Throughout our lives, we learn lessons. Some people call them Life's Lessons and some call it Soul Lessons, the two are interchangeable. The more work I do on my inner world, and the more I work with clients, and their inner worlds, I see a consistent pattern of this particular Soul Lesson: Letting Go
At some point in time as we go through life, we will have to "let go". We have to let go of relationships that no longer serve us, beliefs that no longer serve us, behaviours, actions, jobs, careers, money, addictions that no longer serve us, and we will eventually have to let go of our lives.
If we do not let go of old ways of thinking and behaving, we forfeit evolution and we forfeit expansion. We will stay in a contracted position and ultimately start to regress. There is no maintenance, there is only progression or regression. The thought of "maintaining" something is like the thought of the "perfect diet" or the "perfect body". We can get stuck in a mindset where we think we can achieve this optimum result and stay there.
This is what happens when people try to follow a specific meal or diet plan for too long. They think that, "If I could just find the holy grail of a way of eating then I will be perfect, my health will be perfect, my body will be perfect, and I will just stay here and never leave or stray or go off my plan. All will be good and I can just maintain my perfect life".
Letting go of the "perfect diet", the "perfect body", the "perfect heath", etc, are all essential for us to evolve into something greater.
Sometimes life is asking us to let go of relationships that no longer serve us anymore. They don't contribute to our Soul's growth, and they don't contribute to our journey. Sometimes, life is asking us to let go of a job that we've worked for years that no longer serves our journey anymore. Whatever it is, it is consistently being asked of us to let go.
The Hard Part
As human beings, we like to give ourselves labels. We like to identify with positions, financial status, the friends we have, the kids we raise, the sports we play, you name it and we will identify ourselves with it. The problem with doing this though is that when we have to let go of something (which is inevitable), we also then tend to feel like we are losing our identity along with letting go. We often see this in situations like when a mother says goodbye to her children when they leave for college, an athlete going through an injury and asked to give up their sport, or the business man who has worked at his career for 20+ years and is now retiring. The mother 'loses her identity" because she identifies solely as a mother, the athlete identifies with being an athlete and the businessman identifies with his job.
If we eventually have to let go though, who do we become, what happens next?
The Benefit
The good news is that when we let go of what Life is asking us to let go of, we can be certain of one thing: we have room to receive, and we have room to expand. Wen we let go of labels and situations, places, people, etc that we find our identity in, we end up finding out who we really are. Your identity is not dependant upon anyone or anything but you. Who are YOU? You could say "well I'm a vegan, or I'm a mom", but that's not your identity, that's the way you eat and that's one of the things that you are, but who are YOU?
Life will always ask you to let go of labels and with the things you identify with. It's not because life is mean and the world sucks, it's because Life is asking you to evolve. We lose our jobs, our kids move out, we get injured, because Life is trying to get our attention, and it's asking us to find our true identity. When everything else seems to crumble and fall around us, Life is showing us who we really are.
What labels are you identifying with?
What kind of person are you inside?
What are some of the labels you need to let go of and what are some positive words you can start to identify with?
Some of the words I identify myself with are these:
Bold, courageous, forgiving, giving, faithful, loyal, creative, healthy, caring, intuitive, worthy, successful, a force to be reckoned with...
It's time we stop identifying with the things that will pass away, and start to create a new identity in the things that will remain forever.