The coronavirus known as COVID-19 is taking a huge emotional toll — on everyone around the world. It’s even harder to deal with this pandemic when you’re still holding on unresolved conflicts, withheld forgiveness, and limiting beliefs from your past that impede your progress. Therefore, you’ve finally got an opportunity now to use this self-isolating time to get real about cleaning your baggage and learning to let go.
Let’s talk about how these loose ends from your past can undermine you and how important it is to let go of anger and other negative emotions. Unless you have learned to let go, you will experience a lot more negative emotions during this crisis that will impact your relationships, health, job performance or finding a new job as your mind struggles to deal with unresolved issues, past traumas, mistakes, losses and hurts.
The art of letting go may logically seem like a natural principle to grasp; however, it can be rather complicated to unpack as many people hold onto the past, which stops them from embracing the future. I want to share my experiences and insights which have helped me in my life. The best place to begin is truly defining what it means to let go. It’s the process of releasing any negative emotions or feelings towards any situation or person to have inner peace.
In a world where we are often prone to compare ourselves to others, being rejected, going through hard times like the current crisis or other challenging events, we can hold onto emotions which do not serve our wellbeing. We give our power away to others, letting them stop us from being happy. These negative behaviors are preventing us from being free and keep us living in invisible cages. We are blissfully unaware about the self-punishment that comes from holding onto feelings from the past. Letting go allows new positive energy to flow back into your life.
This practice is more of an art than science, where it begins by really observing your feelings and thoughts. Every moment in our lives, we have the choice to raise our consciousness by trusting to understand more about how we feel and practice ‘letting go’. The next part is moving towards acceptance, sometimes life deals us a bad hand, but we still always have the choice on our reaction. We have to move out of any resistance and start to become our highest self. When we were younger, this topic of self-love was never taught in school. Many people don’t know the power it can have, especially at the beginning of that healing journey. When is self-punishment enough?
Think of letting go of your past baggage as a mental cleanse before you start building your new life. There’s so much talk right now about the importance of cleansing our hands, but so little about how to cleanse our minds. The most powerful mechanism for letting go is the power of forgiveness, which is the letting go of blame or resentment toward anybody who has hurt or offended you in the past. The way I did this in my life was to start by empathizing with everyone who hurt me. I know from personal experience that hurting people hurt others. Therefore, changing your perspective on the whole situation brings to light just how imperfect all humans are.
There is no easy way to do it. You might practice writing forgiveness letters then shred them, shouting out forgiveness in self isolation, visualize kissing or waving goodbye to those people, or wrapping the anger and hurt in a silk cloth and tossing it into an imaginary fire. Do whatever works for you to get it out of you because the choice to hold on to unforgiveness and/or to forgive someone is in your control. It’s profound to realize that you always have the power to hold on to that pain or let it go. The biggest reason to forgive anyone is for your own peace of mind and take that power away from them. As Nelson Mandela said, Forgiveness liberates the soul, it removes fear. That’s why it’s such a powerful weapon.”
As we self-isolate during the coronavirus crisis, let’s take this opportunity to reflect on the most important person in our life — ourself. Forgiving others is easier when we first forgive ourselves for hurting others. Once we truly forgive ourselves, then we can start the process of forgiving others. Self-limiting beliefs are like carrying rocks in your backpack that are weighing you down. And when you start the forgiveness process, it’s like removing those rocks from your backpack. When you start forgiving habitually, not only do you begin to experience a lightness and freedom that for many of us has been absent for decades, but you also begin to recognize just how powerful you really are.
As you begin to practice this concept more and more in your daily life, shifts start to happen for you. One of the biggest things is tapping into a positive flow of energy and stop living with fear and depression. Our minds have a unique ability to convince ourselves of the stories which we have created within our minds, that can become a hindrance. Learning to let go will help you to finally close the book on the past and give you an opportunity to write a better, happier and more peaceful book on your future.