It’s that time of year…when everyone starts making New Year’s Resolutions and panicking about all the things they haven’t accomplished in the year that’s wrapping up behind them.
Right now, it’s critical that you start letting go of all the things you “haven’t” done and focus on all the things waiting for you to do them! A lot of that is grounded in emotion.
Not all of those emotions are good ones.
Breaking Down the Human Psyche
We start off as children in a condition that’s reasonably happy and stable. Over time, learned behaviors, new information, and personal experiences gradually shape who we become.
Everyday life can be a harsh teacher. There may be moments or people in your past that you can’t even think about without tears or anger. Past situations that continue to interrupt, even corrupt, your current existence.
- How can you get yourself together?
- How can you learn from those past experiences?
- How can you use what you’ve learned to work toward your present goals?
- How can you start letting go and moving on?
Painful or traumatic events in your life can cause a ripple effect for decades – sometimes for a person’s entire life. The negative energy this creates can be difficult to see until it has managed to sabotage your relationships, job, or feelings of self-worth.
You must identify this cause and effect and then take steps to stop replaying past mistakes, losses, and hardships within your mind.
It is a process of letting go of the feelings and thoughts that cause your life to stagnate, that keep you on “autopilot” from day to day rather than being in control of your own destiny.
Lester Levenson developed something called the “Release Technique” that helps you realize that you actually create the emotion based on your interpretation of events. In other words, reaching a point where you understand that you are not angry (anymore) about something that happened twenty years ago – but you are creating the feeling of being angry again and again.
Once you own the emotion, you have to identify the underlying irrational thought, assumption, decision, or intention, to determine how it has been driving your emotions.
After letting go of the emotion, it can no longer dominate (or dictate) your view of the past. You can analyze it differently and see it in a fresh light so that you can resolve the trauma, the pain, the grief that’s connected to it.
This allows you to move on, to chart your future based on your present…not your past.
The 8-Step Release Technique
This is the healthiest way to handle a feeling or past experience that is consuming you.
I’m sure you’ve had the sensation of being in the midst of an emotional explosion and then suddenly you’re laughing at yourself, realizing how silly or inappropriate or useless the behavior was…because you became conscious of it.
This technique basically goes deeper with that feeling of awareness.
- Locate the issue. First think of some problem area in life – something that is of great urgency and concern. It may be a relationship with a loved one, a parent or child, it might be your job, health, personal fears, or something else entirely. Perhaps a situation you find yourself in or that is going on in the world. Or it might simply be the feeling that you are experiencing now.
- Identify your feeling. Determine your feeling about the problem area, or the current feeling. What word comes to mind? Is that exactly how you feel? If not define it more clearly.
- Focus on how you really feel. Get in touch with it now. Open yourself up, become aware of the physical sensations attached to the feeling, and focus on them.
- Feel your feeling. Deliberately create it. Let your feeling inhabit your entire body and mind. If the feeling is a grief feeling, you may break into tears. If it is anger, you may feel your blood begin to boil. That’s good – now is the time to feel the feeling.
- Differentiate between yourself and the feeling. Become aware of the difference between yourself – YOU – and what that self is FEELING. When the feeling is fully experienced and accepted, there will at some point be a clear sensation that your feeling is not you, so letting go of the feeling is possible. If you do not feel that it is possible to let the feeling go, feel it some more. Sooner or later you will reach a point where you can truthfully let it go.
- Learn the lesson. The most vital aspect of this procedure is the learning of life lessons. Unless you recognize what you are to learn from your negative emotions, they will not release permanently, because they will have to regenerate again until the lesson is learned once and for all. After all, the very nature of strong emotions is a message to you – letting you know that something needs to be learned.
- Release the feeling. When will you let this feeling go? Sooner or later you will be able to answer: “I am letting go of this feeling now.” Simply release it, if you haven’t done so spontaneously. It feels good to let it go – all the built-up energy that has been held in the body is released. There is a sudden decrease in physical and nervous tension. You will feel more relaxed, calm, centered, empowered.
- Check your work. Do you still have any of the feeling? If some of it is still there then go through the procedure again. Often releasing is like a well – you release some and then more arises. Some of our pent-up emotions are so deep that they require a number of releases.
Once you’ve learned to release you’ll find that simply becoming aware of a feeling is often enough to trigger a natural, spontaneous release. Then you can carry this skill with you through your everyday life – for a more stress-free mind and body.
For more about this incredible technique, read my FREE pdf “A New Way of Seeing” right now. You don’t need to wait until the beginning of every year to make a resolution.
True resolutions (and letting go of negativity) can start today, right now, or at any time. Each day, when you open your eyes, can be the start of your New Year.
Have a safe and happy holiday!