As you practice releasing, you’ll see that you tend to move from the left-hand side to the right-hand side of this chart. Sometimes you may find a difference in only a single category as you let go, and other times you will see a difference in many.
You can, and probably already do, force yourself at times to move to the right-hand side. For instance, you may force yourself to make a decision in order to stop thinking about a particular problem. But that’s not real releasing. If you do force a decision, you may grow uncomfortable inside and increase your tension. When you are forcing yourself to change a behavior without changing how you feel, you will find some categories moving to the right while others move to the left. When you have consciously released, the whole continuum moves to the right.
But what do we mean by consciously releasing, letting go? How can we put releasing into practice?
Practical Releasing
There are three ways to approach the process of releasing, and they all lead to the same result: liberating your natural ability to let go of any unwanted emotion on the spot and allowing some of the suppressed energy in your subconscious to dissipate. The first way is by choosing to let go of the unwanted feeling. The second way is to welcome the feeling, to allow the emotion just to be. The third way is to dive into the very core of the emotion.
Let me explain by asking you to participate in a simple exercise. Pick up a pen, a pencil, or some small object that you would be willing to drop without giving it a second thought. Now, hold it in front of you and really grip it tightly. Pretend this is one of your limiting feelings and that your hand represents your gut or your consciousness. If you held the object long enough, this would start to feel uncomfortable yet familiar.
Now, open your hand and roll the object around in it. Notice that you are the one holding on to it; it is not attached to your hand. The same is true with your feelings, too. Your feelings are as attached to you as this object is attached to your hand.
We hold on to our feelings and forget that we are holding on to them. As I stated in the Introduction, it’s even in our language. When we feel angry or sad, we don’t usually say, “I feel angry,” or, “I feel sad.” We say, “I am angry,” or, “I am sad.” Without realizing it, we are misidentifying that we are the feeling. Often, we believe a feeling is holding on to us. This is not true … we are always in control and just don’t know it.
Now, let the object go.
What happened? You let go of the object, and it dropped to the floor. Was that hard? Of course not. That’s what we mean when we say “let go.”
You can do the same thing with any emotion—choose to let it go.
Sticking with this same analogy: If you walked around with your hand open, wouldn’t it be very difficult to hold on to the pen or other object you’re holding? Likewise, when you allow or welcome a feeling, you are opening your consciousness, and this enables the feeling to drop away all by itself—like the clouds passing in the sky or smoke passing up a chimney with the flue open. It is as though you are removing the lid from a pressure cooker.
Now, if you took the same object—a pencil, pen, or pebble—and magnified it large enough, it would appear more and more like empty space. You would be looking into the gaps between the molecules and atoms. When you dive into the very core of a feeling, you will observe a comparable phenomenon: Nothing is really there.
As you master the process of releasing, you will discover that even your deepest feelings are just on the surface. At the core you are empty, silent, and at peace, not in the pain and darkness that most of us would assume. In fact, even our most extreme feelings have only as much substance as a soap bubble. And you know what happens when you poke your finger into a soap bubble—it pops. That’s exactly what happens when you dive into the core of a feeling.
Please keep these three analogies in mind as we go through the releasing process together. Releasing will help you to free yourself from all of your unwanted patterns of behavior, thought, and feeling. All that is required from you is being as open as you can be to the process. Releasing will free you to access clearer thinking, yet it is not a thinking process. Although it will help you to access heightened creativity, you don’t need to be particularly creative to be effective at doing it.
You will get the most out of the process of releasing the more you allow yourself to see, hear, and feel it working, rather than by thinking about how and why it works. Lead, as best you can, with your heart, not your head. If you find yourself getting a little stuck in trying to figure it out, you can use the identical process to let go of “wanting to figure it out.” Guaranteed, as you work with this process, you will understand it more fully by having the direct experience of doing it.
So here we go.
Choosing to Let Go
Make yourself comfortable and focus inwardly. Your eyes may be open or closed.
Step 1: Focus on an issue that you would like to feel better about, and then allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling in this moment. This doesn’t have to be a strong feeling. In fact, you can even check on how you feel about this book and what you want to get from it. Just welcome the feeling and allow it to be as fully or as best you can.
This instruction may seem simplistic, but it needs to be. Most of us live in our thoughts, pictures, and stories about the past and the future, rather than being aware of how we actually feel in this moment. The only time that we can actually do anything about the way we feel (and, for that matter, about our businesses or our lives) is NOW. You don’t need to wait for a feeling to be strong before you let it go. In fact, if you are feeling numb, flat, blank, cut off, or empty inside, those are feelings that can be let go of just as easily as the more recognizable ones. Simply do the best you can. The more you work with this process, the easier it will be for you to identify what you are feeling.
Step 2: Ask yourself one of the following three questions:
• Could I let this feeling go?
• Could I allow this feeling to be here?
• Could I welcome this feeling?
These questions are merely asking you if it is possible to take this action. “Yes” or “no” are both acceptable answers. You will often let go even if you say “no.” As best you can, answer the question that you choose with a minimum of thought, staying away from second-guessing yourself or getting into an internal debate about the merits of that action or its consequences.
All the questions used in this process are deliberately simple. They are not important in and of themselves but are designed to point you to the experience of letting go, to the experience of stopping holding on. Go on to Step 3 no matter how you answered the first question.
Step 3: No matter which question you started with, ask yourself this simple question: Would I? In other words: Am I willing to let go?
Again, stay away from debate as best you can. Also remember that you are always doing this process for yourself—for the purpose of gaining your own freedom and clarity. It doesn’t matter whether the feeling is justified, longstanding,
