Learning to let go

One of the biggest challenges we face, man or woman, to leading happy lives is the inability to let go.

Whether it's a relationship we're not ready to walk away from, something that happened to us in our childhood or guilt over something we did to someone-else, the failure to make peace with and move on from the things that injure us means that we're sabotaging any chance of being truly happy in the future.

When you take the time to really think about it, any unhappiness we find in our lives can be equated to either not being able to accept things that can't be changed or our inability to change the things we're not happy with.

Too often, whether we realise it or not, we hold on to negative aspects of what's happened to us and the result is that we're not open to the positive things that can come our way.

Pride, guilt, bitterness, regret and anger are all very human emotions and at times they can be a good thing, if they show us what we need to change in our lives, but if we allow them to paralyse us and stop us from moving on they are the most destructive forces known to man.

When we're upset about something we often play it over and over in our heads and the more we think about it the more we find to be upset about. It's a vicious circle and if left unresolved it can stay with us, even subconsciously, for a lifetime.

It's not an easy thing to deal with but it's not impossible and the benefits of simply letting go are so much more constructive than holding a grudge or holding on to guilt that we might feel at something we may have done to others.

Acceptance, whether given of received is a great way to begin the healing process. What we often lose sight of is that right and wrong are subject to perception. Both sides can honestly believe that they're the one that's been wronged and by accepting that the other person may have their own reason to be upset we can start to fix the problem at hand. Saying you're sorry or accepting an apology - and meaning it - can allow you to rebuild what you might have lost.

The past is set in stone and there's nothing we can do to go back and change it but we can learn from it and make sure we don't make the same mistakes in the future.

Learning to live in the present instead of the past is another important step forward in the healing process.

We concentrate so much on what's already happened that we forget to focus on what's going on in the here and now.

We allow the past to eat us up inside and before we know it we've missed the rest of our lives passing in front of our eyes.

"God give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."

- Protestant Theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr

Note: Next week we'll concentrate on 'how' to let go ... or get even.