Slowing down allows you to go faster. (Alain Marillac)
The risk, when we hold on tight enough to achieve our goals, is precisely not knowing when to stop.
Stubbornness is sometimes worse than standing still.
Self-realization and authenticity come a lot from the balance between doing and letting go.
Here are some ways to happily cultivate this balance!
The wisdom of discernment
If wisdom is doing the right deeds to be accomplished, it also stems from temperance and acceptance of reality. So, are we still well behaved?
The values of our society of consumption and performance often command us to succeed at all costs.
And when you go at high speed, you sometimes miss a turn and wow! in the wall.
It is not always easy to get up after that … We regret, we self-deprecate, and feed the little monster that sleeps inside us …
Yet the best decision is often to accept events as they are.
And this is not about aplaventrism. Because it often takes a lot of courage to accept reality, especially when it strikes our pride.
For example, you do whatever it takes to prepare for a trip that is close to your heart.
A few days before you take off, the travel agency announces to you that climatic events beyond its control have destroyed part of the hotel where you were going to stay.
You will be reimbursed but your trip is canceled. As frustrating as the situation is, you have to grieve for this trip that you cherished …
It almost happened to us last winter during our trip to Mexico.
We had to get up at 4 a.m. (the taxi picked us up at 4:30 a.m.) for a take-off at 7:30 a.m.
I who am usually very reliable, I put 4 hours on the dial BUT I FORGOTTEN TO ACTIVATE THE RING!
If the taxi company hadn’t called by 4:15 am, our week in the sun was over!
I swear to you that I would have had difficulty letting go …
Only fools do not change their mind, the saying goes. Doesn’t relentlessness sometimes border on unreason? Self-realization and letting go are two sides of the same coin.
Draw the line between letting go and perseverance
The ability to achieve our goals depends on our level of motivation.
However, action involves the risk of failure.
And failure scares… and immobilizes.
Worse, when we fail, when we make a mistake, how often do we bitterly curse ourselves?
Accept to deceive ourselves: this is also where letting go …
Take a few moments to think about the situations where you feel most motivated.
What are the fundamental reasons that motivate you to do something?
The deep meaning that you associate with your actions has a lot to do with it.
So, in everything you do, make sure that what you do matches the vision you have set for yourself in your life, that is, the horizon of general meaning that motivates you, the big goals. that you want to achieve.
It is when the meaning is too restricted that you will have difficulty letting go.
The Little Robert defines failure as “the setback experienced by someone who sees […] his deceived hopes ”.
To know if we are failing or not, we must therefore consult our expectations …
Imagine an artist who is not satisfied with her work.
She will see it as a failure if her expectations were only for the work itself.
She will see her work as a success if she focuses more on the learning that this work has enabled her to achieve.
Which situation is easiest to accept?
It is the difference between restricted or larger meaning and expectations.
The larger our expectations, the more we enrich our vision and the less risk we run of “failing”.
But it is still necessary that this vision corresponds to who we really are!
In other words, we must formulate our goals based on what is important to us, and not to please others or to reassure our morbid insecurities …
With perspective, you find that your goals and actions are part of much larger goals, like improving your life.
So, accepting that things don’t always go the way you hope will lead to much greater results later on.
If you’d like to dig deeper into the subject, I’ve written a letting go book filled with exercises and strategies that have already helped many people.
There is also the possibility of identifying what prevents us the most from letting go.
Other solutions to achieve your goals while knowing how to let go
Be your own light
In one of his latest books, Guy Finley, the letting go specialist, tells us that we can build our lives on more solid foundations.
According to him, an important reason why we have difficulty accepting certain dimensions of our life stems from imaginary needs that we cannot meet.
It is because we are sometimes quick to build castles in Spain.
We have to impress others, get results easily …
To free ourselves from these chimeras, Finley proposes to cross the limits of our illusions by ceasing to blame others and events and opt for a more realistic horizon.
By the way, here’s a full article that gives you some great strategies to help you let go and another that explains why we have difficulty letting go.
This theme echoes the research in positive psychology of Dr. Martin Seligman.
Instead of pursuing an endless search for beauty, success and wealth, which are typically American or “Western” values, we can build our life from virtues that have crossed centuries and cultures: love, temperance, wisdom and knowledge, courage and transcendence.
The characteristic of these virtues is to make us feel great happiness each time we make them our own.
For example, if you help a mother walk up the stairs of the bus with her child’s carriage, you are selfless (love), which makes you happy.
You will have made a little effort, but this effort will have been a source of great gratification.
Pursue these virtues on a daily basis, even if it seems a lot less sexy that money, power and all-round success will bring you one precious thing that all these avatars of the consumer society will never be able to offer: happiness.
Moreover, when I broach the subject of money in this blog, it will never be as an end in itself but as a very useful way to free up our time and energy to achieve ourselves, and not to consume stupidly like advertising prescribed us to do.
Live at low speed
To move forward despite the difficulties, isn’t it also sometimes worth slowing down?
This is what the author Alain Marillac advocates in his book Mollo! The philosophy of time to live.
He says that “Everyone claims their right to a good and full life, but the majority of humans refuse to spend time in their own company.
In Mollo thought, the human being finds himself facing himself with his ability to work but also to do nothing, therefore to take care of himself. “
It is about accepting your strengths, your weaknesses and putting your results in the spirit of a more balanced life.
How to find the balance between self-realization and letting go
In closing this article, I would like to give the floor to Toad, this great sage of the pond, when he addresses the Prince who did not find himself charming:
“Finding that balance between achieving your goals and being able to let go of failure, like any personal development endeavor, will take time and effort. It will require you to listen to yourself, to stop, to think, to deal with the emotions that tell you to revolt. In short, it is demanding.
But like any improvement work, you can focus on it gradually, start slowly, stay at your own pace. And since you will quickly forget to do it the next time you have to make this effort, I remind you of 7 keys that you can try to remember:
- Expand the horizon of your expectations and your vision: you will scare away the frustrations, these dirty bugs that I love to swallow almost as much as flies!
- Make sure you can change something about the different situations you face before you fight. There is nothing more futile than deliberately hitting your head on a wall …
- Concentrate on the constructive things that each situation brings to you, because the worst is almost always the best.
- Develop your virtues and seek great rewards in small efforts: you will help your happiness to flourish.
- Determine your goals from real knowledge of yourself: you will know where you come from and where you are going.
- Free yourself from your illusions and pursue realistic goals for a Prince like you, like fighting dragons and evil wizards (we are in a magical land after all!)
- Slow down and enjoy what each moment brings to you. Personally, I like to taste the gentle summer breeze when I’m lying on a water lily… It helps me meditate. “
The Prince, who (almost) always liked to listen to the Toad (because he also sometimes gets on his nerves with all his recommendations), thanked him and promised to try to follow at least one or two of these keys as soon as the opportunity would present itself.
For further:
So how do you find the Toad’s advice?
Do you manage to let go when necessary, when you can no longer get anything out of a situation, to keep moving forward despite everything, but in a new direction?
The comments are there for you.
