by Nathan Chua
It’s become a buzzword nowadays. Let go! And be free! However, what does letting go really mean? Where is the wisdom in this? Does it mean that we should just throw up our hands in surrender? Submit to whatever life throws our way? Does it mean just going with the flow and not pursuing what we want?
In ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a better life is one where the process is itself, the outcome. Outcomes can be very unpredictable. We may choose to develop a romantic relationship with someone but end up being rejected. We can burn the midnight oil and yet fail in a job application, a promotion, or an important exam.
The first step to letting go is to understand what we can and cannot control. For example, an angry spouse, or a recalcitrant teenaged child with the accompanying unpleasant thoughts and feelings that these important relationships bring, are hard to control. As our focus moves towards controlling our feelings and thoughts and the significant people in our lives, many of us eventually discover how far we have gone away from the person we had always wanted to be. Some of us may have had experiences of these rude awakenings. I know I have!
Letting go means that we can drop the struggle with things that are outside of our control: our own thoughts and feelings, circumstances, and other people. A popular metaphor is the tug of war that happens in our heads. We are constantly drawn towards fighting this war between how we want to be and how we don’t want to be. It feels like an angel and a devil taking up space inside of us, with each one pulling on either side of the rope. We desperately want the angel in us to win this war! We get trapped in this perpetual struggle, unaware about the only way we can end this war within, which turns out to be simply dropping the rope, or dropping the struggle, or letting go of the struggle!
The Chinese Finger Trap provides us with an excellent metaphor of letting go:
So in the psychological sense, letting go is about letting go of the struggle with our own thoughts and feelings that come with what life brings to the table for us. Let life be as it is and treat it with a sense of wonder.
Allow these unpleasant thoughts and feelings to go through you and start to choose what actions you would like to take in dedication to your lifelong values. Values are shown by the choices you make that bring you to what you wish to stand for in any given moment. Live according to what is in your control and let go of your struggles with pain, in order to find out how rich and meaningful life can be, even with all of its pains.