What Could Happen If You Let Everything Go?

Aside from sounding like the title of a Dr. Seuss book, the question I pose today can cause a lot of emotions to surface. Raised in a society where the words “less” and “nothing” are deemed failure words, I myself used to feel fear with the idea of letting things go. In my youth, I took pride in being a “yes-woman” – a multi-tasking energetic force that can only be caused by extreme naivete. Today, I find myself in a much different place.

I have learned that letting go can create the negative space necessary for growth and opportunity. Letting go of material things that ground us to a hedonistic lifestyle can free us to alternative models. Letting go of our identity can access our fullest potential. Letting go of our biases can open our minds in a way that leads to kindness. Letting go of our wants can lead to inner peace. But most importantly, letting go of the fear of letting go is the first step to starting the journey to a higher way of living.

While I wouldn’t consider myself a wordsmith, I am keen on word selection. It is, after all, what I do. I often wondered why there was negative emotion tied to the idea of letting go, and I have found that many people ask the wrong question. Often times, the same question is worded with one letter changed: What would happen if you let everything go.

That “w” is enough to confuse even the surest of minimalists.

Letting go of everything would lead to negative repercussions. For example, letting go of my job would certainly lead to unemployment, less money, and no job identity.

Sure, giving up everything would not necessarily lead to better things.

But you know what? It could.

Letting go of work could lead to more travel, more peace, a new identity, a better future, a more enjoyable profession, and a more secure financial situation. It’s not definite, but it could.

We need to start switching the language around letting things go into a more positive one.

What could happen if you let everything go?

Absolutely anything is possible.

The Pursuit of Doing Nothing

This post is sponsored by Territory Design. By curating a collection of items centered around crafting a life well-lived, Territory inspires the pause needed for grounding us in our everyday living.

The pursuit of doing nothing is a dying art. Hardly do I ever encounter a human being capable of nothingness. We Americans, especially, are never not doing. We have a bad habit of seeking activity rather than pleasure. We are always looking ahead to the next thing. We are constantly in search of distraction. How many times do you automatically take a moment of stillness and use it to pull out your phone and subconsciously hit that social media icon. BOOM! Time spent, action checked off.

But are you well?

Does it behoove you, the things you cram into your schedule?

We leave the art of doing nothing to the monks, as if it is an occupation that is not worth our time. Or we make up some excuse, saying we were born this way – our personality is just not meant to sit still.

There’s a reason the monks call meditation a practice. Because even monks were not born to be doing nothing. They are human, after all, with human minds that wish to plan ahead and human hearts that wish to conquer dreams. The practice part of it is required in order to master the art of stillness. It is, even for them, a pursuit.

Many of us get uncomfortable sitting with ourselves for too long, constantly on edge should a negative thought fleet across our minds or a scary imagination flicker behind our closed eyelids. We seem to always be waiting for bad news. Why waste time thinking and worrying? Best we get up and go do something about it. DO, ACT, GO. Or so the consensus goes. There is a certain courage required to pause in the face of discomfort and keep going as if nothing was shaking you to the core. There is growth in being able to take a short-coming and process it in ways that transform you.

The pursuit of doing nothing is a challenge worthwhile. It’s not going to be easy, and certainly the world isn’t making it easier. There will be temptations thrown your way, low-hanging fruit dangling inches from your brow, but don’t be fooled. Everyone else will also be holding on to low-hanging fruit. It’s hardly special, and will always be around. You’ve got a job to do.

Look at nothingness as an opportunity. Have you ever found yourself saying, “I don’t have the time”? Doing nothing is required to create space for something new. Therefore, the pursuit of doing nothing is preemptive to moving forward. It is old-age culture that is lacking in new-age thinking. No one else around you is doing that. Everyone else is too busy to take on the opportunities, and losing them too, all at the same time.

The pursuit of doing nothing is a dying art, and we, a backwards culture. Since when did we value filling our time with useless action items that are essentially repetitive loop cycles? Get up, go to work, come home tired, eat dinner and barely see the kids, binge watch TV, go to sleep, repeat five times a week, fifty-two weeks a year, forty-five years of our life. Is this what you want to call a living?

I don’t know about you, but I am committed to pursuing doing nothing.

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Recent Reads: The Power of Habits

I wrote once about the word negligible, and how I refuse to allow it in my vocabulary. I believe in the power of action. I believe in our ability to change things, to move needles, to push past walls that were built. This belief itself is a habit that allows me to accomplish things which other people can only dream to. A quote from The Power of Habit sums up the importance of this belief.

“Later, he would famously write that the will to believe is the most important ingredient in creating belief in change. And that one of the most important methods for creating that belief was habits. Habits, he noted, are what allow us to “do a thing with difficulty the first time, but soon do it more and more easily, and finally, with sufficient practice, do it semi-mechanically, or with hardly any consciousness at all.” Once we choose who we want to be, people grow “to the way in which they have been exercised, just as a sheet of paper or a coat, once creased or folded, tends to fall forever afterward in the same identical folds.”

A habit of mine growing up was to always say yes. Granted, with the advent of minimalism and slow living, I have come to realize that such action easily leads to a place of overwhelm. But within that habit was born a particularly positive outlook towards our abilities as a human being. By saying yes, I was continually telling myself and others around me, “It can be done.” And whenever I failed at something, I always thought in the back of my mind, “If only I had done this”, serving as ammo for the next attempt I make. “Impossible” was not a valid excuse. Perhaps lack of resources, lack of focus, lack of inspiration were the causes of failure, but nothing that could not be improved or fixed.

When people start to dream of the life they wish to lead, there is a tendency to immediately berate ourselves with a list of reasons why dreams are separate from reality. But the truth of the matter is that our realities are shaped by us in our own heads, in the exact same space where dreams lie. The only thing separating the two is your ability to believe in their oneness.

All I promise is this.
It gets easier, by the day,
until eventually, you realize
you’re the writer of your own story,
a magician of your making,
and the creator of your universe.

What could happen if you let everything go?

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