If you are in a rut there is most Definitely something you need to let go of. It
may be someone, something, memories, anger, resentment, pain, expectations,
perceptions, dreams, guilt, shame, regret, grief, addiction, fear, control, weight,
debt, purpose. It may be one or several things.
Often we believe we need to introduce new things into our lives when we find we
are in a rut (to make us feel better) but that may further clutter our lives and make
it more difficult to recognize the culprit(s). It can cause us to become more
overwhelmed if we don’t first clear out some old ‘lingering’ things that create
negative elements in our world (and create road blocks to our RFL).
The “letting go“ I am speaking of is not to be mistaken for an excuse to give up
something or someone willy-nilly.
Letting go of one’s purpose in life sounds like it would always be the wrong move
to make since having purpose is one of the foundations of well-being.
However, for example, let’s say we are new empty nesters whose lives were all
about caring for our children up until now. Our purpose has become somewhat
obsolete.
While our children can and should always still be a part of our purpose,
they are on their own now and this does not require full-time action in our day to
day lives anymore.
It is best to navigate these things in real time as we go along our life paths
when we can steer ourselves more subtly into the right direction. Often we miss
those turns though and have to look back to navigate again to that crossroad or
find an alternate path.
The old saying “hindsight is 20/20“ would not be so well known if it was not highly
typical that us humans have to look in the rear view mirror of our lives to gain the
benefit of some hard lessons. Those lessons often require more time, energy and
growing pain.
Having a purpose become obsolete is enough in itself to send someone into a rut.
Purpose creates positive momentum, a main ingredient to a joyous life.
If we don’t see the change coming or we don’t respond early enough to its
inevitable end, transition and refine or replace a purpose, we could race past
the fork in the road where we were supposed to turn off and get lost far beyond
that turning point.
Then as our momentum comes to a screeching halt, we may
look around and see that there is no place around for us to create value.
Figuring out what we need to let go of is definitely easier than actually letting go but
we need to believe we are capable of doing what is needed for our well-being! When
we wake up in the morning we need to determine throughout our days what comes
along that lowers our level of joy.
If you find that your belongings are creating obstacles to joy in your life, you may
want to read CLUTTER WEIGHS YOU DOWN WHEN YOU’RE IN A RUT.
If the joy suppressor is something that has become part of our regular routine, it is
most likely one of those areas we need to target. Right now we only want to identify
these things. We don’t want to take any knee-jerk actions.
Identification is an exercise in itself. Eventually, once we’ve given some careful
thought, we will take action on these things we have identified.
Now let’s talk ‘people’. If this has to do with an interaction for example, between
us and someone else that regularly dims our sense of joy, we will really want to take
a good hard look at the way we are responding to the interaction first.
I am not suggesting that we always shift the blame for relationships gone bad to
ourselves. We all know that sometimes a friend that we thought we had when times
were going well for us, bails on us when the going gets tough.
We just want to be mindful, giving first the benefits of the doubt so that we don’t
go on a rampage and burn all of the bridges in our lives without great care in
analyzing what the situation really is.
It may be that instead of removing that person from our world we step away
temporarily, limit interaction or work on removing the way we look at interaction
with that person.
For example, there are variations in how we value the opinions of people in our
lives. One may highly value the opinion of a parent and take the opinion of an
old high school friend with a grain of salt.
These variations should absolutely exist. In some cases we may have shifted the
importance of someone’s opinion in the wrong direction because of our state of
being and now they don’t fit as well in our world.
If it is someone that was in our life and fit well when things were going good for us,
we may want to look back on those times and why it worked back then. Instead of
eliminating a person who once fit into our life well, the value of their opinion may
only need to be adjusted in our mind.
When it comes to people we sometimes keep toxic or semi-toxic people in our world
or in their same social position in our lives when we are in a rut and not in the right
state to fix things that are not in proper working order.
Those people can become more skilled at manipulating us as the negative effects of
their bad behavior, words and actions become more immediately damaging to us
and therefore, they are getting more immediate confirmation that their manipulation
is working. They may only subconsciously see the results they prefer which
encourages more bad behavior.
Many people operate subconsciously and are not evil and calculating when they
attempt to manipulate. It is just what they learned as far as how to act; throwing a
behavior into the wind and seeing what happens.
These people I refer to as semi toxic because they can create toxicity but they are
not necessarily being intentional about it.
Some people never really look at themselves (and ask ‘why?’), they just go about
life on auto pilot, behaving in certain ways, looking for certain results and tweaking
it to eventually get people to bring them their exact desired results.
This is sad for them that they don’t understand the true power of self-reflection
and being intentional.
Unchecked intentions do not typically create thoughtful, kindness in a person.
It brings selfish motives where they rationalize that the end justifies the means
for so long they begin to believe it. I don’t believe we should punish everyone in
these cases. Maybe we just need to restrict our engagement with them.
We can also learn to find sympathy for them. Sympathy can often make
resentment disintegrate. When we truly feel sorry for someone, it is difficult to
be hurt by them because we are acknowledging to ourselves that they have no
power at their command, they’re helpless.
When we perceive someone has a lack of control of their own self, it can diminish
how we see their credibility. Without credibility we may be less likely to feel
obligated to respond to their bad behavior at all. This can shift the balance of
control of our responses back to ourselves where it belongs.
For those who are intentionally damaging, the ‘real’ toxic people, we may need
to cut them from our lives or drastically limit engagement. We may want to move
somewhat gradually on this in some cases to diminish backlash that could weaken
our position, our decision.
If we are needing to let go of resentment, understand that this emotion is in vain
and will only ever hurt the person feeling it. If someone’s intention is to hurt us,
our resentment is their prize, so they win.
If someone does not intend to hurt us by their bad behavior, they most likely
cannot fathom why we’d have resentful feelings in response to it, so in this case,
by refusing to move toward resentment, we’re giving the most fair benefit of the
doubt to the people in our world (and again, we’ll avoid making our own selves suffer).
While the pain from being hurt by others can inflict us without a welcome invitation,
our cooperation is required to keep it entertained. Once it arrives, understand that we are
the ones who decide how long we are willing to host it.