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THE ART OF LETTING GO: HOW TO LET GO OF ATTACHMENT WITH EASE (PRACTICAL MANUAL)
Natalya Pazdnikova's Guide on The Art of Letting Go of Attachment
What Is The Art of Letting Go? How Do You Let Go of Attachment?
Letting go is a conscious and intentional, mental action. It isn’t something that should be allowed to happen by leaving it up to life. Sometimes it is true that passing time makes it easier to live with something that we find hard to let go of. This is not always the case. It often happens that we eventually get into the same painful scenarios multiple times before we finally work through a pattern completely. Breaking unpleasant life patterns do not depend purely on our ability to let go of attachment, but it's a big part of it.
THE ART OF LETTING GO is one of those crucial skills that life will push you to develop again and again until you come to a place of non-attachment, personal connection to source, and constant living in the present moment rather than living in the illusions we build in our heads. It is hard to imagine life without any attachments because if we are not dealing with substance abuse and addiction, we might not be able to imagine a life without that one person, or a mother that is so attached to her child finds it unbearable not to stress over the child’s life.
Although it can seem that life without any attachments is not possible, at the same time, we all know at least one person who is neither addicted to substances or attached to their partner, and is fully at peace with his or her child's life decisions. Every unhealthy attachment is a form of neurosis covered up by “I can quit anytime," or “I just love them so much," or “I don't have neurosis, I just care about my child," or any other lies we tell ourselves. We must learn how to let go and heal traumas that were built up over time. Learning how to let go of attachment is essential for growth and overall happiness.
Let Go of The Past and Move On
The core reason for every attachment is the SEPARATION FROM THE SELF that usually happens during childhood. Children are very psychically sensitive and fragile, and it is almost impossible living in the modern world not to traumatize a child at all. Every real or perceived neglect, abandonment, abuse, or any traumatic experience for that matter, results in the feeling of not being safe in this life experience. The more traumatized a person is, the larger the feeling of disconnection with self, and the grander the need to substitute that craving for connection with something or someone external. Trying to fill that void with the external world creates a trap that guarantees a fall, which can result in severe depression and anxiety that grows into panic attacks.
Unhealthy attachment is a wide spread issue and each person needs to learn how to let go and heal from the effects of their own personal traumas to reconnect to themselves again. Traumas create the gap between your soul and your present moment awareness which in itself creates the NEED for something to fulfill this gap. Growing anxiety makes us unknowingly crave for something external. For every person it plays out in a unique way in life, but eventually, some things are similar like the feeling of emptiness we experience and the ongoing pull towards something that is perceived to provide that fulfillment.
Letting Go By Listening To Your Inner Guidance
Any substitution for true connection with the self is a short term, non-lasting solution that will be less and less satisfying over time. When we look outside for answers and salvation, we end up taking a long painful path, which more often than not, does not bring us what we need. On the contrary - looking inside, feeling the pain that shows up and sitting with it, making peace with the present moment, giving ourselves that feeling of safe home, and developing a healthy unconditional connection with ourselves - IS THE REAL SALVATION for many human issues, not only attachment. So the process for letting go of attachment is not only to fight the urge for external fulfillment, but to actually turn the attention inward immediately when the urge starts rising, feeling what needs to be felt and making peace with it right there. This process seem scary, that's why we run away from it. But if you start practicing it already it will not only save you a lot of time and unnecessary struggle, but and to show you that this process is simple and easy.
Practicing the art letting go can help us develop the ability to hear, trust, and fulfill our own needs, and to stay present with ourselves without following the urge to run away into unhealthy distractions. You got to learn to give yourself the love, acknowledgment, understanding, support and encouragement that you need.
Read More on How To Listen To and Trust Your Inner Guidance.
So basically, we have to take attention away from that external object into the here and now, being present with ourselves, especially in the most difficult moments - that is when YOU NEED YOU the most.
While you do that, work through the practical manual below which contains strategies on how to let go, and simultaneously helps you in the process of COMING BACK TO YOU.
Practical Manual on How To Let Go of Attachment
1. BE COMPLETELY CLEAR / HONEST WITH YOURSELF that you would be better off without __________.
Sometimes it's hard to take this step, but the other steps are also difficult to accomplish...You are just making it harder for yourself on top of life being hard enough already. There are 2 types of pain: the one that comes with continuously choosing the wrong path hoping that things will change and the one that comes with dedication and commitment towards building yourself up. We have to be logical and analytical here!
Answer the questions below. Don’t think about the future and just express what you truly think and feel right here and now:
Does _________ weigh you down?
Would you be happier if you didn’t hold onto ___________?
What good does ____________ give you?
2. SET YOUR INTENTION to let go of attachment.
Intention is an action without an action. Setting an intention means honestly and powerfully stating to yourself that you want to let go of ___________.
Intentions aren’t useless. They are really powerful even if you feel like you can’t trust yourself with following through. If you can’t follow through with your newly set intentions the first time - don’t worry, it doesn’t mean you are failing. The art of letting go is a PROCESS and not a quick change. It's okay. Start over.
3. SET SOME RULES for yourself and be mindful where you put your FOCUS.
Intensely focusing on letting go can cause us to be stuck with the desire to let go, without actually letting go. The law of attraction brings you more of what you focus on, so instead focus on those things that you are going to substitute your attachment with. Those things that make you happier and healthier.
Don’t allow yourself to think the same old thoughts that will take you down the same old road again. Instead, try to distract yourself in ways that are pleasant and healthy. The art of letting go is about training yourself to get through setbacks. How would you distract a child that wants something that you can’t give to them? You take their attention elsewhere. How could you distract yourself? Is it your favorite hobby? Or meeting with a friend? Maybe watching a comedy? Is it a healthy activity like sports or some spiritual practices? Building a relationship with yourself massively depends on things you do for your mental, physical, and spiritual health. Choose JUST ONE single new activity that you will commit to, and it has to be something that you enjoy.
So let's repeat the whole scenario: you feel the unhealthy urge and you don't follow it. Instead, you bring your attention inward, feel what's needed to be felt, make peace with it, be fully present, give yourself validation / support / safety / understanding. You then strengthen that re-connection with yourself by following the new pleasant and healthy activity of your choice.
Setting and following your own rules is important for building self-trust, self-reliance, and self-respect. This is where you learn how to let go of attachment with ease, when you can control your focus and attention. Mastering this skill means mastering your whole life!
4. YOU FEEL AWESOME.
This is the good-feeling step because here is where you start to believe that you can! This is the step where you start to feel control over yourself and your life again. After any accomplishment, big or small, you naturally start to feel good. Don't devalue this arising self-loving and self-validating feeling! Enjoy it! You should be proud of yourself! Positive reinforcement closes the gap between where you are and where you want to be. It strengthens your positive relationship with yourself. Don't skip this step and feel it fully!
If you tend to be a lazy bum (like I do sometimes ... just don’t tell anybody, okay?) and want to find the most important information out of this article, then hear me out:
People don't learn from words, they learn from experiences, so I have no illusions that people will commit themselves to follow this manual. However, if you can commit yourself to only one step - fully commit to this one! Reinforce your every tiny achievement and good feeling!
5. HERE, YOU FALL.
In this step, you come back to the old ways of being, because change is hard for people since we are creatures of habit. Self-sabotage is our inner resistance to change. Your subconscious mind tries to prevent you from any changes, including positive ones. Your subconscious mind's only goal is to keep you alive, and as long as you are alive it wants to keep things as they are. It doesn't even matter if it's consciously irrational, makes no sense and only hurts you. Your subconscious mind is your worst enemy until you befriend it, then it will work in accordance with your highest good. To become best friends with your subconscious you need to fill that gap we talked about with a healthy relationship with yourself.
Simply start again. Learning how to let go is not easy. Everything is a process. Life is made of processes, not results and the faster we understand that, the easier every process in life will be and the faster the results will come. Look at this process as a spiral, it might seem like you go in circles but with enough dedication to break the pattern - every new circle will be an elevated step up.
Practice Self-Love to Speed Up The Process of Letting Go
These 5 steps are easy to do and are easy not to do. However, the discomfort of committing yourself to this process is way smaller than the cost of dealing with the consequences of leaving it up to life. In the end, we save ourselves A LOT OF TIME with the healing process.
What is the better option? A short-term solution that prolongs the long-term suffering? Or, a short-term conscious, deliberate struggle that promotes long-term happiness? We train to practically love and care for ourselves. We also learn to have power over our mental focus, and our focus is our main SUPER POWER. We learn to make the right decisions, and in this process we evolve.
When you learn to intentionally let go of attachment to something that is very hard for you to let go of, you build yourself up. It is an amazing opportunity to start believing in yourself. You learn to be your most reliable and trustworthy friend. You build a stronger internal core that you can always lean on instead of seeking that support and fulfillment externally. We need you to build home within yourself, that internal place of comfort. But first, you need to stop running away from your home within, it is safe there...
And from that place, your focus must be more on building the new rather than letting go of the old.
The law of attraction is still at work, and what makes the process of letting go harder is an intense thought process that sound like:
"I have to let go of _______",
"_______ makes me feel bad",
"Something bad will happen if I don't let go of _______".
You get what you focus on, and we don't want you to be stuck in the process of letting go forever. The momentum of habit will keep pushing you towards the old, but it will weaken the more you focus on creating something new. This is a simultaneous process: you let go and build up a higher version of yourself that eventually outgrows the old one.
Remember, FOCUS is your main human SUPER POWER!
Needless to say, this explanation on how to let go of attachment should benefit you, this manual isn’t a personal therapeutic approach where we are uncovering your personal and unique underlying reasons for unhealthy attachments. It is more of a basic blueprint for you to do it yourself. If you are seeking to deeper understand yourself, then no amount of meditations, affirmations, reading books and articles, or exercising your willpower will be as effective as the life transformational work that I, as a Certified Psychologist and Spiritual Awakening Coach, can assist you with. Click on the picture below to book a Self-Discovery Game where you will be able to UNDERSTAND, LOVE and ACCEPT yourself on a whole new level ⬇
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