Letting Go

We are not born with a lack of self confidence. We have just unconsciously followed a certain path. A path made for us by the opinions of others and influence of the environment.

We have been trained out of our natural ability to let go and have learned to suppress our feelings. We have effectively stored up a whole host of problems that do little to raise our self esteem and in fact do quite the opposite. For all of our lives we have been soaking up the opinions of others.

We are told not to cry and we are told to grow up. We are told to keep quiet and to keep our opinions to ourselves. Is it any wonder that we carry with us a huge weight of suppressed emotional garbage. You see when we suppress or avoid emotions they stay with us.

Time does not heal, we just tend to bury those things we suppressed a little deeper. We then wonder later in life why we experience such things as tension, stress, anxiety and depression! We do all sorts of things to avoid how we feel including watching TV, exercise, eating and drinking. It's not that there is anything wrong with these things, it's just that we do them in excess. We have effectively become masters of suppression and built the very walls that hold us back. We are being held back by the prison of our past.

The trapped emotions make us do things that are not good for us. We then blame our condition on some external effect rather than dealing with the cause. For example, it's not our weight problem that gives us low self esteem, it's what caused the weight problem in the first place. We then try to deal with the weight problem and wonder why we seem to end up putting more weight on! What we need to do, is to learn to let go or release the emotions we have built up.

In certain circumstances we do this naturally. Have you ever lost something and then frantically searched the house only to find whatever it is you lost in your pocket. You have? Then you will remember the relief you felt when you found the missing object. This was 'letting go in the moment' and it is what we should be doing with all our emotions even the ones we have suppressed. When we let go in this manner we are actually expressing the greatest expression of love, forgiveness. When we truly forgive we undo the effects of the past and make the way clear for a brighter tomorrow.

For 'letting go' of your emotional load I can recommend two very popular resources. There is a great book by Hale Dwoskin called The Sedona Method. Also, you could try The Secret Key by Charles Haanel.

Stuart is the co-owner of site http://www.7stepsup.com and believes that boosting self esteem is made that much easier when we learn to let go.