Learning #1 - The Art of Detaching: A Guide to Letting Go of Negative Thoughts and Emotions

Learning of the day:


Sometimes you want to let go, but for some reason you keep "clinging" to one idea, person or even your ego. Clinging means holding to something or someone tightly.  

Here are some steps you can follow that might help you detach from it:

1) Identify what is bothering you. Maybe your friend didn't show up to your party, for example.

2) Now, lets go inside your mind. Let's identify what is the belief that is causing the stress. What is the idea in your mind of how things should be. For example: Good friends care about each other and communicate honestly and directly.

3) Now, lets try to exaggerate it and generalise it and make it as strict as possible: Good friends ALWAYS care about each other, ALWAYS communicate honestly and directly, there is no exception, it has to be like that.

4) Next step, lets focus on creating arguments against your previous sentence. We dont want to destroy it because that rule made us who we are so we just want to make it a little bit softer, we want to put it in doubt. For example: 

Good friends many times communicate honestly and directly although sometimes it might no happen and they might still be our friends. 

Keep working on it until you really believe it. (Yes, you are trying to convince yourself). The goal is that at least you doubt your belief. 

5) If you did this your focus will change. You are focusing on yourself and your belief, you have control over it. You should start feeling some inner peace, you might still be angry or frustrated but now it feels that you can manage it. If this didn't happen then either the belief you found was not really the one making you angry or frustrated which means you should be more specific (e.g. instead of "he should always respect me" you could translate into "he should always look at me direcly in my eyes when he speaks") or you failed to lower the intensity of your belief. In this case keep trying.

Extra Notes: 
- The goal of the exercise is not to forgive or forget but to avoid clinging on it.
- Every time you feel angry or frustrated even for a little bit you can use this exercise. You will learn a lot about yourself, your beliefs and you will have more control on them.

--Update--
There is a difference between clinging and attachment. You can be attached to someone, love someone and this is ok. The problem is when you are clinging into it.

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