"There's an important difference between giving up and letting go." ~Jessica Hatchigan
I got the quote above from a friend and find it appropriate with all that I'm working on in life right now.
I don't really like to write too much about relationships, especially personal ones, but I'm going to go out on a limb now because that is where the fruit is.
Basically, I have felt like giving up on myself and the person who I love most in life all summer long. What I've found instead, is I have needed to let go. The past few weeks, I've been learning to let go of my past, my failures and most importantly, pain I've experienced from those failures and the pain I've experienced from others. I believe we have (at the very least) two areas in life where we desire happiness: in ourselves as a person with a purpose for living; and with someone else who we love with all our hearts. Oddly, the latter can be the only thing which makes the former worthwhile, for what good is creating a life worth living if it is not shared with those we love?
In getting back to the quote, "giving up" is never the answer whereas "letting go" of that which we don't need is the answer. It turns out, when I have been faced with disappointments I turned to giving up by simply beating myself up inside over mistakes I've made in the past as well as mistakes others have made regarding me. What I've needed to do instead, is simply let go of it all. Forgive and forget. It seems impossible, it even
feels impossible but oddly, with a little thinking, a little soul-searching and a little time spent looking into your heart, it can be quite simple.
Someone recently asked me, "Why do you carry past pain with you? What purpose is it serving?"
I thought about it for a long time.
The answer I came up with is: "so that I had a reason to fail and give up." I had an excuse for not being loved and for why things didn't work out the way I have wanted them to. I have done this out of a fear of love (and success in life) by embracing pain and failure. I had a way to keep people distant, especially the one I wanted to be closest to. By holding onto my past pain with everything I had, I also had my excuse to hurt others, to run away and to put distance between myself, love and happiness.
Why? Because I thought it was easier to give up on something than it was to just let go of pain. Maybe it is easier at times to give up, but is it what we really want? Wouldn't we rather have success and love? I found that I do and in examining things, getting to my true feelings, looking past the hurt and pain and failures, that I found the desire for success, happiness and love.
It's funny that we fear success and happiness sometimes...yet it's what we really desire out of life. We desire to be happy, we desire success in our own endeavors and, because we're simply human, we desire to be loved. It's natural, it's who we are.
I have spent a lot of time causing my own failures in life and in love because I refused to let go of the past. I have looked back at has happened and I see how it has continued to shape my life in a repeating pattern. I am now learning to let it all go and in doing so, I am not giving up. This is the important difference between the two.
I have learned in looking back, even though others have done wrong and caused pain to me, it's been my refusal of letting go that has caused further pain and disappointment. I have carried the past pain with me from relationship to relationship and let it ruin each one in turn. I have undeservingly hurt others simply because people before them hurt me. I believe that sometimes, we might subconsciously feel that by hurting the people currently in our lives, somehow, we are releasing pain and getting revenge on those who came before them.
Luckily, I've learned that it is never too late to have a change of heart. It's never too late to change, learn and grow and most of all, it's never too late to recognize, forgive and forget that the pain caused to us by others might be a result of their past just like the pain we have caused them is a result of our past.
I recently learned that the pain I caused someone else is not because of me or them, but because of things which happened in my past. I also learned that the pain they caused me, is very much a result of their past too and, combined with my past it multiplied, causing more pain instead of the happiness and love we both desired. I learned that we did not purposely mean to hurt each other, but perhaps simply feared being hurt as we had been by others. Out of this fear, hurt arose yet again. We possibly even acted out of a strange guilt to subconsiously punish ourselves for things we feel we did wrong in the past to others. We allowed life and each other to punish us like a guilty criminal subconsciously gets stupidly caught because deep down, they know they've done something morally wrong and self-guilt steps in to be their own judge and deliver their own prison sentence.
In yet another try at becoming the person I know I can be, I took on a writing exercise regarding all of this. I wrote down why I loved this person. I also wrote down what I did to hurt them and why. I wrote down what they did to hurt me and the reasons why. I did this out of a desire to grow and change and see things differently in order to get different and better results in life. With all my soul, I desire happiness and love and in doing all of this, I am confident that I am changing because I already feel better, different, happier and more loving. Oddly, I'm able to let go of the past hurt, letting it simply float away like water under a bridge.
In the past, I simply hated each failed relationship, I angrily "unloved" the person by not letting go of pain by seeing past the hurt we both caused. I then easily gave up and walked away carrying that pain with me to the next relationship, full of hope, only to repeat the pattern. In letting go of the past hurt from others, I am different now, better, more mature and more "knowing." I have found that giving up is not the answer, letting go is.
I recently said some things to the person I love and I hurt them more deeply than anyone could. What I said was not what I believed in any way, but simply a repeat of eveything they had told me about themselves which I knew they didn't like. I said it drunkenly, out of the pain that I felt from being pushed away by them and everyone else in the past and in saying these things, I was fighting back against the deep pain I felt from rejection and hurt since childhood and through every relationship. Like them, I felt pain from all the things they have been saying to me over the year which I did not like about myself either and in one burst of trying to feel better about myself, I did the wrong thing. I put the other person down with their own pains in order to bring myself up to feel better about mine. I fought back and released every ounce of pain I had been holding down from every hurt I had felt in life to this point, only I did it an entirely wrong way and toward the one person I never wanted to hurt. I did it to the one person I love with all my heart, who has meant the most to me in all my life. Afterward, I simply wanted to die, literally. I was in disbelief at what I had done and said but there it was, all too real.
I had reached my most ugly and darkest moment but also the point which has caused me to stop, take a deep breath and a long look at everything in order to turn my entire life around for the better. It was the moment I started learning that I should let go instead of giving up.
I now know what I should have done all along was to simply work on the things I wanted to change about me. I should have let go of past pain from others instead of dragging it with me, causing nothing but more pain to myself and the person I love. I gave up instead of letting go. And now, in taking a step back, I am not giving up, but am letting go instead.
Here's the twist which I didn't expect to result from all of this and if you are having any kind of trouble in a relationship, I hope you might try this and get the same result.
I have completely changed inside and life is rewarding me from every angle out of the blue as a result. My dreams are coming true left and right and my own success is finally beginning to find me. Instead of continuing to hurt and continuing to hate that which has happened to me, my heart has turned around. This may sound a tad sappy, but it's an amazing feeling. It feels oddly comfortable. Instead of bitterness, I feel nothing but love. Instead of fear, I feel confidence and calm. Instead of pain, I feel strength and hope. Instead of feeling like giving up and walking away hurt and bitter as I always have in the past, I feel strong and oddly, "unhurt." Hurt is gone and strength stands in its place. Pain is gone and love remains as it should. I let go of the bad and did not give up on the good and it has made all the difference.
How can you do this? How can you learn to let go as I have? It's not so difficult and it merely takes not giving up. It takes letting go.
Write down all of the reason you fell in love with someone. From the moment you first met, simply write down the feelings, the passion, the happiness, the elation, the heavenly moments, the laughter and the love you felt. Write down every good thing they taught you. Write down every wonderful moment you spent together doing something you will never forget. Write down all that is good about them, all that you fell in love with, all that they have done to bring joy and goodness into your life. Write down why you cherish them. Write down all of the good things they have brought into your life, the things they have inspired you to do, the ways in which you have changed for the better as a result of them being in your life. Write down every last bit of what it is about them that you love and in doing so, do not let any sort of pain or hurt or anger or bitterness override it. Open your heart, not your pain and anger. Let all pain, anger, hurt and bitterness take a short vacation. If this person has hurt you, it will take a bit of effort, but just stay determined for a few minutes, stick to it and get all the good out there on paper.
Next, write down everything that has caused you pain in your life, be it from others, from yourself, from things in life out of your control. Write down things parents did and said, write down things siblings and friends did and said and write down things people you loved said and did. Examine it. Why did it hurt? Examine if things hurt because of how we felt. Examine if things hurt because they were similar to past hurts. Examine why people may have done and said things which hurt us. Examine if those things were because they meant to hurt us or if they were caused by something someone did to them. Examine if it was your fault or someone else's fault in their lives. Examine the root of each hurt and be honest about it. People typically don't just go around hurting us for no reason, especially people who love us. They hurt us because of a reaction to something which has happened to them, or something we have done to them or a combination of both by us reminding them of past pain inadvertently through something we do or say.
Now, and this one is a bit tough, right down everything you have done to cause pain to others, especially someone you love. Write down why you have done this, is it because of them or you or your past, their past or all of these things combined. Be honest. Be objective. Look at the action and all the possible reasons from every angle. See it in a new light of understanding instead of the old light of "because they deserved it." Examine and understand the real reasons.
Next, write down why you are carrying the pain with you. What purpose is it serving? Is it helping you, or holding you back? Has any of it been carried from childhood to adulthood and from one relationship into the next? Was it right to do so? Examine how it hurt it the current relationship. Examine how carrying that hurt has contributed to where you are now and this is really important...realize that it can all change by not giving up by but simply letting go of the hurt...all of it.
Now, make the choice to let go. Make the choice to stop hurting inside and to stop hurting others. Make the choice to forgive others for their mistakes, for their past and for carrying their hurt. Make the choice to forgive yourself for your own mistakes. Make the choice to forget all of your pain by letting it go. See beyond it. See that it serves no purpose and it never will. See that it is doing nothing except causing more pain. Maybe even go so far as to talk to the person and tell them everything. Tell them how they have hurt you and why you think they did. Tell them how you have hurt them and why you think you did. Tell them you are letting all the pain go and that you will forgive and forget. Ask them to do the same. Ask their forgiveness, ask them to let go of the pain you caused them and if you're really brave, take this one chance in your lifetime to tell them, face to face all the reasons that you love them, why you fell in love with them, everything that you love about them, eveything that makes them good and worthwhile. Thank them for all that they have done for you, for their encouragement, for believing in you, for their friendship, their kindness and their love.
The final step is to continue each day in letting go of pain should it start to surface. Choose to act and speak from love rather than from past pain. Sometimes, we've been carrying things around with us for so long like guilt over what we've done and pain from what others have done that, you will sometimes say and act in the old way as you have been rather than in the new way of what you are trying to be. Do not give up and you will change, you will get there, you will become a better, kinder, more successful, more loving person each day. And you will find as I have, that things will turn around in all areas of your life. Things will magically start to land in your lap because you're now open to them instead of closed off with the walls of past pain. If you don't do this, you will find like I have that when you chase a dream, it will end in heartache and disappointment. You'll hope it won't but it will because there will be something inside that brings it to be, so if for nothing else but the sake of your dreams, do this...let it all go. Trust me, when and only when you do this will your dreams begin to come true, one by one.
It will take time, but don't give up, just keep letting go. There's an important difference, know that difference. I'd like to finish with another quote which has always made sense, but in light of what I've been through and learned, says it all:
Sing as though no one can hear you,
Dance as though no one is watching you.
Love as though you have never been hurt before,
Live as though heaven is on earth.
And remember, as Thomas Edison said, "If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves."
So take the time now to do what you are capable of...and astound everyone in your life, including yourself.
Let go, never give up and Love as though you've never been hurt. Create a life worth living and share it with those you love. Do this and you will find that heaven really is on earth.
Patience In All Things...Patience
With no internet connection for nearly two days, I felt I was out of touch with the world for some reason. I worried about important business emails that were piling up with no way to get to them. I went to my local coffee shop and was able to log onto their wireless network. I didn't have a computer virus after all, kind of like thinking you're sick when it's really all in your mind.
I ended up calling my friendly SBC tech support team and after three hours on the phone, I was elevated (?) to tier 2 tech support. Eventually, I fixed most everything except my wireless connection which I was able to go through and fix on my own shortly after. I learned a lesson in patience and that all things come to be if you wait and work on them with patience. The problem seemed impassable, unfixable, but eventually, with enough trying and testing, it all worked out.
A lot of things in life are like that...impossible...unchangeable...broken...but with a little patience and a tiny bit of effort, anything can be not impossible...changed...and fixed. In life, I've felt very much like a failure for the most part, but I'm learning that even I can change. I can change the way I feel about somebody or something by simply seeing things in a different light and sometimes by getting a little "tech support" along the way.
Each day, I find myself more patient, more willing to wait and more willing to accept the currently impossible knowing that anything
ispossible in time. I think the biggest part of my "growing up" over the past month has been to realize that patience is such a huge key to everything. Patience comes from trust and I'm finally, finally learning to trust. I'm trusting life in general, but more specifically my gut and even more importantly my heart.
I've been making an effort to do the following exercise each day in the morning. I sit quietly and just look out the window at the sky. I let thoughts leave my mind, worries walk away and the big problems drift off as I silently stare for awhile at clouds amid the blue. When I do this, I start to look inside of myself in search of my true feelings and beliefs.
I also let my biggest wishes and dreams bubble up to the surface. The words "never" and "no way" and "it will never happen" fight their way in and I gently ignore them knowing they are nothing but fear and distrust. In doing so, I'm slowly discovering my true desires and am beginning to accept that if I'm patient and trust, I really can have it all. It's perhaps not going to happen over night, or in a week or even a few months, but I am beginning to believe that I have more control over having the things in my life that I want. It will just take some patience and time.
I've been trying to do about three things in my life and bit by bit, day by day, those things seem to be falling into place as I go along. There are little setbacks, changes of schedules and moments of thinking things won't happen as I hope, but if I step back and take a good hard look, I have to admit that everything is turning around for me. It's weird in that it's almost easy. I think that part of why I have had trouble in life is that I've always tried just a bit too hard, pushed just a bit too hard and been just a bit too impatient.
Patiently Trust...and in the meantime, do what you can. This is what is making the difference for me now. Each day, I do a little bit to build each thing. Things happen in "three's" it seems so as I go about my day, I take the time to work on each wish in turn. I've been working on trying to be the first person in history to cross America on a Segway. Not so much to be the first person, but more so in that I think it's going to make an interesting book. Since one of my wishes is to become a writer, I have a feeling that this will all work out as it should. The second thing I've been working on is financial. I've been trying to get to the point where I have an income from something I have built from the ground up. Sure, it's dog treats, but the fact remains that I'll soon be generating a few thousand bucks a month from it, enough to be able to pursue writing. I've also been working on myself, on letting go of the past, growing up and becoming me.
Over the past week, I've started soul-searching all the way back to my childhood and am discovering what I've always wanted to do with myself. The answers are finally coming out of the fog and I'm considering going back to school next year once the Segway Tour and dog treat business are on track and running their courses. It turns out that I have a lot of friends doing what I've dreamed of doing and I've been in touch with them and am working on taking an entirely new path in life to chase one wild dream while I'm still young enough to do so. Oddly, I'm not going to announce it here but rather, I'll just be patient, work on it and see what comes of it in the next six months. I might make it, I might not, but I know that I'll only be happy if I try rather than live my whole life wondering "what if?"
As I chase that dream somewhere in the semi-near future, I'll patiently trust that it will work out for me, kind of like getting reconnected to the internet. It might take a few hours of tech-support, but even the seemingly impossible can be mine if I stick to it with patience. In all things, patience.
Oh, and I should mention one more thing...the time to start having patience is NOW.
Quirks
Yesterday, out of the blue, my internet connection at home decided to simply stop working. Lovely. I imagined tons of important email going unanswered, I missed IM'ing with a few friends and worse yet, I felt I couldn't communicate with Beth, my editor for my book proposal. So, I figured it must be the network. I called SBC, but no, it was not the network. We worked few a couple things on my computer over the course of about an hour and a half and it was decided that I had a virus, er....my
computerhad a virus, that is.
So, I hung up, but did not give up. I went through every imaginable thing I could searching for something which changed, something which maybe didn't work which I could fix on my own. I ran my virus scan for the fourth time that day coming up with nothing. I had thought about going to my coffee shop where there's a wireless connection yesterday but I opted to stay home and remain frustrated. Lo and behold, my computer works fine at the coffee shop this morning, which is good news...it means my computer is fine, it's something to do with my connection at home. Which means I don't have to toast every file and photo and half-finished book on my hard drive to do a full system recovery.
So, I had a lesson in this somewhere, but now I've lost it along the way. I think it's "don't believe everything you hear, even if it's from an expert." Yea, something like that. Oh wait, it's about "quirks" I guess. I kind of contemplate quirks and how something working in a perfectly normal fashion, suddenly decides to go haywire. I don't get it, but it's like life. And I don't think we're supposed to get it, I think we're just supposed to work around it. They arrive out of nowhere so that life won't get too boring, or easy or simple. It's something to keep us on our toes a bit, it gives us a sense of accomplishment that we wouldn't have otherwise. If there were nothing to overcome, things wouldn't feel so good when we eventually reach them. So, welcome quirks and though they might be frustrating or keep you back for a bit, just work your way through them until you get to the other side.
With that, I guess I'll give a weekly update. AxL's dog treats are about to do a "test bake" at the bakery and we're still waiting on the packages to be delivered, hopefully sometime next week. It turns out that I've actually got to wait about two weeks for a pile of corporate paperwork to go through and I've got to spend a few hundred dollars on permits, etc. which means the first few orders of dog treats are going to simply go to paying for beauracracy....or however you spell it.
I'm midway on one of the last two final edits of my book proposal. And not to jinx a good thing, it's less than a week until I hopefully wrap up some final plans for the cross-country Segway attempt. All I know is I'm more than ready to get on the road and start putting some miles behind me, start reaching toward a tough goal again, enough of this sitting around in some boring-ass apartment doing not much of anything. It's time for another adventure.
Oh, I guess I should do some laundry first, though.
More soon...