Letting go of regret

It's tempting to look back on one's life when you're in a slightly pensive mood and start identifying all the mistakes you feel you've made. It's a trap I fall into more than I would like to... One of the things my mind likes to fixate on is past relationships. It says “How is it that your grandmother managed to have just one relationship over her whole life and you have a string of painful, fruitless failures.” Yeah, my mind's pretty nasty like that!

It also says things like:

•    You always pick men who are wrong for you

•    You're not mature enough to have a healthy relationship

•    You're going to ruin every good thing that comes along, you know you will!

What a bitch!

Looking at my past relationships in this way makes me mistrust the one I'm in now. Even though there is nothing whatsoever wrong with this love, or the man I am with, I look for things that could be signs that things will turn bad in the future. I am mistrustful and suspicious. I expect the worst.

How can this kind of attitude ever lead to anything good!?

Considering my past in a more positive light leads to a very different result. If I let go of the idea that I made mistakes, and instead accept that each and every person who has come into my life has taught me important lessons, made me stronger and led me to circumstances that helped to heal my woundedness, then I can see my present situation as the opportunity that it is. Then, instead of looking for faults and expecting things to go wrong in my relationship, I can relax and enjoy it :)

Letting go of regret allows us to trust our ability to make wise decisions in the present moment. And besides, those mistakes we think we made, they're in the past and there ain't nothing we can do to change them now! Regret make us heavy and like any burden it slows us down, makes everything more of a challenge. Letting go of regret sets us free; we become light. We move with ease and grace, even in the most challenging of situations.

What do you regret most in your life? What would it mean to let go of that regret right now?

Letting go of trauma

Being raped is a terrifying experience for a seven year old child. I know because I've experienced it.

The mind is clever at dealing with such things. In order to avoid the intense rush of adrenaline and cortisol that such an experience induces, the mind disassociates. That is, it turns its attention elsewhere. In my case I focused on the sky and the forest around me, on the feeling of the hard ground underneath me. These are the things that I remember. The pain and confusion didn't really register, at least not consciously.

Letting go of traumatic experiences like this is not easy because with no memory of the incident it's hard to see which behaviours stem from the trauma. No doubt the observer self holds a full record of the experience, which could be accessible by hypnosis or meditation, but in the absence of the logical connection between cause and affect it's difficult to discern whether a pattern of behaviour is unhealthy or not.

Trauma also stays embedded in the body at an energetic level, mainly in the auric body. The result can be energy blockages, over or under activity of the chakras and other disorders. These can be resolved through meditation, energy healing techniques such as reiki, kinesiology and acupuncture. Yoga, aromatherapy, sound and colour healing can also help.

 
Practice conscious presence in your everyday life so that you become aware of whether your behaviours impact your energy body in a positive or negative way. This may feel like areas of tension, pain or tightness in the body. Let go of behaviours that do not serve you.

Letting go of trauma can be the catalyst for healing of chronic disease and mental illness, and the key to success, abundance and inner peace.

Letting go of the old to make way for the new

It's always a bit sad letting go of something you've put a lot of time and energy into, but what sweetens the deal is the knowledge that the space created will soon be filled with something new. Something perhaps more wonderful and fulfilling than you've ever previously encountered.

It's a bit like this with Surrender to the Infinite. It's been such a long time since I've written here because I've been pouring all my time and energy into a new project, the Insight Astrology website and blog. Yes I've finally decided to take myself seriously as an astrologer and share this gift with the world!

Those of you who know me well will agree this has been a long time coming. It's very exciting! I've had to learn a lot about all kinds of things, from internet marketing to audio recording to online networking. I've also had to get over all sorts of fears around putting myself out there in the public sphere. A steep learning curve but ultimately very enjoyable.

Working from home has opened up an entirely new way of being for me. Solitude, silence and the freedom to prioritise my time and tasks according to my own values have brought so much peace to my heart. This even in a time when much is changing in my life and at such a fierce pace!

And to my small but loyal band of followers: of course I'll continue to write Surrender to the Infinite. Just a little less frequently. And I'm open to guest posts by others who believe in letting go as a path to freedom and joy - just contact me with your ideas and we can see what's possible.

In the meantime please visit me at Insight Astrology. I think you'll be impressed by how my skills have advanced!

Much love (you know who you are),

Faith

Letting go of needing to be liked

Most of us spend a lot of time censoring our behaviour because we don't want to be disapproved of by others. In fact many of us actively make decisions in order to make sure that others like, respect and approve of us.

Why do we do this? One reason is that we have learned to define ourselves by the responses we receive from others. If others are impressed by our intelligence, tell us we're beautiful or that we've done a good job then we feel validated. We feel worthy. This method works just fine as long as we can ensure that people only think and say good things about us. But as soon as the criticisms start making an appearance we fall apart. What makes it all the more ridiculous is that our self-identity is often so fragile that one little negative remark can override years of compliments and approval. Someone thinks an idea we had is impractical and suddenly we feel as though we are incapable of having a good idea ever again!

Clearly this is a very tenuous way to live. It sets us up to be constantly swinging from self-confidence to self-doubt. We will always feel needy of others' attention, always looking for the next kind word that will buoy us up. Perhaps more importantly it prevents us from living our lives freely and to our fullest potential because every time we open our mouths or consider doing something a little differently we end up thinking: 'But what will other people say?' If we cannot be completely sure that other people's responses will be positive we may avoid doing something that could help us learn, expand our horizons or express our creativity. We are trapped by this need for others' approval.

It's easy enough to see how this works in theory but how does one become free from this need to be liked? Well it all comes down to how you define your self. Underneath the part of us that is a reflection of other people's responses (sometimes called the ego) there is another self that doesn't give a damn what others think. Accessing this deeper self is the key to letting go of the need to be liked.

Connecting with our deeper self can be achieved through practicing meditation and mindfulness in everyday life. When we meditate we watch our fears and desires flit across the screen of our mind without becoming attached to them. We let them come and go without judgment; we just observe. This part of the self that observes is the deeper self. Sometimes it is called the witness because it doesn't get involved in the action, it doesn't have any needs or fears of its own. It is beyond fear and desire.

When we have accessed this deeper self, and become more and more identified with it, it becomes easy to let go of the need to be liked.

Letting go of being perfect

In the past I was one of those people who's addicted to self-help books. Why? Because I've always felt there was something wrong with me that I had to fix, something that I could improve about myself. I felt that until I was perfect I was not worthy of love.

In my work especially I felt I needed things to be just so... Even when I did my best I always felt that I could have somehow done better, that the work I produced was somehow flawed. If someone gave me negative feedback it would send me into a tail spin!

This way of looking at myself meant that for a long time I seemed to attract partners who reflected back my need for perfection. They were always offering suggestions on how I could correct this or that fault, or how I could improve myself. On the other hand, because I had such high expectations of myself I also demanded perfection in them. Needless to say we made one another pretty unhappy!

It took me a long time to realise that achieving perfection is both impossible and undesirable, not to mention that in striving for it we lead ourselves into all manner of difficulties along the way. By expecting perfection of ourselves we set ourselves up to fail over and over and over again, at least in our own eyes. Other people may be impressed by our work, they may love us dearly despite all our flaws but this is never enough. We never believe in their love or praise because in terms of our own aims we have fallen far short.

Letting go of the need to be perfect is difficult, though I've found along the way that a few things can help us along.

Firstly, look to nature; nature is replete with desperately beautiful things that are deeply flawed if looked at from the perspective of conventional beauty. Nature is messy, smelly and seemingly disorganised but somehow harmonious. When we look at our own lives we can see many parallels here; we begin to appreciate that it is our 'imperfections' that make us uniquely, beautifully, who we are.

Secondly, daily meditation helps us to become mindful of our thoughts so that instead of working towards perfection we instead start to notice the kind of thoughts and actions that work for us and those that don't. For example we may notice that drinking a lot of alcohol when we're depressed simply makes us more depressed, so we stop doing that so often. We don't stop because we want to be a better person or to live up to some ideal, we stop simply because we can see clearly that it doesn't work for us.

We no longer struggle to change, we simply let go of what no longer serves us.