Paulo Coehlo
Feeling hurt? Shake it off and move on. Don’t waste a moment on anger, retaliating, or ruminating, I saw a lecture where the speaker asked, ‘How would you react if you visited someone who was sick in bed in the hospital and the sick person made an insensitive remark toward you?” The speaker suggested most would simply blow it off and attribute it to the person being sick. The speaker suggested the person who hurt our feelings is sick otherwise he/she wouldn’t have made the remark. That helped me to let go of the desire to strike back or think about it incident. Try it. Anger isn’t worth it.
When we let go of illusions we free ourselves and no longer have to defend something that doesn’t exist. When we are free of illusions we become free to pursue all that is true, good, and lasting. It takes heaps of courage to acknowledge one’s illusions. Those who have the courage to do so know the freedom it gives.
The whole advantage of other people having problems is that they aren’t your problems. When you frequently take on other people’s problems, you get into the habit of enabling. Let’s get crystal clear about the definition of enabling: enabling is the art of continuing to take responsibility for other people, thereby disallowing their personal responsibility.
Some people develop an addiction to drugs, alcohol, or food. Others choose the seemingly kinder, gentler addiction of enabling. It is of no service to other people to take on their problems because they can’t/won’t/don’t know how to fix the problem. It is of service to empower others to take responsibility for themselves and their lives, to encourage, teach, and motivate others to address their own problems.
Decluttering sounds like a big project, but setting aside just 20 minutes a week can have a big impact. What can you do in 20 minutes? Lots. Set a timer on your phone and take 15 minutes to tidy up a specific area of one room — say, your closet or that out-of-control junk drawer. Put everything in its place and toss or give away any extra clutter that’s not serving you anymore. Keep a designated box for giveaways to make things a little easier (and avoid creating more clutter).Use the remaining 5 minutes to do a quick walk through your living space, putting away whatever stray items end up in your path. You can do this trick once a week, once a day, or anytime you feel like your space is getting out of control.
Note: Decluttering around your office, home, or apartment will help you to feel better. Think about decluttering your mind. Let go of other people’s business. Let go of things you can’t change. Let go of anger and resentments. You’ll add ten years to your life.
“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live (Goethe).”
Learning to trust ourselves takes time. It takes a lot of letting go. It takes heaps of courage to dare new things without a safety net. When we reach the place of where we can trust ourselves, everything changes for the better.
What if I decided the past can’t hurt or haunt me? Every human has scars, emotional or physical, from past hurts. Physical scars heal over, but the emotional pain often remains. The worse part of the pain occurs when we allow the past emotional and physical scars to continue to hurt us over and again. We allow the memories to haunt us like Dickens’ ghost from Christmas past. We may not be able to prevent these thoughts from randomly popping into our mind. We can make a decision not to join them. Let the thoughts stay as long as they want and tell them not to let the door hit them in the ass when they leave. Don’t give them power by reminiscing with them.
You already have everything you want. It may not be packaged the way you want it packaged. When you let go of what you think you want, you will see, perhaps for the first time, everything you really wanted was always with you.
“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.”
