Tag: letting go

An enlightening poem

The birds aren’t singing to win a grammy.

They’re not trying to go platinum, 

Do their marketing or planning,

They’re just jamming.

I’m not even understanding…


“Birdsong”  (IN-Q)


Words, recited with so much warmth, humour and kindness, depth and wisdom. This poet and his poem “Birdsong” got me fascinated instantly when I listened to him the first time on the Lewis Howes podcast.

It’s a very unusual piece and contains so many lines worth pondering over, that’s why I’d like to share what stuck out for me and what it made me think of.

The first lines caught my attention and made me smile. I love listening to the birds singing early at dawn when the sky is slowly brightening. 

They are indeed a bunch of jamming musicians, creating a unique and wonderful sound which is different every day in the quietude of the morning. And while they are doing it neither for financial gain nor admiration, we are listening in awe.

Humans are the only animals pretending to be something that they’re not.

Why are we ashamed of what we’ve got?


“Birdsong”  (IN-Q)

Now that truly hits home. Why are we hiding our true self? It’s ever so often about thinking that we are not good enough, don’t measure up to a standard. Actually which standard? The one set by others we are so easily submitting to, or our own unrealistic expectations we so often set for ourselves? 

It’s easy to get drawn into this spiral about what others do, like or have, so we want that as well. Irrelevant of whether it’s good or useful – or even meant for us. People are social animals, and watching someone else supposedly happy with whatever they got, a signal seems to pop up for us to start chasing after the very same thing.

Such reflex I experienced as well on occasion, putting myself under pressure by setting an unrealistic goal. And then I felt annoyed with myself for not achieving it, for getting doubts along the way and procrastinating. Now I take these feelings as a sure sign that this is not the right goal for me.  

Everyone has to walk their very own path, and that means finding out what is good and meant for me, and only for me. Especially since time is a finite resource which becomes more and more obvious when getting older.

Our creator gave us free will thus choice. That sets us apart from animals. And what do we do with it? Why are we so often pretending instead of being our authentic selves?

Why put up a show, building a fake persona or a fake life – to what end? To impress others or make them envy what I have allegedly got?

How sad it is, pretending (online) to have the perfect body, the perfect relationship, job, holidays ….. or the perfect life. 

Before social media existed, we also flaunted status symbols like a house, a car or “the right clothes”, showing off to impress the neighbours or our classmates at school. Today in the online world people have a much further reach through their posts, facilitating approval from across the globe for their “achievements”. 

But none of it can cover up what’s going on behind the scenes, and the polished facade we put out there is in essence nothing more than a desire to belong and to find happiness.

You have to be willing not to be liked in order to be loved.

“Birdsong” (IN-Q)

Wow – what a statement! And a tall order for sure. How often we are striving for acceptance and approval, for being liked – in the real world and online. 

Who’s got the courage to go against the flow and make themselves vulnerable? Admitting not to be perfect, to mess up from time to time, making mistakes and standing by these slip-ups. Yes, it takes courage. 

I found it gets easier since I got older though, because my priorities have changed. Some things are not that important to me anymore. And how good it felt to simply let go of my wish for perfection!

How to handle negative feedback and disapproval? Well, people can only see and know parts of you. The only person knowing the full picture is you. Have a look at what Thich Nath Hanh wrote about the 6th mantra: “…The other person only sees a part of you, not the totality, so you don’t have to be unhappy at all.” (Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Communicating (p. 86))

Stay true to yourself and close to yourself.

Show me the unseen stuff.

Don’t invite me over only after you have cleaned up.

“Birdsong” (IN-Q)

Show me what’s bothering you, what you’re struggling with and let me help you carry the load. I want to meet your true self. That helps me to be my true self.

In everybody’s life there is something not going right. It’s important to share it and be honest about it. Why hiding it? There is no need to be ashamed. We are all in it together. Nobody is without flaws, without a drama of some kind in their lives.  

These lines made me laugh though, because when I invite friends, I often use it as an opportunity to clean up my creative chaos as I call it. Mostly half finished watercolour paintings, wool in all shapes and sizes, paper, cards, origami dwelling on the table and taking up space on my sofa. 

What the unseen stuff means to me is how I really feel and what is important, and what I want to share with another human being.

To truly be yourself you have to let go of what was.

“Birdsong” (IN-Q)

The past determines a lot. And we are not good at letting go, we are holding grudges, struggling to forgive. It’s easier to blame whatever is not going well in our lives on someone or something else, remaining in the “victim of circumstances mindset”. 

But we cannot go back in time and change the past. Accepting what has happened and that it’s a part of us is crucial and helps to move on. 

How hard it may seem at the start: making peace with your past is the only way forward. 

Do it one step at a time, especially if there is a lot to process or to forgive. I found the act of repetition helpful because it established a positive pattern over time. It’s showed me that it’s possible to move on, even if it takes quite a few reiterations. It’s never “done” in one go anyway, you need to re-visit your wounds again and again. 

But once you’ve done it the first time and felt how it opened a door for you, it’s a feeling you will remember the next time round, and that helps you to push forward and repeat the action, trusting that turning into this direction already changes your life’s trajectory and helps you to stay on your chosen path.

That’s what the healing journey is all about.

Stay courageous and curious!

Check out IN-Q for more poems and inspiration:

https://www.youtube.com/@INQonline

https://www.in-q.com/

Acknowledging our own Emotions

Your default reaction to a problem or any challenging situation does not define who you are. Your chosen response does. It shows your progress, your emotional maturity.

Yung Pueblo writes a lot about this topic, and reading his words made me ponder about my reaction in situations which do not go according to (my) plan. Like unforeseen events, delays on public transport, someone making a mistake that impacts me –  anything that could be considered as changing a goalpost in the middle of a game. 

My typical first reaction is getting angry and fretting about potential disadvantages and the ensuing pressure. I want to protect myself and start blaming and complaining. I am blowing the whole thing out of proportion,  knowing it while I am doing it. I know very well that reality is different and that I am exaggerating. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I am already trying to establish my options.

Then I switch to solution mode, thinking about how I want to respond – looking at the facts and setting up a plan. But it doesn’t end there.

I move back and forth a few times between my initial reaction and my chosen response. It takes me a while to step away from the repeating cycle – let’s better call it “lamenting cycle”.

Repeating my thoughts around a problem thus making it bigger than it is, is a typical human behaviour, and it gets me into a negative mindset making the situation feeling worse and worse. It is also a complete waste of my time and energy. 

The last time I did this (after receiving incorrect advice from a tax consultant) I asked myself: do I really want to go on like this? Which purpose does it serve? How does it help me?

Although I eventually managed to stop myself from further engaging in angry monologues, for several days I still felt drawn to going back to that lamenting cycle. Surprising how strong that temptation was to continue an unproductive behaviour.

When we truly begin to let go, happiness will no longer just be our friend, it will become our home.

Yung Pueblo

I realized as well my tendency to blame someone else or “the world” or fate in that moment, instead of letting go and taking responsibility myself. It felt as if I wanted to make somebody else feel guilty about my problem.

Things outside of my control I cannot change, but I need to accept the situation and manage it with what I have got at my disposal. That’s not always easy, of course. 

What finally convinced me to calm down, was the realization how much I had learned in the past months, and that I wanted to honour these insights by choosing a new approach. After all, I knew how to do it better.

My counsellor had told me that falling back into an old habit is not failure, but only human, that it will happen again, but that I would realize in that very moment what was playing in my background and that way having the chance to respond differently, without stressing myself out. 

I know it’s not a given and will continue to be challenging each time that a difficult situation or a difficult emotion arises. But I trust it will become easier over time, especially with repetition. Structure is part of recovery: to recognize what is working and sticking with it.

What she also told me: acknowledging the emotions coming up – the undercurrent – is important and the first thing to do. Emotions need to be given the space they deserve. Jumping too fast into solution mode means ignoring the emotional side. 

That was the reason why I felt so torn between the lamenting cycle and my choice to respond differently: the emotion came back again and again, demanding to be seen and heard.

My solution orientation being my comfort zone explains why I am so used to resorting to analysing, instead of connecting with my body to feel what it’s telling me.

And what came up was my difficult emotion of course: unsafety. 

Feeling safe is a very basic need. When safety is impacted, then all other functions are compromised. In this moment, no willingness exists to understand or communicate well, to be reasonable and open. All this is overwritten, defaulting to the sole instinct reaction to protect myself. 

So that’s what I need to practice more: giving the emotions that come up their space, accepting them – but without being controlled by them. The benefit: by skipping the lamenting cycle that way, it will become easier for me to choose my intentional response. 

It is as it is – feeling unsafe will always be my difficult emotion – it won’t disappear. It belongs to me. 

I am learning to embrace it as a part of me.

your immediate reaction
does not tell you who you are
it is how you decide to respond after the reaction
that gives you real insight
into how much you have grown
your first reaction is your past
your intentional response is your present

Yung Pueblo

Some food for thought:

What is your difficult emotion? Do you give it space?

How does it feel when you embrace it?

Trust the voice within and learn to let go

Focus on what you can control – what is in your own sphere of influence. Easier said than done. Although knowing it well I regularly happen to fall into the same trap again and again, getting worked up about things I simply cannot change – because I am not the decision maker. Some examples:

  • Government decisions
  • The slow pace at which much needed change happens
  • Climate change
  • Other people not doing what I would like them to do (a particularly ridiculous one)
  • Not to forget, the covid pandemic changing our lives forever

I need to remind myself from time to time that the only things I really can control is my perspective and my own behaviour. My response to the events of life – which is my choice. It always comes down to mindset, ultimately. 

Why is it so hard to let go?

It’s not as if I’d release control by letting go – because I have none in the first place. What I find so hard to bear is this helpless feeling of having to accept the inevitable: things taking a wrong turn in my opinion and me being unable to stop it. 

Take climate change for example. Knowing that decisions taken by our governments to combat it are still not sufficient, which will cause even more irreversible damage to the planet thus impacting all our lives, is a hard pill to swallow. Like a cloud casting a shadow I cannot chase away.

Often it’s not difficult to anticipate an outcome, but I simply don’t want this outcome to materialize itself. Which makes it even harder for me not to give in to despair.

So, whenever such inner dialogue starts to take up too much space in my head, I try to actively stop myself and re-direct my thoughts. Merely hoping for a twist of fate in form of a nice surprise which will prove me wrong in the end, because the human factor in the equation is never predictable (which of course, could be a blessing or a curse either way). 

Until then I talk myself into having trust that things will work out somehow, and not worry too much in the process. 

I don’t always succeed though.

There are two ways to be. One is at war with reality and the other is at peace. (Byron Katie)

And so, I experience a recurring pattern of complaining and worrying about something I have no influence on. Maybe I should rather be happy about becoming aware of this behaviour much earlier now than I did decades ago. My “worrying turnaround cycle” indeed got faster which is one small success after all. 

Probably, that’s all I can expect? Is this a lifetime exercise about strengthening my awareness, achieving patience and some sort of equanimity? Learning to encounter the events of life with a little more assuredness, confidence and trust? 

Don’t get me wrong – I am not advocating to stay indifferent in the face of the many, many problems life shoves into our path. We certainly can and should take responsibility to do something – but it needs to be a contribution which we can control and is worth our time. 

For all else beyond our control we do not have a magic wand to prevent or reverse events – however unfortunate that might feel sometimes. Accepting this is really hard. Some days it feels like advancing on a thin wire while struggling to keep my balance. 

It takes trust – especially in people who have not given up yet holding all of us in balance – like a net supporting us. But first and foremost, we need to have trust in ourselves, because we are a part of this support net. 

Learning from the pandemic situation

Think about how the pandemic has pushed us violently out of our comfort zone since it started to change our lives forever. Suddenly, there was a lot more to worry about than usual, and far more uncertainty. And nobody could escape it. The situation asked a lot of us. Flexibility, trust, perseverance to name but a few – and that certainly is not easy to muster for everyone. 

It is tiring to hang in there for such a long time, in this rollercoaster of emotions, hopes and fears. What fascinates me: there is still hope. We still do not give up. We might be angry, frustrated and sad, but we still hope for the return of some form of normal life which will give us back at least some sort of control. 

Surely, we cannot expect everything going according to plan because it never does anyway. But giving up planning for the most part of the last two years was a surrender to reality for me. And a big test of (not only my) patience. Being so used to planning ahead and looking for solutions I felt stuck. 

Don’t hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way they happen: this is the path to peace. (Epictetus)

Then I decided to take it as an exercise in letting go. Allowing myself more room than ever before. “Leaning into discomfort” (Brené Brown) is essential in a challenging situation, but we often don’t dare to go down that road. To try it out lets us grow, however scary it feels. And it’s totally ok to be scared when doing hard things.

I was not alone in this. The many conversations with friends and colleagues who were struggling themselves while moving along, the mutual encouragement, all these little signs of support and understanding did and still do help. 

To move forward trusting my voice within. Hesitating, stumbling, sometimes falling – and then getting back up.

Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on. (Eckhart Tolle)

Now things do start to look better, even with a bumpy road ahead. Finally, there is light at the end of the tunnel. And once again we see that life takes unexpected turns, and not necessarily always bad ones.

My best piece of news I found last week: two Texas scientists developed a cheaper, easier to make and to distribute anti-covid vaccine which they do not intend to patent, so anyone could reproduce it. Thus enabling low-income countries to make it available faster to far larger parts of their population. 

It means we are coming closer now to global vaccine equity because two people did the right thing without hesitation, hoping others will follow their example.

If we ever needed proof that not all is lost, here you go.

The past two years have put a spotlight on many things. Not only on what does not work well and where our priorities should lie, but also on what we are capable of. 

What we can control – and what we need to live with.

Where we should take action – and where we need to let go.