Switch On To Your Inner Strength. Sandy MacGregor

       Letting go of the phases of life. We go through various phases in our lives, the young teenager, the young trainee training for a trade or the youthful student at University, the new graduate entering a career, parenthood of young children, the prestigious position representing a company overseas and so on. Each of these phases will run its course and we must face the time when they each draw to a close. The challenge, as each phase closes, is to let it go and look forward to the next challenge before us. In motivation terms, to reset our goals. There is no reason why the challenges should not get better and better throughout our entire lives. We must surrender each phase before we can really get on with the next.

       Letting go our children. When our children are first born we have a tendency to regard them as “ours”, as though they are our belongings, our property, our chattels. This is not necessarily a bad thing at the start – it is in fact true that for the first few months of a baby's life, it is incapable of distinguishing itself as being separate from its mother. However, if this were to continue for too long it would start to inhibit the progress and development of the child and, indeed, of the parent. How many times have you heard the story of the mother or father who takes their child to school on the first day and then comes home to spend the rest of the day in tears? The difficulty is to let go. Later in the children's years come all the little letting go moments when, for example, you realise that they would rather go to their friend's house on Saturday afternoon than come to the beach with you, as they used to love doing when they were little children. And then there is the picture of the strong truck driver or coal miner who breaks down and gives a blubbering speech on his daughter's wedding day. Embarrassing for him, but it happens. Letting go is not always easy.

       Letting go relationships such as a marriage that has irretrievably broken down.

       Letting go after the death of a spouse, life partner, friend or close relative.

       Letting go our status. Circumstances can arise where we have to let go status. This can happen to a busy corporate manager when he/she retires. It is no use to talk on endlessly in retirement about “What I did when I was the manager of the Bloggs Marketing Company.” You may have faced a business failure in your life. You may have gone from a person employing many workers and commanding great resources to a bankrupt depending on the favours of friends for a rather menial job. It is no use at all to ever engage your new workmates in conversations about, “When I was a hotshot in this big company that I owned I ... ” If you ever want to rebuild the financial position you once had you must let go of the previous status first. Don't release your self esteem, but let go of the old status. Let go, and if it's status you want, you will clear the way to clamber back up the status ladder again. But for starters, let go, let go, let go.

       Letting go resentment.

       Letting go envy or jealousy.

       Letting go memorabilia. As I write these words I look across the room to see a shelf of old thirty three and a third rpm vinyl albums with all the hits of years gone by. I haven't played any of them for ages now! On the shelf above sits my nice little CD player next to the rack of new CDs which contain all the variety, and more, of my old record collection. Maybe I have some collectors items but maybe not! But I must let go of those old records soon. How many of us have wardrobes full of old clothing which is all the wrong colours, out of fashion and hardly fits any more? How many of us do this with other items that we needed in the past?

       Letting go a home. Situations arise in life where we may have to move from a home we have loved dearly. This may arise in all sorts of ways such as in a career move for a business executive from one city to another. The business executive, the spouse, the children all have to move and they may all know that the move they are making is for the better, but they may all experience the loss of that place, the sense of being at ease in a house you have lived in for a long time. There is a need to be able to let go that home before the next phase of life produces its benefits. An elderly person who decides to move to a smaller unit may, similarly, experience grief over the move. The person knows the move is for the better but can't help being nostalgic about the old home; the place where the children were small and grew up, the place where the grandchildren came, where neighbours were familiar and the place where love was shared. It is sad to leave such a place. But circumstances arise where it is the best thing to do. And so the need arises – the need to let go.

       Letting go a pet. A child may have to let go a pet when the pet gets older and dies. An elderly person may have to let go a pet when the person moves into a different form of housing.

       Letting go on life itself. In some ways life is a process of letting go all the phases until we reach the stage where we can let go on life itself. How many times has it been said that we bring nothing into this world and we can take nothing out of it when we die, except our experiences. We tend to hope that this final stage of letting go will come when we are in our grand old age. But quite often, when we think this, we are trying to postpone something which we do not wish to contemplate now. We are postponing it until some far distant point in the future. But the idea of being able to let go on life itself is important to us at all ages. This may apply to people of any age who face a life threatening situation.