The Art of Letting Go

First written in Jan 26, 2021

Imagine you are in the wicker basket of a hot air balloon and the colorful envelope is filled and floating above you. You wait for liftoff so that you can soar above your surroundings and enjoy the magnificent view but no matter how much hot gas is released into the balloon nothing happens. Then you notice that you are still attached to the ground by ropes. You work to release the ropes one by one until the basket is untethered at last. Only now does the balloon lift you high into the air giving you a much broader and more sweeping perspective of the world you just left. You are the same person looking at the same world but your frame of reference has changed.

In this analogy, the basket represents our current state of mind, the balloon our unlimited potential, and the ropes that hold the hot air balloon to the ground represent all of the things we grasp onto with our minds. We spend most of our lives tethered to our experiences. If we are fixating on things that happened to us in the past, the tethers cause us to become depressed. When we worry about what might or might not happen in the future, our tethers make us anxious.

What if we let go of those tethers? What would happen then? Would we be able to rise above our current situation and gain a broader perspective? Is it possible to get to a point where nothing bothers us?

The answer is an unequivocal YES. The way to let go is to pay attention to what bothers you and do the work necessary to change your perspective. You are the boss of you, including your thoughts. The work starts and ends with YOU.