Letting Go is Courageous

A new month is almost over. And then it will be October. That has to mean something, right? I don't know. Maybe I should ask the cats.

What are your plans? What are you gripping onto? I often realize that whatever I'm clutching correlates with what I'm afraid of. If it's in my hand and I'm refusing to let go of it, chances are that I'm afraid of what will happen when I release. "Letting go" is an idea that's developed a negative connotation around it. We associate it with giving up and becoming weak. When we let go, we're undisciplined, lost, unmotivated.

Or are we?

When I let go of running, I was afraid. There was pitta-vata imbalance written all over me, and the more I fed into the frustration and fear inside me, the worse I felt. Speed and force can help us numb out of things, but as soon as the "high" of adrenaline subsides, the worry and fear and grasping creep back in. Tools like over-exercising, restricting, etc., are not long-term helpers for us when we're dealing with stress or anxiety. They're unsustainable and put our bodies in a constant state of sympathetic nervous system overload.

Having people that love you enough to call you out when you're going into SNS overload (pushing, resisting, and fighting mode) is a blessing. I'm so grateful to my loved ones for helping me see that moving faster and faster isn't going to make me feel better, and it breaks my heart that there are people all over the world who are going through destruction alone. We need to help spread the message that, in some cases, letting go isn't bad. It's not weakness!

Letting go is strength. It's courage. It's something we have to practice every day.

Our inner demons have all sorts of names. Anorexia. Perfectionism. Workaholism. Internet addiction. These insidious forces overtake us during a period of vulnerability in our lives, and before we know it, we're afraid of everything, most of all ourselves.

Image found on Sue Atkins

Marianne's got it. We're terrified of letting go because, somewhere within ourselves, we know that we CAN let go. It may not be cut-and-dry or simple, but it's possible. When people are overexercising, for instance, it may scare them to know that they have the power let the alarm go off a bit late and skip running. They have the power to do yoga instead, or sleep in, or read . . . .

In order to access our "power," we need to have faith that things are going to be okay. I'll admit that I'm definitely not the full-of-faith, let-it-be person that I'd like to be, but the point of writing this is to say that it's okay to let go of inner demons and let faith in. Let love in.

<3 <3 <3