profound judgments about this person with
the slimmest of knowledge gleaned from only hearing just one point of view.
Challenge your assumptions. We go through life and never reevaluate what we
believe. The great spiritual leaders ask us to leave the life we are living
behind and enter into a new one. Our modern leaders such as Gandhi or Mother
Theresa did just that and devoted themselves to living a new and more expansive
existence. They were able to increase the circumference of what they previously
knew to include the world and in doing so changed the lives of many, many
people. Give up your old ways and take on new experiences. Reconsider your
values and find out if they support you morally and soulfully.
“Some think it's holding on that makes
one strong; sometimes it's letting go.” ~Sylvia Robinson
Letting Go: I have thought a lot about letting go. In
fact, it has been forced upon me. In the past many months, I have moved, moved,
and then moved once again. Many of my treasured and sentimental possessions
were left behind or put into storage. Projects I had hoped to initiate
evaporated overnight. I asked a trusted friend what was going on. He told me I
wanted to change my life. But my frustration was in my own inability to make
these changes. I was literally breaking my ties with the past in dramatic
fashion. This string of little losses had added up to a big rethink about how I
am living my life. Loss tears something loose. It breaks us open in
excruciating ways. Yet it allows for new things to rush in. How do we let go?
First, acknowledge the pain of letting go. Loss of any kind can hurt and there
is no getting around it. Allow time to adjust to the change. In most
situations, we cannot control losses. I cannot will my wallet back into my
hands. But how we react to change is in our control. My small losses pointed to
larger issues of loss in my life. Take inventory. What is holding you back? Are
there areas in your life that you want to change but may be resisting? List the
pros and cons of each change. Acknowledge any feelings you may have around
letting go. Though some losses are thrust upon us letting go can be something
we choose to do.
Choice: What kind of life do you want to live? Every
minute we make small choices. Reconsider how you interact with people on a
daily basis. Instead of ignoring the person who hands you the newspaper each
day say hello and thank you. When faced with the choice between potato chips or
salad consider what has the most value for your life. Again O’Dea says this,
“We can increase our inner strength to make critical choices for ourselves and
for the planet by refraining from cluttering up our lives with too much
superficial choice.” When there is a strong value system in place it becomes
easier to let go of things that don’t support your higher ideals. In his
autobiography, Benjamin Franklin outlined a very specific formula for creating
a value system of life changes that anyone can emulate. He listed 13 virtues
from #1. Temperance - eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation to #13.
Humility - Imitate Jesus and Socrates. Franklin creates a chart for each day of
the week listing by initials the 13 virtues he has outlined for himself. Each
day he would do a careful examination of his life and puts a mark next to the
virtue when he has found fault with himself. He then committed one week to a
mastery of each virtue, repeating the process at least four times in a year. He
would add or subtract to this list as needed. This formula allowed Benjamin
Franklin to work consistently on his life not in an obsessive way but in a
constructed manner. From this careful examination of his life, Franklin was
able to establish a value system for how he lived his life. Thus allowing him
to make choices and to let go of behaviors and things that did not support this
system. The result for Franklin and for us is a life full of wonderful
inventions and creativity.
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