Letting Go

Letting go of worries

• When we stop fighting the inevitable, we release energy which allows us to create a richer life. Elsie MacCormick
• I act where I choose, then allow all to flow.
• There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will. Epictetus
• Two step formula for handling stress. 1. Don't sweat the small stuff. 2. Remember that it's all small stuff. Anthony Robbins
• I let go and trust that all is happening perfectly. Susan Jeffers
• I won't worry about anything today. I'll worry about it tomorrow. Susan Jeffers
• Worry, is in effect, saying to God I don't trust you. John Loftness
• Relax. This is the yesterday that will not matter tomorrow. Brilliant Ashleigh
• I have suffered many things in this life, most of which have never happened. G. W Gates
• Worry pulls tomorrow's cloud over today's sunshine.
• Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength. Corrie Ten Boom
• I close my eyes, then cut an imagery cord that is attaching me to whatever I am worrying about. I then say to myself "OK God, I am doing my best. I'll let you take over now. Take over God, I trust it is all happening perfectly." I take a deep breath and feel myself letting go." Susan Jeffers

Letting go of Thoughts

• The power of calm: In matters of the mind, the more mental effort you apply to any given situation, the less will be the result.
• When you allow your mind to take a break, it comes back stronger, sharper, more focused and creative. Richard Carlson
• Go slow. Stop thinking. Look around. You'll see something beautiful if you open yourself. Sermon of Van Gogh
• That which is left when there is no more grasping is the Self. Panchadasi
• The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
• The truth emerges when you get stuck

Letting go of the need for order and perfection

• Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit. Henry B. Adams
• For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly. Kahlil Gibran
• Have faith in the Great Mystery to guide me. Important ideas will return. Prove your faith by letting them slip away! This is the secret to an effortless mind.

Letting go of the need to solve it right now

• Use your back burner. Gently hold the problem in your mind without actively analysing it. This simple technique will help you solve many problems and will greatly reduce the stress and effort in your life. Richard Carlson
• The next time you are feeling bad, rather than fight it, try to relax. Richard Carlson
• Don’t allow yourself to be fooled by your low moods. People do not realise that their moods are always on the run. They think instead that their lives have suddenly become worse in the past day, or even the last hour. A low mood is not the time to analyse your life. In low moods we lose our perspective and everything seems urgent. Life is almost never as bad as it seems when you're in a low mood. The trick is to be grateful for our good moods and graceful in our low moods - not taking them to seriously. Richard Carlson
• Practice ignoring your negative thoughts. You can analyse your thoughts, ponder, think through, study, think some more - or you can learn to ignore them - dismiss, pay less attention to, not take too seriously. Richard Carlson
• Negative thoughts do not need to be studied and analysed. Simply recognise that the reason you are feeling sad, angry, stressed or whatever is that you are sweating the small stuff. Instead of rolling up your sleeves and fighting back, back off, take a few deep breaths and relax. Richard Carlson

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Letting go of expectations

• When you let go of your expectations, when you accept life as it is, you're free.  To hold on is to be serious and uptight.  To let go is to lighten up.  Richard Carlson
• When things don't seem to go my way, I let go of my attachment to how I think they should be, trusting that I am not seeing the big picture.  If I knew the big picture, I would understand that there is a reason for things unfolding the way they are, and that the cosmos has a plan for me much grander than anything I have conceived.   Deepak Chopra
• I let go of expectation.  I visualise cutting the cord to my expectations.  I imagine them drifting into the air until they are gone.   Susan Jeffers
• I relax my consciousness.  I unset my heart.  I wear the world as a loose garment.  I learn to dance with grace on the constantly shifting carpet.  I go with the flow.  Susan Jeffers
• Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done? Matthew Arnold

Letting go of possessions

• Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment.  For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind. Kahlil Gibran
• It is the preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.  Betrand Russell
• Let me not be tied down to property or praise and I shall be free. Free from the nagging ache of envy. Free from the hurts of resentment. Free to love all and forgive all. Free to do and say what is right, regardless of the unpopularity. Free to wander everywhere as inspiration guides me. Saint Francis of Assisi
• The things you own end up owning you.  It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything.   Chuck Palahniuk 1996, Fight Club
• Barn's burned down - now I can see the rising moon.  Zen Master Masahide
• Appreciate the abundance of what's good in your life, rather than measure and amass things that do not actually lead to happiness.  Cherie Carter-Scott

Letting go of the need for certainty

• The search for certainty and security is an attachment to the known.  The known is the past. There is no evolution in that.  Uncertainty on the other hand is the fertile ground of pure creativity and freedom.  I relinquish my attachment to the known and step into the field of all possibilities.   Deepak Chopra
• I am unattached to outcome.  I am comfortable in the realm of uncertainty.  I do not anticipate or resist, I allow.   Deepak Chopra

Letting go of striving

• Learn to pause or nothing worthwhile will catch up with you. Doug King
• Happiness is as a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond our grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you. N. Hawthorne
• As long as there is drivenness, then we cannot experience our true nature. Our true nature is effortless. It is the nature of nature itself - an effortless spontaneous flow. Whether we realize it or not, all of us, from infancy on, start to acquire drivenness, compulsiveness, grabbiness, and that covers over our true nature. As long as that is covered over…life is going to be suffering. On the other hand, we could just as well say that Buddhism teaches that life is heaven on earth if we see what is really there. Shinzen Young
• He who bends to himself a joy doth the winged life destroy. But he who kisses a joy as it flies lives in Eternity's sunrise. William Blake
• The earth belongs to anyone who stops for a moment, gazes, and goes on his way. Colette
• Untroubling and untroubled where I lie, the grass below, above, the vaulted sky. John Clare
• Act without doing; work without effort. Tao Te Ching
• Let your skills evolve with time, without forcing or grasping, especially meditation. Bursts of progress, followed by consolidation and sometimes even apparent relapse. Read your dairy for confirmation. Ebbs and flows - this is the way of the world.
• Sometimes the most urgent and vital thing you can possibly do is to take a complete rest. Ashleigh Brilliant
• If you want to be happy, be. Leo Tolstoy
• What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stop and stare. William Henry Davies

Letting go of end goaling

• It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end. Ursula K. Le Guin
• Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of travelling. Margaret Lee Runbeck
• Nothing comes into being all at once; not even the grape or the fig. If you say to me now, I want a fig, I shall answer, that requires time. Let the tree blossom first, then put forth its fruit, and finally let the fruit ripen. Epictetus

Letting go of physical tension

• Every movement I make is a chance to release
• I let my neck release, to let my neck go forward and up, to let my back lengthen and widen. Each movement is a chance to release and lengthen with my head leading. Each part of me releases and lengthens out of the nearest joint. I am supported from below. I think upwards for downward movements. My head floats on a water fountain. Alexander Technique

Letting go of judging others

• Become an anthropologist. Be interested, without judgement, how others choose to live and behave. This is a way of replacing judgements with loving kindness. "I see, that must be the way she sees things in her world. Very interesting." Richard Carlson
• Resist the urge to criticize. Criticism, like swearing, is actually nothing more than a bad habit. When we criticise, it is a statement to the world and to ourselves "I have a need to be critical." Richard Carlson
• I will practice non- judgement. Today I shall judge nothing that occurs. Deepak Chopra
• Non judgement creates silence in your mind. Judgement is the constant evaluation of things as right or wrong, good or bad. When you are constantly evaluating, classifying, labelling, analyzing, you create a lot of turbulence in your internal dialogue. This turbulence constricts the flow of energy between you and the field of pure potentiality. Deepak Chopra
• Observing is witnessing. Judging is concluding. I do not draw conclusions about Who You Are because in your creation of yourself you are never concluded. N. D. Walsch
• When you learn not to judge, you are basically saying, "I am willing to let anything in without deciding first whether it is good or bad. In the practice of openness, you will be inviting your soul to be intimate with you. Deepak Chopra
• One of the cardinal rules of joyful loving is that judging others takes a great deal of energy and without exception, pulls you away from where you want to be. Richard Carlson
• Imagine this person as a tiny infant. See their tiny little features and their innocent eyes. See the same person as a very old person who is about to die. Look at their worn out eyes and their soft smile, which suggests a bit of wisdom and the admission of mistakes made. Richard Carlson
• See the innocence. Learn to be less bothered by the actions of people. Look beyond it so that we can see the innocence in where the behaviour is coming from. Underneath even the most annoying behaviour is a frustrated person who is crying out for compassion. Richard Carlson

Letting go of worrying what others think

• Praise and blame are all the same. You'll never be able to please all the people all the time. Even in a landslide victory in which a candidate secures 55% of the vote, he or she is left with 45% of the population that wishes someone else were the winner. Everyone has their own set of ideas with which to evaluate life and our ideas don't always match those of other people. The sooner we accept the inevitable dilemma of not being able to win the approval of everyone we meet, the easier our lives will become. Richard Carlson
• Practice humility. The less compelled you are to try to prove yourself to others, the easier it is to feel peaceful inside. The less you care about seeking approval, the more approval you seem to get. Richard Carlson
• As for worrying about what other people think, forget it. They aren't concerned about you. They're too busy worrying about what you and other people think of them. Michael le Boouf
• Be more concerned about your character than about your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think of you. Richard Carlson

Letting go of the need to be right

• The next time you find yourself in an argument, rather than defend yourself, see if you can see the other point of view first. Richard Carlson
• I let go of my need to convince others of my point of view. When I remain open to all points of view, my dreams and desires will flow with nature's desires. Deepak Chopra
• Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Stephen Covey, 5th Habit
• I am not controlled by any unfortunate need to be right. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong. Only time and circumstances will show for sure… maybe. Susan Jeffers
• Most of our energy goes into maintaining our own importance. If we were capable of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things would happen to us. One, we would free ourselves from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our grandeur; and two, we would provide ourselves with enough energy to catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the universe. Deepak Chopra
• Being right is highly overrated. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Richard Carlson
• A wonderful, heartfelt strategy for becoming more peaceful and loving is to practice allowing others the joy of being right - give them the glory. You don't have to sacrifice your deepest philosophical truths or most hearfelt opinions, but starting today, let others be "right" most of the time! Richard Carlson
• Choose being kind over being right. The reason we are tempted to put others down is that our ego mistakenly believes that if we point out how someone else is wrong, we must be right and therefore we feel better. Richard Carlson