Why “Letting it Go” Can be so Tough

We hear it everywhere, “just let it go.” Yet no one really tells us how to do that. We hold onto our pain and our suffering as if it were a life raft keeping us afloat. We do this mainly because we were never taught how to “let it go.” I mean, if something is causing us pain and we could drop it as easily as “let it go” sounds, don’t you think we’d have done that already?

The irony is that to let something go, we don’t get there by pushing it away or cutting it off. If letting it go is hard it’s because this emotion, this thought, this feeling that we cannot escape is part of us. Lobbing it off is like removing one of our appendages. To understand the pain, we must learn to listen instead of running away or trying to amputate it. Instead, letting it go is about leaning into it. Feeling it. Allowing it. Accepting it.

These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them. ~Rumi