What Do You Need To Leave Behind To Move Forward?

Normally when we get to the end of the year I talk about the importance of setting goals for the next year so that you take action and create the life of your dreams moving into the new year.

But today I want to come at this from a different angle. This is the convergence of ideas from four wise souls who I admire...

Bob Proctor talks about creating a space for the good that you desire.

My mentor, Eben Pagan, says that in order to go to the next level in our lives we need to let go of the things that we're identified with at this level.

Dr. Joe Dispenza says that we cannot create a new future by holding on to the emotions of the past.

And Marie Kondo, the Japanese tidying expert, poses the question: Is this something you want to take with you into your future?

I'll come back to these ideas in a little bit, but I want to set that up by telling you a story from my life. I don't often talk about my story, but I think it's relevant to give you some context for moving forward in your own life.

A few days ago I was looking for something in my bathroom drawers and I came across this stuff that I had from when I started having problems with my hands and had surgery and was eventually diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis. Splints, straps, padding, compression gloves, bandages, gauze, waterproof protectors, putty and sponges for rehabilitation.

These items sound innocuous enough, but they represent a period of intense suffering in my life. It was about 2 years of my life where I was in immense physical pain. It was so bad that I couldn't play piano anymore. I lost a lot of mobility and strength. I couldn't open bottles or even door handles. I couldn't prepare my own food or do housework. I had to rely on other people to do really simple tasks for me.

And it wasn't just the physical pain. It was the loss of my independence. It was the emotional pain and the uncertainty. My life savings were quickly chewed up by medical expenses... surgery, physio, the various medical aids. I tried so many things before surgery, none of which helped. The doctors said they had never seen anything like it. That was reassuring.

I was tormented by these questions: Would I ever recover? Would I ever be able to play piano again? Would I have to give up on my dream of being a successful musician? Who would I be if I wasn't a musician? What was my place in the world? What would I do? How would I support myself? Would I completely lose the use of my hands? Would I be able to look after myself? Would I have to move in with my parents? Would I even be able to wipe my own arse? I fell deeper into the abyss of despair. It was one of the darkest times of my life.

Now, I've made a lot of progress since then, especially in terms of my mindset and emotional regulation. I've arrested the progression of the condition and improved a lot, but I still haven't healed completely. And I had an insight that maybe I was unconsciously holding on to these splints, gloves and medical aids.

I realised that as far as I have come in the last 3 or 4 years, I still have one foot in that world. If I really expected complete healing, I would have disposed of those items. But there was some part of me that kept them because I thought I might have a relapse, my condition would worsen and I'd need them again.

We unconsciously hold on to things from our past that we identify with. That keeps us stuck at this level. We can't move forward.

I've been unconsciously holding on to these medical aids because I'm still identified with this disease and the disability that comes from it. Why in the world would I want to hang on to that, especially when you consider all the things I've lost and the suffering I've gone through?

Many of us are addicted to our struggle. We get secondary benefits from it whether it's getting sympathy or getting attention or we're able to avoid taking responsibility.

I believe I've been holding onto these items because I'm still addicted to my struggle subconsciously. The payoff is I can keep procrastinating and avoiding responsibility. It's been a way to keep myself small and safe because I have a fear of being seen in the world in a bigger way and potentially being judged, criticised, rejected.

So it became obvious that for me to move forward, I'd need to let go of these things that no longer serve me. I didn't want to take them and everything they represented into my future. And so I threw them out.

As we leave 2020 behind, what will you let go of that no longer serves you? What are you identified with or attached to that's preventing you from going to the next level in your life?

What can you release from you life that will allow you to create a space for what you desire?

It could be a physical item, a limiting belief or mindset, an unproductive habit, a disempowering behaviour, an obsolete identity, or a relationship that's keeping you small.

What's a physical item that you might need to let go of? Maybe there's something in your house that makes you feel bad every time you walk past it. Maybe it's some half-completed project that's sitting in pieces collecting dust and creating clutter.

What's a limiting belief or mindset that you might need to let go of? Maybe you have a particular line of negative self-talk that you do repeatedly, like you're a loser, that your brain just isn't wired for learning a certain skill, that you're no good on camera so you can't do a livestream, that your singing voice isn't good enough, or that you blew your big opportunity and now you're too old.

Maybe it's a limiting belief that your music has to be perfect before you put it out into the world or else people will hate it and hate you and think you suck.

It could be the belief that you're going to create a full-time living from your music exclusively from live performances. Maybe you had an insight when COVID-19 hit and your gigs dried up and you realised how unstable and unreliable that can be as a source of income, and how little leverage you have in that situation.

What's an unproductive habit that you might need to let go of? Maybe it's staying up too late and not getting enough sleep. And then you wake up feeling tired and you're masking that with caffeine or energy drinks. Maybe it's around creating music. You say you don't have enough time to write, but you're binge-watching Netflix for hours every night when that time could be put towards writing. Or you write something and you're so disappointed with the results that you go smoke a joint or get drunk to numb yourself from the pain for a while instead of persevering and editing and refining your work.

What's a disempowering behaviour that you might need to let go of? It could be an emotional pattern that you do when you feel triggered in your relationship, like blowing up at your partner and escalating a disagreement into a full-on fight.

Maybe you have a disempowering pattern around avoiding your emotions, like eating junk food because you're trying to mask feeling a certain emotion. This then has a flow-on effect of not feeling good physically for the next few hours after you have a sugar crash, or, if you do it often enough, you might even get fat.

What's an obsolete part of your identity that you might need to let go of? If you identify as a musician, that identity circumscribes your actions. You think as a musician you just write music, record it and perform it. But maybe you're having trouble building your audience and making a full-time living from your music. So you might need to let go of your exclusive identification as a musician in order to embrace a bigger identity that also includes marketing so that you can find an audience and build your fanbase.

What's a relationship you might need to let go of? Perhaps one of your bandmates just isn't pulling their weight, they're not putting in the effort to learn their parts, they're not showing up to rehearsals or writing sessions, or they're never available, or they're not as committed as you, and so you just keep spinning your wheels. And maybe they're a friend so you don't want to fire them from the band, but they're holding you back from moving forward.

It requires some reflection and awareness to determine these things. A lot of the time they're unconscious because they're so deeply ingrained through repetition that they've become woven into the fabric of our daily lives.

We want to make the unconscious conscious so that we can bring some awareness to these parts of our life and get leverage on ourselves so that we can move forward.

You probably have several of these things. But we don't want to get bogged down and overwhelmed, so just pick one. What's the one that would make the biggest difference for you if you released it, if you stopped identifying with it, if you didn't take it into your future?

Letting go of these patterns probably won't happen instantaneously. It's a process that might take weeks or even months. But the important thing is to become aware of what's holding you back and then to make the decision to consciously release it.

One last important point. We don't want to shame ourselves for doing these behaviours or patterns or habits. When you shame yourself, you only make that behaviour dig its heels in and become more firmly entrenched and it becomes harder to shift. The behaviour is disempowering, but it developed as a protective mechanism. It was the best thing we could come up with the tools and resources we had available to us at that time. And there's a lesson behind it for you to learn. And when you learn the lesson, you see how you can move forward. So you can thank the pattern for its service in keeping you safe, and then release it.