The Power of Letting Go

Time is a precious thing, and for most of us, it often slips through our fingers because of the busyness of everyday life.

We all have to deal with obligations and commitments, but we also set goals for ourselves. I don’t even mean big goals, but the little goals we want to accomplish that are part of the big goals, or just the everyday tasks we want to get done.

A big part of the stress of everyday life comes from those small goals or tasks. You set goals in your mind, your write them down on your calendar, and expect to finish them by the end the day or week. Then, if something else comes up and disturbs the progress of those tasks you can get annoyed, anxious, grumpy or even angry.

You get stressed out of something you have put on yourself and lost sight of the bigger picture. You have stopped putting things in perspective.

When you start putting those tasks and difficulties in the grand scheme of things you will come to realize it won’t hurt you, it won’t even touch you. The only hurt happens inside of your head, but not in real life. You’ve planted this seed, this time limitation, deadline or problem inside of your mind and turned it into a huge obstacle.

But you know what, there is always tomorrow. There really is. And next week and the week after that. It can actually be done later. And if you really think about it, sometimes you can even not do it at all.

Just imagine the worst-case scenario, and then ask yourself what you could do about it if it actually did happen? (but it won’t). How could you fix it?

You will see that the anxiety immediately starts to lose it’s power over you. It wouldn’t be so bad at all.

The thing is, once you’ve nearly accomplished a task, the next task is already lurking around the corner, waiting to grab you by the tail when you’re done. And then you set the next goal, and you’ll feel that pressure again. And again, time is running. Hurry up!

For some it may not seem that big of a problem, but going from one goal to the next and doing more and more, is a habit that will be stored in your subconscious mind. It becomes what you do and who you are. You’re a human on autopilot.

You’ve programmed your subconscious mind to behave like that and all you do is setting goals, tasks, finishing, hurrying, running, completing, inside your head, living inside your head, day after day, and you forgot about the pause button.

When you step outside of your home or office without doing the next thing, without going to the next thing, without thinking about the next thing, without reaching for your phone, and DARE to look around and observe, and sit down for a minute, even for a while, observe the little things, observe nature (a tree, a flower, a plant, water), breath in deeply, and out slowly, repeating that a couple of times, immersing yourself in what is there… then, only then, you’ve found the pause button and you will notice something is starting to change.

You are in the present moment. The most precious thing there is.