Letting Go and Surrendering to What Is

My son just turned 18!  And he is starting college!

Whoa.  How did that actually happen?  Wasn't it just yesterday he was a baby?

I'm feeling all the feels about having a kid that's an adult, and all of the letting go that is happening inspired me to look at the other areas in life where we all have to constantly practice letting go.

In this episode, I talk about different areas of our lives where we tend to hold on tight to the way things are and I give my thoughts on what it means to let go.  I also share some ways that you can practice letting go too.

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Transcript

Episode 15 Letting Go

Hello, hello,  hello!  And welcome to episode number 15. Today, I'm going to talk about letting go, which is the topic that's a little near and dear to my heart lately. And I'll explain why in a moment, but before we get started, I want to tell you really quickly about a really cool offer that I have right now.

[00:01:19] It's an introductory coaching offer called the Kickstarter Sessions. 

[00:01:23] If you feel like you are going through the motions in your life if you feel like you want more from your life, but you're not really sure where to start, this is the program for you.  In this program, I'm going to help you go from feeling like your best years are behind you to waking up excited about what's possible for you every morning. To go from being afraid to step outside of your comfort zone, to knowing that even if you're a little bit afraid you have totally got this! To go from going through the motions, living your life on autopilot, to taking control of your life, feeling joy and fulfillment. To go from letting your mindset hold you back from the life you want to doing the things that make you happy - even if you fail no big deal, right? And generally, I'm going to help you go from feeling just kind of "meh" to being unstoppable. 

[00:02:10] And the way that we're going to do this is we're first going to assess the gap between where you are right now and where you want to be, so we can focus our time and our energy to get you the results. Then you're going to have a 90-minute session with me. We're going to create a plan to start closing that gap. You're going to walk away from that session with a plan with the three most important steps you can take towards this. And finally, We're going to fine-tune your plan so it works for you in a 30 minute follow up session with me.  We'll tweak it. We'll look at what's working. What's not. We'll make it even more tailored to what you want and what you need. And you're going to leave that session feeling even more confident in your mindset. And you're going to be on your way to the results you dream of.

[00:02:57]This introductory offer for new clients is only 149. It's basically 50% off of what I normally charge. It includes this assessment, pre-work that kind of stuff... assess where you're at and includes the 90 minute Kickstarter session where we create your plan, the customized plan, and some custom resources, personalized resources and practices for you as well as that 30-minute followup session. $300 value.

[00:03:22]And it's all yours for $149. It's a great way to check out coaching and see how a coaching relationship works. You can learn more by visiting  kortneyrivard.com/claritykickstart. 

[00:03:35] Okay. And now onto today's episode.

[00:03:39]  So, like I said today, we're going to talk about letting go. And what really prompted this subject or this topic for today was my son just turned 18. How does that even happen? It seems like just yesterday I was holding him on the way home from the hospital. We were in the elevator on the way down to the car, he was in his little car seat and someone said something like, Oh, you're bringing home a little meatball.

[00:04:15] I just laughed so hard. So we called my son, the meatball for a while, but,  yeah, he just turned 18 and is ready to start college, even though been taking college classes as a senior in high school since January.  He's, he's an adult now, technically. 

[00:04:35] So I was cleaning my closet the other day, trying to get rid of some stuff.  And I came across this box of stuff from when he was little and inside it was the little outfit he came home from the hospital in and a little newborn diaper. And the little hat that he came home from the hospital and, and then also in the same box was a little t-shirt I had made for his first birthday  I took fabric markers and wrote, Ethan is one.

[00:05:04] And,  I found the one-year-old birthday candle,  birthday hats, and then a birthday noisemaker or the blower thing. And it just really hit me. I just was like, okay. How did this go so fast?  It, just brought up all these emotions of like, Oh my gosh, like he's 18. And while he still will need me,  it's that transition of, you know, gradually as he's gotten older, he's needed me less and less. Maybe sometimes he tends to gravitate towards his dad a little more.  It's hard to let go of that time when we were really like buddies. His dad worked a lot, and we're not together anymore, but his dad worked a lot. So it was just him and me, you know, we spent so much time together and we just, we did everything together.

[00:05:52] We were little buddies and you know, he's a teenager, it's not the same. And it's also kind of a tie to the times when we were all a cohesive family before the divorce.  So there's a lot of emotion there. 

[00:06:05] So today I'm just going to talk about how life is just really this practice of letting go of things to surrendering to what is.  And we kind of have to do this every day and it doesn't mean that we can't want to change some things or, you know, want to improve things. But there is so much that by staying, by holding onto it, we just stay kind of stuck. So today I'm going to look at, I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the places in life, where it's really easy to hang on too tightly and therefore get a little stuck and how we can let go.

[00:06:39] I'm also going to share some of my favorite quotes with you too, related to letting go. 

[00:06:44] So letting go is really related a lot to just mindset work, which is so much of what I teach. I recently held a webinar about mindset and we've talked about why people get stuck in the scarcity or fixed or negative mindset and how to change that to more of an abundance or a growth mindset. And it was a great webinar. 

[00:07:06] So I host webinars with topics like this often, every other month or so, and they're generally free. So if you aren't already, I would highly recommend getting on my email list so you can get notified when I'm offering another free one.  Or sometimes I offer paid ones too, but just keep that in mind. Go to kortneyrivard.Com and there's a little popup form you can fill out and then you can be sure to be alerted when anything new, that's coming up.

[00:07:32]So why is letting go so hard? I talked about, in my mindset webinars, that one of the reasons our mindset is maybe not maybe needs a little work, is that we get really attached to things.  

[00:07:46] Not only things, but also just like the way we think things should be or the way we want things to be, or the way someone's told us things should be. Or just, as I said, material things, people's circumstances, places, stuff like that.  But we tend to have these very strong attachments. And so the more we can let go of that attachment practice...non-attachment that's really like letting go. 

[00:08:13] There are all kinds of places in life where we really get stuck holding on tight to things.  And when people hold on tight to something, that is a reason you get stuck. You get very myopic about where you're at and how you want things to be and it's really hard to see beyond that.

[00:08:33] So some places that we could really practice letting go in our lives are, first of all, relationships,  I'll start with, for example, I was in a very, very toxic relationship shortly after my ex left me and I held onto that relationship for a long time, believing that this guy was my soul mate, and  I couldn't let go of it.

[00:08:55] I held on to that. I couldn't see outside of "this guy as the person, for me, it has to be". And you know, if you've ever heard the saying, like, I can't remember exactly how it goes, but well, the saying, if you love something, set it free and it will come back to you if it was meant to be or something like that.

[00:09:13]Relationships when you're dating, it's really easy to hold on, too tight. Whereas if we could just kind of enjoy the moment and sort of feel how things are from moment to moment and actually entertain the idea that the relationship might not be good for us. That'd be so much healthier.  

[00:09:32] We can practice letting go of ourselves, just how we want to look or how intelligent we think we are or aren't, or the way we handle certain situations, all of these things that we have, these "shoulds", you know, we should be doing something this way. We should look this way. We should weigh a certain amount. We should have a certain body fat percentage. We should be able to do this at this age, we should be able to be, we should be smarter than so and so we should be farther ahead in our lives at this age, things like that. 

[00:10:08] We can also practice letting go of the expectations we have for other people and just the way things are. This relates to just letting go of control too. You know, we can't control others, but yet we want people to be this certain way.

[00:10:23] And so it's sort of, if you really think about it, it's sort of insane to spend so much time hanging on to a way that you want someone to behave when you can't do anything about it.

[00:10:37]Life would be so much easier if you could just accept that someone isn't going to meet your expectations or a certain situation is not going to live up to your expectations.. Or you could just let go of your expectations, to begin with.

[00:10:53]We hold on a lot to our beliefs and the stories we have about ourselves. Like we hold onto a narrative that no longer exists. By that, I mean - so let me first define a story, like a "capital S Story" is what we call it in coaching terminology, but a story is something that you basically tell yourself in your head. You tell yourself it's true. Like if I had a story about myself that I'm fat,  I'm not really fat, but I've made up the story in my head that I'm fat. So it determines how I feel about myself.  So if I can let go of that story, I have then  I'm much happier, right? 

[00:11:33] A belief is really a story that we tell ourselves over and over and over again that we just, now it's just part of our, the fabric of ourselves. That it's a, it's a belief we have about ourselves in the world that is maybe true, but most likely when they're internal beliefs they're not a lot of times they're not helpful, they're limiting. So we tend to hold onto those and not question them. And then it affects all kinds of pieces of our lives, which I talk a lot about in my work.

[00:12:01]I already touched on expectations as being something that we tend to really hold on... we could practice letting go of a little more in our lives. But also just the expectations of how things are going to work out, being, you know, attached to those. If we can learn to let go of the outcome. 

[00:12:23] This applies to so many things, you know, like,  like applying for a job. For example,  if you're applying for your dream job and you're so attached to getting that job, you're really setting yourself up for disappointment if you don't get the job. So if you can learn to let go of that outcome...sure.... you want the job, but if you can learn to let go of it and say okay, well, if it - a lot of times what I tell myself when something doesn't happen is that it's not meant to be. Parentheses. Thank you, mom. My mom always said that and I hated it so much at the time, but I really believe that.

[00:13:03] But you can kind of reframe it. If we let go, we reframe it. And that if this happens, I will be so happy, but if it doesn't happen, it means either, you know, for example, I need to work harder or I need to do something differently next time, or it wasn't meant to be, or, you know, you make up your own, you reframe it the way that works for you.

[00:13:22]We can get attached to the way things used to be. We have a hard time letting go of that. Things change people, things change, nothing ever stays the same. And part of what I talked about in my mindset webinar was the concept of impermanence. It's just that things are constantly changing. They're ebbing and flowing.

[00:13:42] And if we hang on really tightly to the way things are at a given point in time. It makes things really difficult when they change. So if you can let go of that and really practice riding the waves, just rolling with that impermanence, you're going to be a lot happier.

[00:14:00]We hold on to the way we want to feel. We have a hard time letting go. Like we'll judge feelings. We have a hard time letting go of our judgment of feelings. Like if you label a feeling like, if you feel depressed, you label that as bad that sets you up for a lot of times an emotional spiral...whereas if you can learn to let go of that judgment and just kind of accept that, okay, I feel kind of crappy right now. I feel sad. And that it just kind of IS. If you can let it go surrender to what is, I'm going to let this feeling sit here. I'm going to sit with this discomfort. And at some point, it's going to change.

[00:14:40] It's going to shift to a different feeling.

[00:14:43]We also hold on to things that at one point used to make us feel better. So things that, you know, brought us happiness or pleasure, or even self-validation, we tend to have a hard time of letting go of those things. And sometimes holding on is really, actually more pleasurable because we can indulge in fantasies and ideas that really deep down, we know hold no weight in reality, but they just feel good in the moment.

[00:15:10] Or it's something to hide behind rather than face up to the tougher truth. There might be something about ourselves that we really need to work on. So those are some examples of where you might be holding on really tightly in your life that you could maybe practice letting go a little bit.

[00:15:27] Or, in other words, as I said, when you hold on tightly to something, it's where you get stuck. 

[00:15:32] So now I'm just going to share a few of my favorite quotes about letting go. The first one is by Ann Landers. 

[00:15:39] Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it. 

[00:15:50] Ah, that's so true. How many times have you felt like you just needed to be tough? Just hang in there. You can do this or sometimes it's better to just let go. And sometimes it's hard and I've been there. And I wonder if you can think about some times in your life where maybe if you would have let go, it would have taken a lot of strength to let go, but if it would have been the better thing to do. 

[00:16:21] Okay.

[00:16:22] Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny. That's Steve, Maraboli.   

[00:16:31] This quote is something that I think I found this one when I was kind of trying to release that toxic relationship I referred to earlier, but it's like saying that, okay yeah. This person came into my life for a reason. It was like a lesson, but that person is not part of where I'm going. And this, I think happens so much to people, especially if you go through a divorce or a loss where, this person crossed your path for a reason, but it's not where you're landing.

[00:17:05]Here's one by Paulo Coelho. It's a long quote, but, Paulo Coelho wrote my favorite book, The Alchemist. If you haven't read it, please go read it. It's so good. It's fiction, but it has the most beautiful message in it. And we'll do another episode on that another time, but the quote is:

[00:17:21] Let things go release them, detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards. So sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated your genius, to be discovered your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again - the one that shows you how much you suffered from a certain loss that is only poisoning you. Nothing else.

[00:17:52]That one's beautiful. I love that one. It's it's long and it's kind of deep, but like, you know, when you're attaching to something like that, this quote just talks about, you know, the expectations and how we hold on to that. And it drives our emotions to really, really poison us and keep us stuck.

[00:18:14]Next one:

[00:18:14] To let go doesn't mean to get rid of, to let go means to let be. When we let be with compassion, things, come and go on their own. And that's Jack Kornfield, who is a meditation teacher. He has some really amazing books out there. That one is just beautiful. It just, it feels so to even read that quote, it just feels so free, so light.

[00:18:38] And I think that that idea of letting go but not having to get rid of something, for example, like my relationship with my ex-husband, you know, I let that go, but I didn't get rid of that because I have so many good memories, you know, even though at this point in my life, he's really not my favorite person...I have a lot of good memories and I appreciate that. So I'm letting them be, and that's a beautiful way to think of it. I think. 

[00:19:10] The last one.  I don't know who said this, but so I don't know who to attribute it to:

[00:19:16] Holding onto pain doesn't change anything, replaying the past doesn't fix it, and wishing things were different doesn't make it so. 

[00:19:24] This is so, so, so, so true. You can hold on to pain for years and all it does is keep you in this miserable place. Replaying the past, over, and over and over does not change it. You know, if I wanted to still be stuck in this devastation and depression that my marriage ended, I could still replay that over and over and over again, but it does not change the fact that my ex is gay and he left me. It doesn't change it. So I have to let go of it or let it be.  And wishing things were different, again, that doesn't change anything either. So if I wanted to sit here and wish things were different, I would just be a miserable person. I would be sad or would be depressed all the time. I wouldn't be able to be grateful. I wouldn't be able to look at the bright side of it, so I have to let it go or let it be so I can move on and have a life. 

[00:20:20] So, how do we do this? How do we let go? It, it's tough. It's a lesson. It is a lesson in life.

[00:20:26] And I really believe that if you don't get this lesson at some point, well, I think over and over, you're going to keep getting this lesson until you figure it out. Once you figure it out, you're kind of done with it. You practice it and, and then you don't have to learn the lesson cause you've already learned it and you have it in practice over and over and over again.

[00:20:46]But the first thing I would say is I talked about this in my mindset webinar, and it was, we practice non-attachment and we practice not hooking into things, to really embracing this concept of impermanence. 

[00:20:59] So things change, and we just need to learn how to not attach to not to hang on to these things so tightly.

[00:21:09]We practice self-compassion, you know, that you're not always going to get it right. There are going to be times where you are going to stick your claws into something, and you're not going to want to let it go, but you're going to be compassionate with yourself, and you're just going to kind of know that this is an evolving process and it's a lifelong process. It's not like letting go, you just learn it, and then it's easy for the rest of your life. You have to be aware, you have to practice self-awareness about what's going through your head. What are your thoughts? And then practice self-compassion for them. 

[00:21:42] You also need to allow yourself to feel without judging or resisting your feelings, accepting them. When you resist your feelings they are so much worse. When you judge your feelings, they are so much worse. And that goes back to where, to the beginning, where I talked about,  labeling them as good or bad.

[00:22:02] So if you can just learn how to accept your feelings, where they are right now and not judge them as good or bad, they're going to be so much easier to let go of.

[00:22:14]Work on changing your thoughts. And this kind of goes back to practicing this non-attachment piece of things - to realize that you can choose your thoughts is a game-changer. And this is something that, again, if you're not subscribed to my email list for webinars and stuff, you need to go do that now.

[00:22:34] Cause I have some really good info on this stuff. But you can change your thoughts. You have the power inside that amazing brain of yours to actually decide what you want to think. A lot of us think that our brain is on autopilot and these thoughts just pop into our head. And yes they do because our brain likes to be very efficient so it puts these repetitive type thoughts in the back of our brain where we don't need to think about it. But the good news is you can bring those thoughts to the front of your brain that actually deals with logic and, and stuff like that. And you can just change them. And when you can start changing your thoughts, that's how that's where you start that letting go process of things.

[00:23:21] Here's an example.  I'm going to use my divorce as an example again. So I found out my ex was gay about six years ago and my first thought was, My life is over. What am I going to do?  So that's a pretty normal thought. I'm not berating myself for having that thought at all. Of course, I'm going to have that thought, but over time I had to choose not to think my life is over what I'm, what am I going to do?

[00:23:51] If I was still thinking that thought I would still be a mess. So I had to eventually learn how to change my thoughts to this is my life now, and I'm starting over and I am doing my best, putting one foot in front of the other to rebuild my life. 

[00:24:06] Okay. So I didn't change my thoughts from what am I going to do?  My life is over to  I'm rebuilding my life, putting one foot in front of the other. I didn't do that overnight. It's like a ladder. You gradually choose your thoughts to get from the bottom to the, but that's how you let go. As you start changing your thoughts, you surrender the control.  You've got to learn that control is not always going to help you.

[00:24:35] So you have to take these steps to let go of needing to control situations, needing to control outcomes, needing to control people and how they treat you, accepting there are going to be outcomes that you can't predict, and that you're going to feel emotions that you don't want to feel. Just surrendering the need to control those outcomes, control those emotions, control, all that stuff, is going to, you know, once you can let go of that need, you'll be able to actually let go of the control.  

[00:25:08] Another one that you hear a lot is... I just need closure. If you can forget about the need to close the gap, to find that closure, that will help you immensely and letting go. 

[00:25:22] That is letting go really. It's this: instead of I'll be able to let go once this loop closes it's this is no longer serving me and I'm going to choose not to have it part of my emotional thought process. That's the difference. 

[00:25:39] So again, it's kind of changing your thoughts. It kind of goes back to that all the time. 

[00:25:46] You can also work on letting go of these old ways of being too, like, it can go down to your behavior, like, let go of the idea that you are a person that always does this. Or you are a person that always does that. And just accept that you're always changing. You're always evolving. So you don't actually have to be that way. 

[00:26:08] Work on recognizing what letting go feels like. And if you think about a time where - this is probably, chances are it's going to be something that's not a huge, huge crisis kind of time or anything like that. But think about an, like a normal thing where you said, Oh yeah. Oh, I totally forgot about that.

[00:26:27] That's a letting go feeling. And I can speak to that relationship, the toxic relationship that I spoke about earlier.  I know that when I was in it and I did not want it to be over with, I felt this feeling of this tight contracted clingy claws-in-it energy. And when I finally let go of it, it was just like, Oh yeah, I remember that. That sucked. 

[00:26:54] But it didn't have any effect on my emotion, really. It was kind of like, Oh yeah, that was, that was it's hard. And that guy was really a trash human being, but wow. Whatever. 

[00:27:08] But there's a lot of strength in surrendering the past, really. There's a lot of strength. There are a lot of things that are really hard to let go of, and it's just part of you growing as a human being.

[00:27:21] You need to let go of something old. That no longer serves you so you can make room for the new stuff, right?

[00:27:27]Holding onto the past tightly, really prevents you from developing a really strong sense of self too,  a self that's not defined by the past. But rather the person that you want to be. And that's what I do in my work, really.  I help women be the person that they want to be, but, but not only who they want to be, but just who they were meant to be, who they are meant to be at their core. And you know, definitely who they want to be, but not the person they want to be with all of the ego and the holding on. It's once they let go and let be, I help women be who they want to be as who they're meant to be kind of person, what fills them up, what lights them up, what's their passion, their purpose.  I help them get over their fears so they can be that person. Because a lot of times when we are stuck holding onto something, we can't let go. It's because we're afraid. And so a lot of the work that I do is identifying a person's fear.

[00:28:32]What are you afraid of to let go of this? And how can we address that? And then I help them dig into that, that, and take some steps. And a lot of times they're pretty gradual, but we do it. And you know, there is a time where everyone has this  "aha" moment of, Oh my gosh. This is what it was. And now I am feeling light. I'm feeling like I'm letting be and letting go.  

[00:28:57] And I want that same thing for you too. So I would encourage you to, to some of the stuff I talked about here in terms of what you can do to practice letting go... AKA getting unstuck.  I would encourage you to do that, pull it a journal. Brain dump some of the things that you think you are stuck in. 

[00:29:21] What are you holding on tight to? Journal about it.  I always find that getting stuff out of your brain is so, so, so, so helpful. And if you don't like to write or journal in a notebook, which I'm more of a digital journal person and I should be getting a commission from Day One because I love Day One...

[00:29:38] it's a great digital journal app. I love it. It syncs across all your devices. You can put pictures in there. It'll make a little note of what the weather was that day or the location you typed in. It's awesome. I love it. So go check that out.  

[00:29:53] And as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, go check out that Kickstarter sessions program.

[00:29:59] it's at kortneyrivard.com/claritykickstart, and it will help you with exactly the stuff that we talked about today. A hundred bazillion percent - trust me. And it's an amazing value for new clients. It's only 149. You cannot really lose. There's nothing to be afraid of. There's so little risk.

[00:30:20] You'll get so much more out of it than 149 anyway, so check it out kortneyrivard.com/claritykickstart. 

[00:30:29] And I will see you next time.