Sometimes life is like a balloon ride. We have to get rid of old ballast first before we can fly, live and dream again. I actually didn't want to start this post with this cheesy greeting-card-like quote but it was totally fitting. This post today is not really fitness related, yet I wanted to share it with you. It sort of explains how I got to where I am today and why I started this blog.
The importance of letting go
There are a lot of things that hold us off from where we want to be, who we want to become or how we want to live. Things that steal our time and our energy and make us feel anxious and uncomfortable.
Sometimes it feels like the more we try to remove those negative thoughts and energies out of our life, the more obstinate they become. We have learned to function in this state for a pretty long time. But there comes the time when you realise that you just don't want to live like that anymore. You want to be who you are and you want to do what you're most passionate about. Call me a dreamer, but I think it's possible for everyone of us to do what we love and to live the life that we are most happy with.
Consumed with all of these negative thoughts in your head however, it's pretty hard to make room for the good things in your life. That's why it is so important to let go of things that are just not right and replace them with things that feel good for you.
Letting go, however, isn't always easy. In fact, it's pretty hard for the most of us. But even small changes can have a big impact on your life and that's what I want to talk with you about in todays post.
My story
Right now, I am wondering where to start my story. Let's go back in time a little. After I finished school I wasn't really sure what to do next. So I did what I always do when I don't know how to move further: I procrastinate and go traveling. I went to Australia for seven months and let me tell you, those were the best seven months ever! Traveling around, meating new people and working occasionally didn't leave me a lot of time to think about what to do after returning home. However, I thought things would just magically work out. Life has to go on, right?
After my return I packed my things again and left home to study in a different city. I finished with a Bachelor's Degree after three years but again, I didn't really know what to do with it. So I started to do my Masters as well. After a lot of little jobs and internships during my studies I thought I had found what I wanted to do. I loved to write and I loved to connect with people so I thought PR would be perfect for me. I got a pretty great internship and during the first months I had the best time. However, things started to change and after a while I just wanted to leave again. And so I went traveling again to Vietnam.
When I came home again I found a new job pretty quickly. I thought it was perfect. It was PR again, but this time it was Fashion PR. It couldn't be any better for me. However, again things didn't really work out and I started to wonder if PR was even the right thing for me. I was so consumed of this bad situation I was in that I didn't even have the energy to think about the things that I would like to do more. The situation became pretty bad for me after a while but as I didn't know what to do instead I just stayed.
It wasn't until I was on holidays in Italy that I could really start thinking about alternatives. Not only alternatives to my job at the time but to PR in general. It felt like I finally had the time and the energy to rethink my whole situation and at the end of my vacation I was pretty sure about what to do next. I wanted to become a freelancer, I wanted to start a fitness blog. I felt so liberated.
But of course not everybody is in the lucky position of going on vacation to Italy to clear the head. However, there are plenty of things you can do at home to practice letting go of things that don't feel right.
Learn to let go
While I don't think there is a magic formula to learn to let go and get a clear head again, I think that a positive mindset can move mountains. That's why I think that these five tips of how to let go are so important:
1. Forgive Forgiving people and letting go of pain and anger gives you a feeling of liberation and makes room for positive emotions instead of negative ones. It will help you to let go of the past and to abandon afflicting things.
2. Be grateful There are a lot of things in our lives that we can be grateful for. Gratefulness makes us focus on all the good things happening in our lives. And I really believe that positive things happen to people with a positive mindset. They seem to somehow attract the positivity.
3. Stop pitying yourself Self-pity only hinders us from starting to do something. It puts the focus on all the negative things in our lives and leaves no room to the feeling of gratefulness.
4. Take time for yourself Our society is referred to as the "always-on-society". While it's certainly a good thing to stay busy from time to time, it's equally important to take some time off and reflect, sort your thoughts and get rid of nonessential things.
5. Be attentive The more we focus on the things we are doing right now, the less room we have to occupy our minds with negative thoughts. The present moment is the only moment that counts. That also liberates us from anxious thoughts about the future or things we regret from the past.
