Developing the Letting Go Skill

 

So we can see some of the benefits of letting go, and we can start to see how it might work. This is all great, but how do we actually develop the skill? It doesn’t just happen with a snap of the fingers.

 

Instead, we must practice the skill of letting go.

 

And to practice a skill, it helps to break it down into smaller skills and examine those one at a time, practice them one at a time, before bringing them together into a larger skill.

 

A dancer, for example, might work on various steps of a complex dance move before putting them together and doing the entire move. That’s what we’re going to do with the letting go skill: break it into pieces and practice each piece, each mini-skill. And then bring it back together as a whole.

 

Here are the pieces:

 

1.     Noticing Signals: When you are holding onto something that is harmful, it shows up in various little signals, symptoms like anger or procrastination. Seeing those signals as they happen is the first mini-skill.

2.    Seeing the Ideal: What ideal are you holding onto that is causing the signal?

3.    Seeing the Harm: Is the ideal causing you to suffer, harming your relationship, keeping you from being happy?

4.    Letting Go with Love: If the ideal is causing harm, then letting go is an act of love and compassion.

5.    Seeing Reality: Now that you’ve let go of an ideal, turn your attention to reality and see it as it is. Accept this, and respond appropriately.

Those all come together into the skill of letting go. The practice doesn’t end there … there’s still the question of how to act after you’ve let go. And we’ll discuss that as well.

 

But first, let’s examine the smaller skills, and then talk about how to practice them all and develop the habit of letting go.