Today we ask that you practice letting go around areas where you feel blocked or frustrated.
Most people feel frustrated or blocked in certain areas of their life.
The usual response is to fixate on these areas, to obsess and stress over them, to want to resolve the problem right away.
But often the true solution to these matters is counterintuitive. The correct action to take is to release your energetic grip on the matter. To let go.
It is like the conundrum of the Chinese Finger Trap. The more you struggle to release your fingers from a Chinese Finger Trap, the more stuck you become. The solution to the puzzle is to cease all struggle and resistance, and behave counterintuitively by moving one’s fingers deeper into the Trap.
This does not mean that you should avoid or neglect problem situations.
However, stressing and obsessing over problem situations can and will perpetuate the problem, and create new problems.
The key to any situation is to approach it with an open, expansive energy. This is impossible when you are stressed and frustrated.
That is why it is always useful to step away from a problem temporarily, so that you can relax your energy around it. That is why people say to “Sleep on it” — this is good advice. Ideally, you step away long enough that you can feel a sense of relaxed humor around the problem, that you do not take the matter so seriously or feel angry and offended.
Impulsive action arising from anger or taking personal offense at something never leads to an effective solution. It only makes problems worse.
Whereas stepping away from problems and relaxing around them leads to much more effective action.
This is difficult, in a crisis. And yet the best leaders are able to create such space for themselves, able to step away even briefly so that they can clear their heads and respond with wisdom and clarity.
Most humans do not know how to do this. They obsess over their woes, and must complain to everyone around them. This only perpetuates their problems, though they do not realize it.
The course of greatest wisdom is always to let go. Let go, but do not ignore or bury problems.
Here is one intelligent thing you can do:
Say that you are frustrated by some seemingly intractable matter, some blocked or stuck energy.
Instead of obsessing over it, complaining to others, and taking some impulsive action, either set a timer or make a note in your calendar to address the problem later, after you’ve given yourself time and space to relax around it.
You can give yourself ten minutes, an hour, a day, a week. Whatever duration feels right to you.
And in that time, you make a real effort to focus your energy elsewhere, in areas of your life where there is more flow and good feeling. If you only have a brief amount of time, use it to meditate, or go for a walk, or listen to music.
What you will discover, if you do this, is that in most cases, the problem will resolve itself. And if it does not, you are in much better place to address it with wisdom.
Much drama could be avoided if people followed this very simple practice.
wordfromthewell 