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It’s easy to say ‘let it go,’ and I think that we’re all really good at giving this advice to anyone who is holding onto something so tight that it looks like they are going to break it. I have done it so many times—and I’m referring to both things: I’ve advised people to let go, and I’ve held onto something with such intensity that I have totally lost control.
Of course, we’re all good at advising others to ‘let it go’ because it’s easier to see from the outside when something is about to break. It’s similar to watching a horror movie; we know the bad guy is coming after the good one, so we start screaming, “Watch out! Watch out!” but of course they can’t hear us. So we have to let them experience what they are supposed to go through even if that means crashing, breaking, falling apart, or everything in between.
I am slowly learning to incorporate letting go into many (if not all) aspects of my life. It has been a difficult task, though. For those of us who have a hard-core-control-freak personality, letting go is not even an option. For many years I’ve been fighting to get control over everything in my life, and that has been really exhausting. So I’m working on letting go of my personality’s controlling side. I can’t say that I am 100% recovered from my control issues, but I have learned to deal with them.
Last year I did a solo fertility treatment. I talked about that process a few months ago, and if you remember that post, you know it didn’t work. I enjoyed the experience as a whole, however; it was a huge lesson for me. I learned (in a particularly hard way) that I can’t control everything, or—let’s be honest—anything. I remember my family telling me to keep my faith as strong as possible and let God do His thing. I wanted so much to have a cool ‘let it go’ attitude, but it wasn’t possible for me. I was holding so tightly to the result that I wanted, that for a moment after I realized it hadn’t worked, I thought I was the one who ‘broke’ it. I felt like my desire was a crystal glass that I wanted to protect so much that I broke it with my intensity.
It’s very difficult to let go of something that you really want. If you have read about the Law of Attraction, you might also notice that it sounds contradictory sometimes. The Law of Attraction works when you relax and let go, but you must keep your desire really high in order to make sure you get what you want. How in Earth is that even possible? How can we hold on to a fervent desire for something to happen and let it go at the same time? I was not clear about this rule for the Law of Attraction at all. So, I read a lot more about it until I came to my own conclusion. If you think about it, if you believe in God or if you believe in the Law of Attraction, the concept is the same. If you really believe in God, you pray and ask Him for everything you need, and then you let Him do His job. If you believe in the Law of Attraction, you send your signal to the Universe, and then you wait until the Universe replies to you.
How does that work? Well, the religious name for this mindset is simple: faith. Faith is that magical act of letting go. When you have absolute faith, you let God, or the Universe, do the work. You pray or you ask, and then you trust in such a strong way that there is no need for you to hold tight. Wait, wait, wait… does this mean I didn’t believe in God all these years? Not at all. I have always believed in God. I have experienced His love and answers millions of times. The only thing I was missing was the ‘relax’ portion of the trust. I was practicing the wrong concept—micromanaging—because I was expecting instead of aspiring.
I did this awesome guided meditation a few weeks ago, where they talked about the huge difference between expectation and aspiration. Just like that, everything became clear to me. Aspiring is what keeps us motivated. When we aspire to something, we have a clear desire… without any attachment to a particular result. On the other hand, when we expect to get something, we attach our desire to a result that we feel has to happen in a specific way. So, if things don’t happen the way we want them to happen (even if the outcome is good for us in the end), we feel disappointed. So, faith is basically trusting that our aspirations have been heard and letting the Big Guy do His job to deliver what’s best for us.
Understanding the major difference between aspiring and expecting makes such an impact. I have learned that micromanaging my aspirations led me to specific expectations, and that’s not healthy faith. I’m aware now that my job is to send the prayers and leave it to God. (Or, speaking the Law of Attraction language, send the signal and let it go.) It feels so good to turn that switch that I am not going back to micromanaging. I’ll use control only for keeping my mind sharp, my body healthy, and my faith sky-high.
Love,
Irene.
