Let It Go... A Different Perspective than Frozen.

At some point or points in our lives we have either said or been told to, "Let it go." (Thanks to Disney and Idina Menzel, if you're reading this and can honestly say you have never been on the giving or receiving end of this simple advice... turn on your radio and you can listen to the song from Frozen). 

When you stop and actually think about this concept though, what does it mean? How do you do it? Should you, actually, let it go? 

For me at least, this phrase becomes popular when I start obsessing about God knows what. So, it's safe to assume this is a very popular phrase in my life. As I have been embarking on this journey to become an authentic version of myself, this phrase has started evolving. When I first set sail (if you will) I thought 'letting it go' was the point. If I can just let go of all of the "bad" things in my past then I will become the better version of myself. 

Let us pause for a minute on that thought, as I hope I am not alone. The belief that letting go of bad things in my life will make me a better person, infers that I believe bad things that have happened in my life made me a worse person. 

That's a powerful belief to be aware of.

Redirecting, I reminded myself my goal is to become authentic, not better. Then I started questioning how I could become authentic by letting go of the bad? That doesn't seem authentic, at all. Experiences, whether judged good or bad, shape our lives and make us who we are. So maybe we should stop trying to "let it go" and start accepting "it."  

The key to accepting is experiencing. Honestly, I think we try and use the idea of "letting it go" as a scapegoat to avoid feeling and experiencing different situations. Once you've experienced something you can move on. Think about it this way...

Replace a situation you want to "let go of" with this situation: you are told to spend a dollar you can only see but not have in your possession. How can you spend something you do not have? 

You can try your hardest, but until you grab a hold of it and own it, there's nothing you can do with it but look and think about it. As you think about the dollar, it's easy to see how we can start story telling about "it" without experiencing it. The story would include talking about all of the things you can do with it, what you want to do with it and how you feel about it. Experiencing something isn't about how you would feel something, it's acknowledging what you feel about something. How could you know what you would feel about spending this dollar until you owned it and were able to spend it? 

So once or if you are able to own and acknowledge what you are feeling, why does the idea of "letting it go" sound so good? If you really experience it, no matter how sad, you have gone through it and helped yourself. Now you have this as an experience you can look back on and use help to guide you forward. How can you look back and utilize something that you have let go of? That'd be like catching a fish, throwing it back in the water and then trying to eat it for dinner. Doesn't work. 

So clearly, I am not an expert at experiencing, or letting it go, for that matter. I do feel like once I am able to truly connect and experience events in my life I have otherwise avoided, I won't want to just "let those go." Mostly because I have been working on connecting and experiencing really hard and for a long time. Doing all of this work to just "Let it Go," seems silly. I also do not see how I can be the most authentic version of myself by letting parts of myself go.