There is power in letting go
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I am a very clingy person, let's start with that! I hold on to everything very closely, be it my values, my ideas, my perception, my people, anything and everything that matters. Letting go has always been a challenge, I hate the fact that things can't always stay how they are right now and that change is inevitable.
A lot of people who know me would call me stubborn because if I have decided to do something, I would do it anyhow. Sometimes it is a good thing, but it's annoying the other times (for other people obviously). But when I started hearing it constantly from my family (now that I am living with them all the time) I started realising that it was true!
I noticed that I was holding on to the fact that it's my responsibility for how other people perceive me. And it's a dangerous responsibility to take. It messes up with your head because you are constantly judging yourself on the basis of what others have to say about you. I don't remember being like this, then why was I holding these narratives so close?
Maybe because I was in a different environment now, maybe what my family members said about me actually mattered. And I guess most of us feel or believe that their parents, their family members are always going to show them the truest picture about themselves, that these are those people to whom you can rely on.
Most of the time it is true, but not always. You see, when I moved to college I stopped living with my family. They weren't a part of the growth which I went through for the next 5 years, they still saw me as someone who was in school, who had the same attitude, the same personality. And maybe that's the reason when I came back home, we didn't tune well instantly. They were adapted to a version of me which I already outgrew. And I too had perceptions about them which didn't stand true now.
So when they said I was being stubborn, they meant I was holding on to my notions for them very strongly, I wasn't allowing myself to see the real picture. And I was always in a quarrel with them regarding things that didn't really matter after a while. But they would affect me so much that I would start questioning whether I was wrong or they were wrong in the situation.
What I completely missed is the fact that I cannot change who they are as people. I can only adapt myself to the versions they have become. And so gradually I stopped explaining myself, not in a manner that meant distancing myself from them, but to actually let them be their complete selves in front of me.
I understood that if I argue, or counter their values or opinions, it will only make them feel bad. It's going to make them feel that whatever they said or believed in didn't matter to me, which wasn't true at all.
Even though sometimes I did have a completely different stake on a situation than them, I didn't try to bring them on my side, what I did instead is sometimes I would let go a little bit of me on to their side. Not by abandoning what I believed in, but by softening how tightly I held it. I did so to let them know that their values, their perception matters to me.
This might not be something which you would have done. To some people this would feel like not standing true to themselves, and that's completely fine. How I look at it is that you need to constantly evolve into versions of you that give you peace and power in a particular situation. If you don't evolve, you lose control over the situation, you get stuck in a constant loop of explaining yourself, searching for what's going wrong, but what you should be doing instead is asking yourself what the situation really asks you to become, and can you become that without losing yourself?
A river is not powerful when it's stagnant, it gains it's power from moving, flowing freely, changing it's ground time to time and still not losing it's essence, it's nature. I think that's my favourite analogy to look at the importance of letting go. We shouldn't get too attached to our beliefs or our ideas that we aren't able to see what harm they do us than any good.
That's all for this time!
See you again on Saturday
Do share your views on today's article, I would love to hear them!
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1 comment
Finding the middle ground is the path to survival. Once we master that- thats when we can progress to think BEYOND survival- to Thriving. And its not always going to make everyone around you happy and understanding and supportive. But THATS life. Thats the purpose. Thats the journey. Thats where all the growth is. And beyond- your best self.