The Key To Behavior Mastery : Letting Go Third Part

The Key To Behavior Mastery : Letting Go Third Part

We’ve discussed how our attachments, our desires, are the root of much of our painful habits.This article builds heavily on ideas covered in the first two posts Part1 and Part2.
But what do we do, then? What if the usual methods of handling our behaviours are making them worse? This article details some of these errors, and provides a long-term solution, the most useful I have come across: simply dropping the rubbish.

Denial and Suppression
The first thing to know is that we cannot deny our desires, pretend they don’t exist, push them down. Repressed cravings, like emotions, will simply resurface in the future with greater intensity, in a different form, or create psychological and physical symptoms.
A good friend of mine used to overeat compulsively, and one day decided to stop using sheer will-power. Soon afterwards, she began smoking heavily, but she justified it by saying it helped her lose weight. When she decided to stop that, again using will-power, she started drinking almost nightly.
Why was this so? She had changed her external behaviours over the years, but the driving forces inside her remained the same. She was shocked when she begun to practise awareness, she told me – for she discovered the triggers for all these behaviours stemmed from the same insecurities and fears.

Many of the ways we handle our desires and attachments are helpful, but are merely temporary measures. I am not saying that channelling your energy into other outlets, or quitting a bad behaviour through force of will is wrong, if they work for you – but they are not permanent solutions.
Further, these techniques create more inner conflict. The craving itself is causing us pain. We are adding to it every time we fight it; force it down; beating ourselves up or feeling guilty about indulging.
Please note that this article has a general behavioural focus; I am not an expert on addiction. The addictions I have quit, and therefore discuss here, are fairly minor – cigarettes, painful mental habits (rumination), and various other unhealthy lifestyle choices. So if you are dealing with a serious addiction, this is not a replacement for whatever program you are on, but something that can be attempted in conjunction.

Based on my research and discussions with others, the principles are the same, regardless of the habit or behaviour you want to change.
Bringing Awareness To Your Behaviours
What then, can we do? In my experience, the best practice is to let go of all your painful attachments, behaviours, habits, and tendencies.
To do so, we first need awareness, mindfulness. The first post of this series contains a section on analysing your negative habits. This step alone will raise your awareness of how it manifests in your life, the possible root causes and insecurities. This is a tremendous step, so please take the time to try it.
The mind will often fight this exercise. This is the cutting to the core of our suffering – and we will do anything to avoid looking at parts of ourselves we do not want to see. The mind screams, fights, tricks, deceives – anything to get us to avoid the pain. Some people even begin to feel dizzy or bored.
Lorne Ladner, in The Lost Art of Compassion , provides some useful questions.
Analyse your behaviours –
• What were you feeling at the time?
• Does it come when you are stressed or angry?
• When you are reminded of something in your past?
• When you are feeling lonely, unloved, insecure about something?
• Does it come during a specific time in the day?
• Is it associated with other feelings?
• What were some of the triggers?
I first started smoking a while ago, for instance, when I felt lonely. It was after a break-up, and whenever I felt insecure about my attractiveness, or saw other happy couples, I would run and hide behind a cigarette.

Awareness In The Moment
With this background work, it is easier to bring awareness to your actions in the moment. Be mindful of what you are feeling; try to catch yourself when the triggers present themselves. Thich Nhat Hanh calls them habit energies, and I think that is a beautifully apt name.

Sometimes you’ll only realise what you’ve done when it is over. Don’t make a problem out of it. Slowly, you’ll catch yourself sooner and sooner in the habitual cycle. In time, you’ll be able to stop yourself before the behaviour even starts.
Awareness and the habit energies that drive us are so broadly applicable that they can be applied to almost anything. I’ve found people tend to be “locked in” by my examples, so I’ll select from several different examples – some successful, some not – in the hopes it can stimulate your own explorations.

Anger Habits
The first example would be my anger habits. A few weeks ago I had a big online argument with a close friend. I have not had reason to be so angry for a long time, and as a result I was not actively watching out for habit energies in that area. In addition, much of my habits around anger have been let go of, and I thought I was done with it. I did not realise some old and stubborn habits had remained hidden inside me.

My friend managed to press just the right buttons, and in that moment I was overwhelmed and piled on him several abusive and foul-mouthed messages.
As the days passed, my thoughts would flash back to the argument, and as the anger arose again, I felt the urge to contact him again to start another fight. Sometimes the habits got too strong, but with awareness, I dropped many of these urges before I acted on them.

Mental Habits
Another area we can apply this to would be our mental life. When I began personal development, I used to have a strong tendency to drift off into painful memories, replaying them endlessly in my head. Often I would suddenly look at the clock and realise I had spent the past two hours reliving an old insult, fantasising about revenge. Over the months that followed, I began to “snap out” of the reverie sooner. In time I managed to bring awareness to the triggers that would start such self-pity sessions, and have stopped them altogether.
Social Behaviour

The last example would be in the social world. I used to indulge in approval seeking behaviour – trying to manipulate people into liking me by smiling too much, showing too much false interest, or exaggerating accomplishments. It was a deeply ingrained habit, based on the false belief that I was not likeable simply for whom I was.
This habit was a bit more complex simply because of the countless ways my insecurity showed up; but it is useful to note that we do not have to be aware of them all. Start with a few – excessive smiling, boasting – and you’ll find the others much easier.

Again, be gentle with yourself. While some people can make tremendous progress in days or weeks, it would be more realistic to measure your progress in months.
The Growing Awareness
Some people spontaneously drop their habit energies when they become aware of it. But don’t make it a problem if you don’t – simply stop and take a few deep breaths when the habits arise.

By doing so, you are interrupting the loop, and being mindful of what it is. Thich Nhat Hanh puts it simply – smile internally. Hello, habit energy. And let it pass through.
In doing so, we disconnect with our compulsions –
“I have to make this person love me” becomes “This is my tendency to supplicate.”
“I WANT TO KILL HIM!” becomes “Hello, anger energy.”
“I need to smoke!” becomes “My insecurities have been brought up again.”
How much freedom comes from that one shift!

Letting Go
If we see our habits and compulsions are simply energy, perhaps blocks of thoughts and feelings – we can simply let them pass through us.
What are you thinking now? What were you thinking five minutes ago? Where did they go, where did they come from? Thoughts and feelings simply come and go, and that is what they are supposed to do.
Our minds have been wrongly habituated to hold on to certain thoughts and feelings, when the natural, healthy, response is to simply let them through. And so freedom comes in retraining our minds, to go back to what they are supposed to do: let go.

How Do We Let Go?
So how do we release? First, feel these energies completely without repressing them. Say hello to them; let them be there for a few seconds. In the first two posts, we have seen that these habits, cravings, and attachments merely cause our suffering. They don’t satisfy us for long; at best, they are a temporary relief. And finally, we’ve discussed that we can still enjoy what we have, in fact enjoy them even more, without the associated cravings.
With that in mind, simply try dropping it. This can be a difficult process to learn, because most of us have never tried it before. The first time you do it, you probably won’t get it right. Drop it, in the same way that we loosen our grip on a pencil and simply let it fall to the floor. Relax, soften up internally and physically, and let it go.
If you are having troubles with this, a technique from NLP might help. What is your strongest sense? If you prefer seeing, try to picture your habit energy. What colour is it? What does it look like? Does it have a shape, a picture?
If you prefer, try hearing it. What does it sound like? Is it a voice? What is the tone? Is it a sound? An animal?
Or you can feel it – is it a tightness in your chest, a heat in your neck, or any other sensation?

Then whatever it is, try dropping that. Don’t get too caught up in these imaginings, they are training wheels, meant to be discarded at the right time.
Miracles May Happen, But Don’t Expect Too Much
If you do let go of the desire, you probably won’t get any fireworks or excitement. You won’t feel any deflation or anything negative either. You just feel the urge has lessened, or that you feel satisfied and relaxed without having indulged in it.
The first time I heard about letting go was from a Buddhist teacher I met a long time ago. I tried it for a day or two, didn’t feel any different, and simply gave up on it. This is a common mistake – while some people can drop it all immediately, many cannot. The habits are so strong, have been there for so long, that we are dropping bits and pieces of it.

The desire might return in the future, and it might feel just as intense, but it doesn’t mean that you’re doing something wrong. It just means that you haven’t dropped enough to see a significant difference. This is especially true when we are learning how to do it. Dropping becomes faster and easier the more we practice, so please don’t get discouraged.
Further, realise that these desires are surface expressions of something far deeper, something that has possibly been there for decades. It doesn’t always go away in a few days.

If you are still having troubles, I recommend The Sedona Method . While their marketing might turn off some people, the method is entirely about letting go.
In the book and the audio course, they trace all tendencies and emotions back to the roots: the four basic wants. Wanting control, approval, security, and separation are the master programs the Method claims underlie all our tendencies, and I have found it tremendously helpful to let go of those directly.
Albert Foong

I took the liberty to post some of their methods here.I will add you are free to use any that will suit you from any other source.
There are three ways to approach the process of releasing, and they all lead to the same result: liberating your natural ability of letting go of any unwanted emotion on the spot, and allowing some of the suppressed energy in your subconscious to dissipate. The first way is by choosing to let go of the unwanted feeling. The second way is to welcome the feeling, to allow the emotion just to be. The third way is to dive into the very core of the emotion.

A simple exercise:
Let me explain by asking you to participate in a simple exercise. Pick up a pen, a pencil, or some small object that you would be willing to drop without giving it a second thought. Now, hold it in front of you and really grip it tightly. Pretend this is one of your limiting feelings and that your hand represents your gut or your consciousness. If you held the object long enough, this would start to feel uncomfortable yet familiar.
Now, open your hand and roll the object around in it. Notice that you are the one holding on to it; it is not attached to your hand. The same is true with your feelings, too. Your feelings are as attached to you as this object is attached to your hand.
We hold on to our feelings and forget that we are holding on to them. It’s even in our language. When we feel angry or sad, we don’t usually say, “I feel angry,” or, “I feel sad.” We say, “I am angry,” or, “I am sad.” Without realizing it, we are misidentifying that we are the feeling. Often, we believe a feeling is holding on to us. This is not true… we are always in control and just don’t know it.

Now, let the object go.
What happened? You let go of the object, and it dropped to the floor. Was that hard? Of course not. That’s what we mean when we say “let go.”
You can do the same thing with any emotion: choose to let it go.
Sticking with this same analogy: If you walked around with your hand open, wouldn’t it be very difficult to hold on to the pen or other object you’re holding? Likewise, when you allow or welcome a feeling, you are opening your consciousness, and this enables the feeling to drop away all by itself—like the clouds passing in the sky or smoke passing up a chimney with the flue open. It is as though you are removing the lid from a pressure cooker.

Now, if you took the same object—a pencil, pen, or pebble—and magnified it large enough, it would appear more and more like empty space. You would be looking into the gaps between the molecules and atoms. When you dive into the very core of a feeling, you will observe a comparable phenomenon: nothing is really there.
As you master the process of releasing, you will discover that even your deepest feelings are just on the surface. At the core you are empty, silent, and at peace—not in the pain and darkness that most of us would assume. In fact, even our most extreme feelings have only as much substance as a soap bubble. And you know what happens when you poke your finger into a soap bubble: it pops. That’s exactly what happens when you dive into the core of a feeling.

Please keep these three analogies in mind as we go through the releasing process together. Releasing will help you to free yourself of behavior, thought and feelings from all your unwanted patterns. All that is required from you is being as open as you can be to the process. Releasing will free you to access clearer thinking, yet it is not a thinking process. Although it will help you to access heightened creativity, you don’t need to be particularly creative to be effective at doing it.
You will get the most out of the process of releasing the more you allow yourself to see, hear, and feel it working, rather than by thinking about how and why it works. Lead, as best you can, with your heart, not your head. If you find yourself getting a little stuck in trying to figure it out, you can use the identical process to let go of “wanting to figure it out.” Guaranteed, as you work with this process, you will understand it more fully by having the direct experience of doing it.
So here we go.

The Choice of letting go and Aiming for Emotional Intelligence
Make yourself comfortable and focus inwardly. Your eyes may be open or closed.
Step 1: Focus on an issue that you would like to feel better about, and then allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling in this moment. This doesn’t have to be a strong feeling. In fact, you can even check on how you feel about this exercise and what you want to get from it. Just welcome the feeling and allow it to be as fully or as best you can.

This instruction may seem simplistic, but it needs to be. Most of us live in our thoughts, pictures, and stories about the past and the future, rather than being aware of how we actually feel in this moment. The only time that we can actually do anything about the way we feel (and, for that matter, about our businesses or our lives) is NOW. You don’t need to wait for a feeling to be strong before letting go. In fact, if you are feeling numb, flat, blank, cut off, or empty inside, those are feelings that can be let go of just as easily as the more recognizable ones. Simply do the best you can. The more you work with this process, the easier it will be for you to identify what you are feeling.
Step 2: Ask yourself one of the following three questions:
• Could I let this feeling go?
• Could I allow this feeling to be here?
• Could I welcome this feeling?

These questions are merely asking you if it is possible to take this action. “Yes” or “no” are both acceptable answers. You will often let go even if you say “no.” As best you can, answer the question that you choose with a minimum of thought, staying away from second-guessing yourself or getting into an internal debate about the merits of that action or its consequences.
All the questions used in this process are deliberately simple. They are not important in and of themselves but are designed to point you to the experience of letting go, to the experience of stopping holding on. Go on to Step 3 no matter how you answered the first question.
Step 3: No matter which question you started with, ask yourself this simple question: Would I? In other words: Am I willing to let go?

Again, stay away from debate as best you can. Also remember that you are always doing this process for yourself—for the purpose of gaining your own freedom and clarity. It doesn’t matter whether the feeling is justified, long-standing, or right.
If the answer is “no,” or if you are not sure, ask yourself: “Would I rather have this feeling, or would I rather be free?”
Even if the answer is still “no,” go on to Step 4.
Step 4: Ask yourself this simpler question: When?
This is an invitation to just let it go NOW. You may find yourself easily letting go.

Remember that letting go is a decision you can make any time you choose.
Step 5: Repeat the preceding four steps as often as needed until you feel free of that particular feeling.
You will probably find yourself letting go a little more on each step of the process. The results at first may be quite subtle. Very quickly, if you are persistent, the results will get more and more noticeable. You may find that you have layers of feelings about a particular topic. However, what you let go of is gone for good.

Out from the Deep - Enigma


With Love and light