Life Is So Much Easier When You Learn To Let Things Go

When we’re hurt, it’s difficult to let go of pain and find inner peace with a grievance. However, life will be much more simple if you can learn to just let that crap go.

1. You shouldn’t harbor anger. As the saying goes, “holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Seething will only hurt you in the long run and from personal experience, I can tell you that staring daggers at someone won’t end in any kind of gratifying result. It seems that looks can’t kill, after all. Save that mental energy you’re expelling wishing harm upon someone because karma will do the work for you eventually. When someone has wronged you, the best way to get back at them is to pick yourself up and prove that you’re better off without them.
2. You’re wasting precious time and energy on useless emotions. Anger and jealousy don’t benefit us. Perhaps anger can fuel us to do better and be better, but hatred has never truly helped anyone. Focus on your own happiness, because you shouldn’t waste your time on someone who isn’t worth it in the first place.
3. You can’t change the past or other people. You can only change what’s within your power like your eating habits or time management skills. Unfortunately, the past is untouchable unless you’re a time-traveling Doctor and people only change at their own volition. When someone has no interest in trying to right their wrongs, there’s nothing you can do to change that.
4. You shouldn’t get unnecessarily angry over silly and petty crap. We all have our less than stellar moments when trivial matters manage to worm their way under our skin. Bad days can stretch into weeks, but taking out your frustration on someone over every little annoyance makes you the villain. Your boyfriend isn’t trying to slight you by forgetting to start the dishwasher or pick up his socks and it’s certainly nothing to slam doors about.
5. You’ll begin to see things in a new light. When you start to let things go, you’re less likely to react in anger and you’ll see things through a different perspective. Perhaps you were being a tad self-centered and failed to see how your actions hurt other people. When you let your anger go and are able to approach a situation calmly, you’re much more likely to reach an understanding with the other person.
6. You can start to focus on what’s important. Hating someone can take up a significant amount of time, thought, and energy. Why not put all that towards something more productive and that will actually make you happy? Time spent being angry is precious time wasted.
7. Your emotions will feel more valid when you’re not sweating the small stuff. Have you ever had an argument where lashing out felt completely justified and then an hour later you felt mortified about the way you acted? When you let small irritations go and spend more time working through your emotions before approaching someone else about a problem, you’ll feel more confident. Maybe there was never a problem in the first place.
8. You’ll stop feeling like the victim and be more in control. Whining constantly and saying “boo-hoo, poor me” can only make you the victim for so long. People don’t like being around someone who can’t take responsibility for their own actions and is constantly finding somewhere to place blame. Take control of your own life by admitting fault.
9. You’ll learn to forgive yourself. It’s much more difficult to forgive yourself than it is to forgive others. Be honest, you still occasionally kick yourself for something silly you said or did over five years ago. Once you begin acknowledging and processing through your emotions, forgiveness for your past will follow.
10. You’ll find healthy ways to express pain. Letting something go seems uncomplicated, but anger, stress, and irritation don’t disappear on their own. You have to express your emotions in some way and writing a letter you never send or taking a kickboxing class will offer an outlet for that.
11. You’ll start to take responsibility for your actions. No one likes being wrong, but if you can admit when you are, you’re much less likely to make a fool of yourself. Those who are responsible for themselves can better control their outbursts and realize whether or not an argument is even worth it.
12. Your emotions will no longer control you. When stress accumulates it seems damn near impossible not to hurl a chair across the room. Once anger consumes us, we often begin to ramble, yell, and verbally cut people we care about despite it being counterproductive and hurtful. Instead of lashing out and acting irrationally, let it go and be the sane one in the argument.