Chapter 3

Making Space to Be Yourself

The best way to run the world is to let it take its course and to get yourself out of the way of it.

Tao Te Ching

We have to be our own midwives as we shed the baggage to make space for our souls to grow. We are often caught up in fear of change: “I can’t leave the job I hate because...the time isn’t right. I might not get another one. The children are in school. I don’t have the money. It’s not really that bad here.” The bottom line is that often we know in our hearts it is time to let go and move on, but fear stops us, so we stay put, year after year after year. We substitute the seeming comfort of the known for the uncharted waters of change. There is a cost, however. We shrink inside. Each time we put up and shut up, we shrink. We are unconsciously giving ourselves the message: this is as good as I deserve. Each time we bite back an honest response in favour of a more diplomatic one, we shrink inside. We came here for our soul to grow and expand. Expansion is our nature - and not just in the waistline as we age! When we negate that nature, we die a little inside. We shrivel.

Letting Go and Getting Out of The Way

Letting go is an integral part of healing ourselves. We carry much baggage from our past: our mistakes, our traumas, our regrets. The weight of these burdens can stop us from living in the present. There are many ways to learn to let go and it doesn’t matter which of them we start to use. What matters is that we do start. Now. Today. Because letting go is a process and we need to embed it as a habit in our lives.

Most of our major blocks are unconsciously created and maintained by ourselves. We frequently sabotage ourselves just when a great opportunity arises. Our objective is simple: to get out of our own way. To stop our unconscious fears, anxieties, misperceptions and limiting beliefs from keeping us mired in stuckness.

It’s not that we need to take anything new on board to achieve this, rather that we need to set our intention to delete all obstacles to the realisation of our goals. To let go and allow. To open to receive. A dissolving of blocks as opposed to taking arms against them. We unconsciously hold on to all these fears in the vain hope of controlling our lives, but it doesn’t work and all we do is hold on to the very things that keep us stuck.

There is a useful concept that comes from energy healing. If a person is sick or diseased, there are only two possibilities: either there is something inside them that is detrimental and they need to let it go, or there is something missing and they need to allow it in to nourish their hearts, minds, bodies, cells, spirits and souls.

I do quite a bit of healing work for other therapists and healers. I often say to them: “You know this already. And you know how to do this change work.” They say “Yes, I do, but I can’t seem to let myself do it.” And that is the kernel of it. Our subconscious programming is sabotaging our apparent desire to get ahead and move along. So healing and releasing that programming is key to progress. Of course I have my own therapist, who helps me see my blind spots and let go of my own blocks! We all need someone to help us along.

Letting go is like discovering that you have been wearing night vision goggles all your life. Your perception has been limited to less than ten per cent of your actual field of vision. When you pay attention to the process of letting go, you allow the blinkers to fall from your eyes and start seeing who you really are. At this point, you begin to realise that we are all interconnected. You start seeing that we have more in common than you may have previously thought.

Letting Go of Perfectionism

Perfectionism arises out of the need to control. It usually arises because as children, we had little or no control over our lives, or we may have gotten the message that the only way to gain approval was to make no mistakes and do everything perfectly. Perfectionism is a relentless taskmaster. The need to do things perfectly can cause us to be paralyzed with fear of making mistakes – so instead, we take no risks and do nothing. Alternatively, we may become workaholics. Perfectionism is exhausting because the goals are unachievable. Letting go of the need to be perfect is part of the journey to self-love. Acceptance of the fact that we are not perfect is the starting point of this journey. It is an allowance of the realisation that we are unique, but not special, because everyone is unique. Instead of perfectionism, we can aim for excellence. Excellence allows mistakes to be made while doing our best. It is infinitely kinder to us because it is achievable. The Pareto Principle is often used in business but can be applied to all our endeavours. In this context, it says that if we get 80% of things right, we can reasonably allow ourselves to have 20% that may be less than ideal. I like this idea: we can often achieve over 80% of course – but we are allowing ourselves the 20% room to fail, to learn from our failures. This is how we grow.

Letting Go of Mistakes and Hurts

I often tell therapy clients that the work has two parts: looking back into the past to let go and forgive, and looking to the future by aligning your intentions, thoughts and beliefs with what you want to invite into your life. When I say “work,” I mean our life’s work. One of my teachers, Nora O’Neill, believed that we amassed traumas in the first half of our lives so that we would have something to DO in the second half!

Sometimes we do things we regret. Other times we regret not acting or speaking out when we should have. We beat ourselves up for “what we have done,” or “what we have failed to do.” At other times, we have been badly hurt by others. Condemning ourselves leads nowhere. It is a closed road, one that piles guilt on top of regret.

Buying into the duality approach – this is good and that is bad, keeps us on the seesaw. It’s time to step off that seesaw now and say: “That happened, it’s over now, I survived and I’m all right now. I choose to learn from what happened or from what I did or didn’t do. I forgive them now. I forgive myself now and I resolve to act differently and in a better way the next time.”

Feng Shui: Combining Physical Action with Mental Intention

What makes the vessel useful is its emptiness.

Tao Te Ching

In order to become yourself (your true, authentic self, the “real you”) you must let go of anything that does not reflect who you are now. You are not the same person that you were five years ago. Using Feng Shui can help clarify who you are now.

Feng Shui is the Chinese art of placement. It is also known as “clutter clearing.” The Western equivalent of Feng Shui is the spring clean. Whatever you choose to call it, it is a very useful transformational tool. The reason for this is that we invest objects with symbolic meaning. I have found that asking clients to do a clear-out of clutter during therapy helps things along. Everything has a vibration and a good question to ask during this process is: Do I love this item? How do I feel about this item? If you do not love the item and/or if it makes you feel less than happy, let it go.

We can use Feng Shui to literally and symbolically release our attachments to possessions, ideas or beliefs. If we are holding on to the letter of rejection from a job thirty years ago, it can unconsciously cause us to hold on to a belief that we are not good enough.

Clearing out old photos, letters, cards or clothes can be a cathartic and symbolic act of releasing the past to make space for ourselves to expand and grow. You might choose to rearrange furniture or give some furniture away. You might choose to change how the garden looks. You have licence to be as creative as you want to be. We are making space to invite in new things and new people into our lives. It is part of getting clear on what we do want, as opposed to what we don’t want. Clearing out is also an ongoing process. It is never completed until our lives are finished.

Practising Feng Shui is a way of anchoring our desire to change in our environment so that when we look at the new arrangement around us we are instantly reminded of what we are in the process of doing – letting go and getting ready for better days ahead. Letting go gives us hope for the future.

Puja: Ritual for Letting Go

A puja is a fire ceremony for symbolically releasing attachments. The reason a ritual is effective is that it is understood by the deep subconscious mind, the language of which is colour, imagery – and symbolism. The subconscious mind is extremely powerful and all change begins at a subconscious level. You might choose to safely burn that letter of rejection, for instance, to release old feelings of inadequacy or failure. Alternatively, you may choose to write down what it is you want to let go of, and burn it safely to symbolically release it.