Letting go of judgements

Albert Einstein once famously said that “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of personal growth and change. 

We all want to change something about ourselves or our circumstances - but to do so we have to experience something new, or at least experience something in a new way.

But here’s what normally happens when we’re presented with a new situation or event: we tend to reduce the ‘new’ to the ‘old’ - we instinctively evaluate a new event using the framework of our pre-existing belief system.

So in cases where that belief system itself has created a problem we easily end up in a bind -  because new and potentially transformative data will be absorbed into that faulty belief system and lost.

Even though opportunities for radical freedom and growth might be right there before us, we’re unable to see them or seize them because we’re already too strongly identifying with being stuck.

Through that lens of ‘stuckness’, whatever shows up in the perceptual field appears to further confirm that belief. Thus giving rise to a self-fulfilling prophecy, the net effect of which is no real or lasting change.

If a heavyweight wrestling champion like The Rock were to trap us in a half-nelson it would probably be quite a similar experience! The more we struggled to free ourselves, the tighter the grip would become.

Letting go is challenging for similar reasons. We know we need to let go of the past to heal, but at the same time feel that we also need to grasp at and manipulate the past for the very same reason.

We may take a strong stance against feelings, memories, or aspects of ourselves that we’d like to be free of - but in such a way that makes us identify with them all the more strongly.

Or we may even think that relaxing and letting go now would mean losing all of our hard-earned emotional ‘gains’ - which in reality might simply be bitterness, resentment and suppressed anger.

A vice-like grip is great in a wrestling match, but it's crippling as an approach to life, because aside from being stressful and exhausting, it’s also totally unrealistic. 

Expectations and disappointments are a mental narrative - a projected storyline that we’re ‘narrating’ to ourself right now, about what happened in the past and how we’re going to protect ourselves in the future from ever being hurt or disappointed again.

These narratives take us out of the present, and essentially out of our real life - which is something that’s only ever occurring right now. 

Habitually stuck in those storylines, our lives become small and fragmented, full of buried regrets and disappointments. 

The alternative step of letting go takes genuine courage - but it’s precisely what allows real change to occur.

Letting go of our judgments and expectations allows new variables to appear within the perceptual field.

Letting go opens us up to the possibility of happiness now, long before we’ve actually achieved our lofty goals. 

It invites the possibility of being surprised, even delighted by life, and protects us from being disappointed when we aren’t.

It brings clarity of mind and unconditional love for ourselves and others. Who doesn't want that?

When you begin to let go of your judgments and expectations you embark on a journey with many possibilities. 

In short, an attitude of letting go is courageous and reality-based - offering new possibilities for healing, personal growth, and many opportunities that were hitherto unimaginable.

Letting go provides a solid foundation from which we can heal and prosper.