LETTING GO……
“The beautiful journey of today can only begin when we learn to “let go of yesterday.”……..Steve Maraboli
3 min readJul 1, 2021
Let me start with a story “ Once upon a time two sages who practiced brahamcharya were returning after attending a religious function, on the way to their ashram they had to cross a river, when they reached the bank of the river ,a young lady was anxiously waiting ,she requested the sages to help her cross the river, to which one of the sage immediately refused but the other one agreed to help her. He picked her up on his shoulder and three of them crossed the river. On reaching the other side, the lady thanked him and all of them went on their ways. On the way to ashram , the sage who refused to help the lady expressed his disappointment to the sage on his action of helping the lady as it was against their rules. To this the other sage replied “ i have dropped the lady on the bank of the river it is you who is still carrying her in your mind”. It is clearly evident from the story that the sage who helped the lady has nothing in his mind, he had “let go”of the incident where as the other sage was still carrying the it in his mind.
Letting go means detaching oneself from the hurtful experiences and Dreading memories of the past .In order to close the gate of constant regrets, Grudges & complaints let go of the past and move forward in a progressive direction.
We all witness a simple pattern of dawn to dusk everyday, both of them have their importance each makes us realise the value of other .It is also the nature’s way of conveying that after every night their is always a day with a sunrise.We can relate hope with sunrise, most important factor for “letting go”. In our life most of us might experience various events which can hold us back and cause a lot of pain and suffering like sudden death of a loved one, break ups, failures, facing unnecessary criticism, these incidents get deeply etched in our mind due to that life becomes scary and challenging, we think that nothing is going to ever change , our wounds & scars will never heal, we will never be happy . The incidents constantly relives in our mind trapping us into hopelessness and discouraging to move forward.
The only way out of this mire is “letting go” . Trust me its very strenuous, it requires a lot of introspection, time and efforts to win this hardest battle.
Guidance for“letting go”
1.Acceptance is the beginning:- There are certain life encounters for which we have always desired a different ending, we seek answers from others and ourselves, we go through self pity and demand immediate closure. The painful truth is the situation/experiences remain as it is , accepting them starts the journey of being ok.
2.Forgiveness:- involves forgiving ourselves and others, even though they don’t realise they wronged you. Many problems are solved by just forgiving.
3.Feel the phase:- Allow yourself to feel all the emotion caused by your loss cry it out loud , talk about your anger,frustration , worries. Work on your anxiety issues and fear. Do not make this phase your comfort zone.
4. Professional Help:- Some times the intensity of our emotions caused due to certain incidents is so strong that we need and must seek expert help such as counsellor, therapists and psychologist.
5. Room for imperfections:- Simple understanding of fact that many things ,situation and behaviour of people is out of our control, can solve a lot of our problems, also keeping space( mistakes happen and will happen in future) for our mistakes can also help.
6. Try to associate with people/groups who you feel are positive and creative and seem to be happy.
