Letting go makes sense

Feelings of disappointment are real. When we dislike someone’s behavior, we believe he or she should act differently. We look for evidence to support our conclusion, and we find people who agree with us, believing that being right will make us feel better. But instead, we end up with more of what we don’t like, because making an effort to prove we’re right produces more evidence that we’re right.

Here is the issue. Our problem with other people’s behavior, develops from what we believe about what others do and how we believe we’re entitled to respond. So, making others wrong and justifying our response keeps us stuck.

If people treat us badly, we have every right to hold them accountable and to take action to stop the abuse. But we hinder ourselves by going the next step: “You hurt me, I am miserable because of you.”

If we feel hurt or betrayed by someone, and we chew on that bone for a while, and we wonder whether we should forgive the person, and then we chew on that bone for a while, we create more unpleasantness, as our focus on the problem causes us to feel worse.

“Do I want to hang onto these unpleasant feelings? Does it serve me to keep reliving events that have already ended?”

The secret to letting go of what happened in the past is to depower it, by no longer giving it attention and meaning. It’s commonsense action toward nurturing ourselves, because we deserve to be our first priority.