Go With The Flow Of Life

At any moment, your life is exactly the way that it is. You are the way you are and the people in your life are exactly the way that they are. This is true whether you like it or not.

When you fight and resist the way your life is, you create a state of fear and upset that almost always makes your situation worse.

You close down inside. You lose your ability to see clearly. You get tunnel vision, and you interact in a way that destroys love and creates opposition and resistance against yourself.

When we get upset, the upset seems to be caused by what happened, but this is not the case. Upsets are not caused by what happened. Upsets are caused by your fighting and resisting what happened.

To see this in your life, select a recent upset. Now notice what would happen to the upset if you were at peace with what happened. There would be no upset because the upset was not caused by what happened. The upset was caused by your fighting and resisting what happened. The moment you take away the fighting and resisting, the upset disappears. You create your own fear and upset by your resisting.

To handle a situation, you need action, not resisting. Resisting only destroys love and keeps you from seeing the action that you need to take.

If you could somehow let go of your resisting, you would restore your peace of mind. You would then be able to see your situation clearly and you would be able to see what needs to be done. You could then take the action you need to effectively handle your situation.

"Letting go" is the inner action that removes the resisting which in turn releases the fear and upset.

The moment you let go, everything seems to change. With the fear and upset gone, you become creative and able to discover solutions that you could never have seen before. You become naturally effective.

To see this another way, let us look at the nature of fear.

Fear is created by the avoiding and resisting of some future possible event. For example,  you are resisting the possible loss of your relationship. The more you resist this loss, the greater your fear.

As your fear increases, so does the chance of your fear coming true. The greater your fear, the more you become threatened and the more you hang on. That in turn pushes the person further and further away. By avoiding and resisting this future possible event, you create a state of fear and upset that tends to bring you to the very event that you are avoiding.

To have a fear lose its power, you need to do the opposite of resisting. You need to be willing for the fear to happen. You do not have to like it, just be willing.

Keep in mind that letting go is a state of mind and is totally separate from your actions. It is the letting go that removes the fear and upset so that you can see what action works.

For example, in your heart, be willing to lose your relationship, but in your actions, do everything you can to have the person want to stay.

The moment you become willing to lose your relationship, fear and upset lose their power. You restore your peace of mind and your ability to see what needs to be done.

You can then interact in a way that creates love and greatly increases the chances of your relationship staying.

To let go and restore your peace of mind, you need to be willing for your life to be however it is and however it may become.

You do this by granting permission. "I give my spouse full permission to be exactly the way he or she is." "I am willing to lose my spouse." "I am willing to lose my job."

Let go of your demands and expectations for how your life should be and make peace with the way your life is. Set yourself free inside. Then take whatever action you need to have your life be great.

To make the process of letting go a little easier, there are two very important steps that you can take. The first step is trusting. Trust that no matter what happens, you will be okay.

Now this does not mean that life will turn out the way that you want it to. Life often does not. 

Trust is knowing that however life turns out, you will be fine.

When you know that you will be fine, letting go becomes relatively easy. You can then let go. You restore your effectiveness and life works out great. This then reinforces the trust.

When you do not trust, life becomes very difficult. You fight, resist and hang on. You then make everything worse, which reinforces "do not trust."

Trust is actually a choice. Trust is something you create. It is a declaration. "I will be okay no matter what happens. I trust, just because I say so."

Trust is also telling the truth. You really will be fine no matter what happens. Life is only threatening when you resist. So stop resisting and trust. Trust that no matter what happens, you will be fine.

The second and most important step in the process of letting go is to be willing to feel your hurt. Be willing to feel all the sadness and all the feelings of being not okay that your circumstances reactivate.

This is important because the avoidance of this hurt is what causes you to resist.
We think that we are resisting our circumstances but we are not. We are resisting all the feelings and emotion that are being reactivated by our circumstances.

More accurately, we are resisting a very specific hurt from the past. We are resisting the hurt of feeling not good enough, worthless, not worth loving, or some other form of being not okay.

Once you find and heal this hurt, the need to resist or hang on disappears. You can then let go and take the action you need to effectively handle your situation.

With thanks to Bill Ferguson
http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/ferguson4.html