Hello and welcome to Never or Now with me,
Rosie Wyatt.
It's really great to be back quite soon after my last episode.
I haven't really got a lot to report in the last few weeks.
I'm fully recovered now from illness so that is wonderful.
Slightly,
Slightly croaky voice.
And my daughter Lucy is home for Easter later today so I use her room for recording so I'm making the most of it,
Recording one now and then clearing the room of all of my kit so that she has a clear space to return to.
So I'll get straight into it.
It's just me today,
No guest and it was something that came up for me a week ago this weekend and I thought I really need to talk about this because it's something that I've been having to consciously work on for the last year,
Happens to all of us,
Will affect most people in some way or form and if it doesn't then you're really super,
Super lucky and that is the art of letting go.
So there's so many situations and things in life where we cling on and we're all different so someone might cling on where someone else can easily let something go.
So to give this some context I'll share my example.
So last weekend I was going to make a list on my phone.
So basically for years and years over the last three phones if I've needed to record something quickly in my mind and think I can't forget this,
I text myself which I know seems mental.
Why did I not put that in a notebook or a note function on my phone?
But I've always used SMS.
So I just text my own number and it could be so many different types of things.
It could be a thought I've had,
It sometimes notes with my therapist so I'll come out of therapy and I'll think I don't want to forget that and I'll text it to myself.
The one I was really sad that I lost because that's what we're coming to is that I lost these messages is that the first note in there was a conversation I had with my dad years and years ago because he died three or four years ago,
Four years ago I think and before he was poorly we were having a conversation and this sounds like a small thing but it's pretty huge.
He gave me all the birth and death dates of his parents and my mum's parents and there is no way I would remember.
I know their birthdays but I don't know the year they were born and the day they died.
So I was really sad that when I went to my phone last weekend because I think I wanted to jot down in there a recipe that I'd seen so it really is a sort of digital notepad for me and I will go back to it and sort of scroll through and when I went to add something else to it it wasn't there and I just thought where on earth has it gone and it's different now things aren't SMS anymore are they it's a it's an Android so it's a Google Google messages it's very different and I must have deleted it because on previous versions if you deleted it you could still see them with this version if you delete it's gone it can't be retrieved unless you do a factory reset on your phone and import it and I just thought I had a decision to make do I spend hours going down an absolute rabbit hole trying to find this data or do I let it go and that was a the first time I think I'd been aware of what I was doing and thinking you have a decision you can get very stressed and very hot and sweaty googling this and trying to retrieve this information or you you have you are able to react now and in a different way and you can just think okay that this isn't life and death there is information on there that I would like to have but it's not absolutely necessary how am I gonna feel about this in six months or a year and just made a quick decision to just let that go I've got too much going on in life too many other compartments of life's sweet journey to be focusing on that so I just let it go and what a relief and that's quite a light example because it you may be listening to this thinking okay crazy woman you know I'd let that go easily but it was quite a big thing for me because I like to understand things and I like to have data that's just how my brain works and it felt quite huge to let that go later on because and I think this is because I let it go later on when I was trying to get to sleep and thinking really self-soothing which is another aspect of letting go so being very very gentle with myself and saying you know I think that was a really good brave thing to do and that's huge growth and that's not something you'd have been able to manage one year ago so you know it's quite a big thing for me and because my brain had relaxed I thought hold on when you changed your phone last year you took a few screenshots of the ones that were really important to you and lo and behold I had and there were screenshots in my Google photos and I had got those dates so I haven't lost it it's there there was a few other little things that I had recorded so it's interesting isn't it when my brain relaxed I thought actually there's a partial solution there but I let go of the rest and it's gone and and then I thought of other areas of life where I'm still struggling to let go so I thought let's have a chat about that or I'm chatting about it so I think there's a few areas of life where this can crop up a lot and I think one of the big ones for all of us throughout life is things to do with people conversations with people instances with people relationships situationships and there's a lot of times when we need to let something go that's in connection with something to do with a person and that's quite difficult because obviously people are really important to us especially if it's an important person like a spouse or something someone very very close and I will replay conversations I've had from years ago from you know things that something like my mum who's who died a very long time ago that she might have said to me and thinking well why am I replaying that why am I replaying that comment or that conversation how's that serving me is that doing me any good and can I change it it's happened but I can change how I react to it and that you know a current conversation or a current thing that's happening with a person letting go of relationships letting go of something that's might not be good for me can I let that go or am I clinging on where I really shouldn't be and so yeah I think letting go of that is really important I think another area where we tend to want to know things the need to understand and really work at something is at work so if we've got a job or vocation and we're doing something you know how long do we struggle with trying to get something done or really do it to absolute perfection and make sure it's a hundred percent okay for instance with this podcast when I will go back and edit and get it prepared to put it up on you know on Spotify and Apple I probably will never get it to a hundred percent as there comes a point where I have to let it go there comes a point where I have to let go of that need to control and just think that's okay it doesn't it really doesn't matter so I think with work and if there's something that you're currently thinking I you know this situation at work is really not going how I need it to go does it does it really really matter will you be thinking about that situation in a year how will you be thinking about that situation in a year can you change it now I mean and sometimes you can but there might be a bit of fear holding back so maybe there needs to be a conversation with someone that you're putting off and you probably can do that but you can definitely change how you react to it so I think that's another thing that's quite important and I think a really big one for a lot of us is thoughts so unless you have a very different wire brain to me you're thinking all the time so when you're with people you might be thinking probably a bit less because it's a nice distraction but certainly when you're on your own and having downtime you finished work you might be sitting on your own in the evening particularly if you live on your own this is quite a biggie the thoughts will be going round and even if you don't live on your own you're on your own pretty much a lot of the time particularly in sleep so if you're having trouble sleeping and you're waking in you're not going to always have conversation going with someone else so thoughts and letting go of clinging on to thoughts and clinging on to believing them and taking every single thoughts fact because thoughts are not facts they're how your brain has manufactured some piece of information that you might have heard or some twist of conversation so you may have had a conversation with someone and then your brain is thinking about it but it it may have contorted it it may not be true but there's this sort of tendency to think well I've thought it so I must believe it and this is a constant practice for me to be thinking do I need to take that thought and put it into some sort of action do I need to speak to someone or email someone or carry something out or is it helping me and can I just let it go and let go of obsessively thinking about it or rumination it's probably a better word so ruminating going over and over the same problem issue conversation puzzle puzzle is quite a good word for this because I think sometimes the brain is trying to solve a puzzle it's trying to be very very helpful and stop you suffering and solving something like a jigsaw and trying to work out every single piece of it and actually the answer comes to me when I relax so going at it and overthinking and thinking doesn't often produce the answer but when you can learn to let go that is often when I can see things more clearly get a better perspective and it'll it'll often be when I'm least expecting it so I think I consciously think I'm going to let that go I can't do this this is exhausting and then I'll go for a or it might be a few days later and I'll see it totally differently or I will make peace with it so there may not need to be an answer but I'll let go of the thought and then three days later which is often a time scale for me I think I'm that's not worrying me anymore it's not bothersome and I think that's a lot there's a bit of a skill in how to handle how to handle letting go and I don't normally look things up when I record episodes but I did have a feeling that I wanted to look up letting go in relation to Buddhism because oh years and years ago it was where just after Lucy was born and she's 21 this year so a long time ago I went to Buddhist meditation classes for years and I'm not at all religious I'm not a Buddhist but I like the philosophy of how Buddhists think about this type of thing it it's just for me it's a philosophy it's not a religion it's just a very gentle compassionate thoughtful way of thinking and the thinking there is that a lot of our suffering a lot of our pain and turmoil comes from attachment and that can include attachment to things people not letting go of people where it would actually be beneficial attachment to thoughts in particular so really grasping onto something and thinking I've got to keep thinking of this until I come up with an answer and the opposite is true you really don't need to the thinking is also to let go gently so not think I unless I let go now and immediately I'm going to suffer but if that's a bit of a turnaround for you and that's not something that comes naturally to let go it's going to take time and do it really gently and it will keep coming back and recovery and learning isn't linear it's going to be a bumpy old ride and it will be harder when you first let something go so last weekend when I let go of that loss you know of things I'd noted down it was really hard I felt so my body reacted I felt speeded up I felt very hot I was sweating I felt quite desperate and then I'd you know sort of kind of like going through a process of letting go and then it just became easier you know the next day I woke up thinking well that's progress you've let that go but it's not easy and knowing that it won't feel easy knowing that it's not a simple thing to do I think also from what I was reading this morning is was a really poignant lesson is to embrace impermanence so I think often when we are attaching ourselves to something that is important to us or we see it as important to us we want it there forever because we think it's making us happy so we want it until we die we want the thing or the person or the situation or the job or a way of thinking we want it there forever we don't want to let it go and actually nothing is forever absolutely nothing there is not one thing that you will have from now until the end so and that is really scary it's something I'm totally comfortable with but it's it's very very scary to think well I want that thing I want those photos on my computer I want this car to work you know for the next 10 years I want whatever it is I need this job to work I want this marriage to be forever and it it may not be I need this person in my life forever and they may not be so to think about really gently with yourself to think about how to embrace that things might not always be permanent helps to let go I think and if letting go is quite difficult or you're thinking I just can't do this and I've got this situation and I'm not sure I can let go there is quite a useful technique if you can think about the situation that you are struggling to let go of at the moment and it's the open hand metaphor so just picture yourself grasping this thing picture yourself holding really tightly and then release your hand and just open it up and then if it helps imagine sand falling through your fingers and letting go of this thing and if you need to repeat that over and over then repeat it and just imagine letting go of your tension you're holding on and just let it pass physically through your fingers and visualize that if you're able to visualize I understand for some people that's quite a hard thing to do but if you're able to see that in your mind that can help and just understand that it's going to be a bumpy ride things aren't straightforward and some people might say that it's helpful to just accept things just accept it except that you can't but I do struggle a little bit with acceptance I think it's incredibly useful in some situations maybe for me with the text thing there was a certain there was a certain acceptance and that in that situation was useful but it's a really hard one to sort of describe how I feel because I've got a really certain thought about it in my mind but it's very hard for me to put this in words because acceptance can feel a little bit passive it feels like you're well I've been done quite a bad deal here so I'm just going to accept it and sometimes that the thing that you might be trying to let go of isn't okay wasn't okay with you made you angry and I think almost accepting that you can't accept it is all right but I think with that even though you can't accept something I think you can still let it go so this situation isn't all right with me I'm not okay that I was I'm fairly dismissed from my job for instance I wasn't I'm just saying this this hasn't happened to me but if you think I'm not okay with that and I'm not accepting but I don't want to think about it for the next 90 days or for the rest of my life I'm gonna let it go but it's not okay that it happened with me then that is a shifting a little bit from acceptance to me and that's only my thoughts I have no idea you know what a therapist might think I'm I'm a trained coach but I don't I'm not a therapist so I don't know what's right or wrong that is just my thought that you are able to let go of something despite the fact it might not sit well and I think that's all right so not a hugely long one today I didn't want to go on for too long I think it's just food for thought and because it had happened to me recently and I had a recent example I thought I think now's the time now's the time to talk about it so I think the takeaways if they can be are if there's something you're struggling with at the moment know that you can let it go if I can then I think anyone can actually and I think you know maybe the open hand metaphor might be a useful place to start also thinking is this going to matter to me in a month knowing it's really hard and it won't feel easy so try to avoid the need to sort of revert back to well it that felt too difficult so I'm gonna keep thinking about this thing I'm not gonna let it go and just know that there's a lot of peace in the process so when you are able to let something go really let it go not just say I'm gonna let go but actually you're really not there's a lot of peace that comes afterwards and clarity so you may you may actually get the answers you were always looking for with a bit of time so I hope this helps I hope it's not confusing and thank you so much for listening it means so much you know it means the world and I don't know what's next I think a guest I think we need a conversation don't we not just me talking to the mic so I will keep you updated thank you so much for listening if you feel you're able to comment on this episode please do if you want to rate and review please do and subscribe that really helps too so have a great time whatever you're doing today and thanks for listening goodbye
