Hello and welcome back to practicing human, the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I'm your host, Cory Muscara, and in today's episode we are going to talk about one of the key ways that letting go happens.

More to come on that in a moment, first let's settle in together with the sound of the bells.

Letting go is one of those topics we're all familiar with.

We've all connected to a time in our life where we wish we were able to let go or we've asked the question of how can I let go?

From big things to little things, from inner emotions that we want to be able to release to people that we wish we could let go of.

The thing that I've found early on with my meditation practice in relationship to letting go was a very clear understanding that there is a bit of a semantic paradox with this phrase.

Because when we hear letting go it immediately implies pushing away from something inherent to the phrase is release.

And inherent to our usual understanding of release is a moving away from.

And so it creates a bit of an oppositional relationship to that which we are trying to let go.

And my experience there is that the more we push or fight the thing we want to create space from, the harder it is to actually create space.

And oftentimes we end up just doubling down on our holding on.

Or we temporarily suppress or distract ourselves from the part that wants to hold on and kind of convince ourselves that we have let go by trying to focus on something else.

Again, anyone who has tried this knows these are usually few tile strategies.

And so what I want to offer you here and maybe it's a reminder for you if you've heard this from me before is that letting go doesn't just happen by telling yourself to let go.

At least in most cases if your system is very ripe and mature mature in the sense of you've passed through a number of stages leading up to the capacity to let go.

Then you may just need like a simple prompt of release let go and that may happen in very few cases.

Most of the time letting go does not happen by telling yourself to let go.

It actually happens by more clearly seeing the pain of holding on does not happen by telling yourself to let go.

It happens by clearly seeing the pain of holding on.

Well, why is this? Because your mind and your brain they're not trying to make you suffer.

They're just doing the best they can to try to help you survive and be fulfilled.

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