Letting Go and Commitment

The Balancing Act
Life Manual Newsletter No.16

In Letting Go to Move Forward, Newsletter No. 15, we explored the concepts and tools of Letting Go. In our lives as well as our relationships, letting go lives alongside commitment.  True commitment is taking whole hearted action based on our choices. Misunderstanding commitment can lead us to living half heartedly, which is the same as a life half lived. It can also leave us standing still in our lives, either torn between choices or feeling that we are carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders. Whether in our relationships, friendships, families or careers and jobs, this blocks the happiness and success that true commitment can give us. When we add expectations to our commitments, and move on to blame when our expectations aren’t met, everybody gets to be unhappy!

Commitment

Commitment can be a very confusing concept. Often it is seen as a one time promise that we make at the beginning of a relationship whether to a partner, friend, job or career, or even our children. Unfortunately, commitment often becomes a ‘have to’ or a ‘should’ as time goes on. ‘Shoulding’ on ourself, means we build up resistance to the things ‘we have to’ do. They become an increasing burden, and cause great stress in our lives. We are like a donkey walking uphill carrying big panniers on our backs. Every ‘should’ or ‘have to’ is like another rock thrown into our pannier, and we are walking more and more slowly and painfully up the hill. One day we may wake up and find the accumulation of rocks or ‘shoulds’ has become so great, that we literally can’t get up off the ground. (Link to Chuck’s  video on stress)

Commitment is a choice followed by action, and we will make choices over and over again in every aspect of our lives. I was given a great insight into how choice works many years ago. I was travelling with a wonderful aid worker in Uganda, and we went to see the village ‘aunty’. The ‘aunty’, was a very wise woman who had given great service to her village all her life, but was now very sick. She was just lying on her veranda, unable to move. She was being looked after by her ‘niece’, a beautiful young woman who had left a job in the city of Kampala to come back to this remote village and look after her ‘aunt’.

“Oh this must be so difficult for you!”, said my companion, for good jobs were very hard to come by. “No”, said the young woman. “Not at all – I chose!” It was said with simplicity and humility, and yet revealed such wisdom. She had considered her options, the choice had been made and committed to, and the past and alternatives let go. That is such a beautiful place to live our lives from. It’s a commitment to the moment, to living in the now, with great acceptance of life and its outcomes. It’s a clear, untroubled mind able to respond to each of  life’s moments.

Commitments + Expectations

A burden that we mistakenly put on our long term commitments is our ‘expectations’. In our minds, we are saying ‘I have made this commitment to you, so you owe me.’ When we sit back and look at this we can see that it is quite funny. Somehow our choices have come along with a set of  rules. That immediately undermines the strength of our commitment. It’s the same as saying ‘I am only going to do this if you give me this in return.’ We do it to our partners, our bosses, our friends, our children and even to God. It stops both the flow of life, love and laughter. Many of us impose our expectations without conscious awareness, even though we know how we run when other people’s expectations are placed on us.

Going back to our analogy of the bird in the palm of your hand from part one, it is a cage we have put around our bird. Even if the bird can’t see our unstated demands, it feels them, becomes insecure, unsure and shrivels. At first, our new bird in the hand may try to learn to fly within our restrictions, but pretty soon it will tire of the effort – especially as many of us have a habit of adding to our list of demands. Many of our birds or partners, have a rebellious streak and will break the boundaries of the cage and fly off in any case, or increasingly behave exactly the opposite to how we would wish.

Letting Go of our Expectations

If we have the courage to look closely, we will find that the demands or expectations that we are putting on others, are the same ones we put on ourselves – they are the rocks in our panniers, causing our stress. Why would we want to hand this pain around?

Often, if we had critical parents, we can see that we are still unconsciously carrying our parents voices in our minds. If we can see the absurdity of that, we can let go of those voices. And we can forgive our parents, for didn’t we just see how easy it is to fall into that place.

Understanding, acceptance and forgiveness are all tools of letting go that free us from our chains of false commitment, our expectations. Changing our focus, having a vision of how would we like our lives to be, enables us to make new choices, and set goals for going in a new direction in our lives.

We can symbolise letting go of our rocks by dropping them in a river or the sea, either in reality or in our imagination. We can write them down, “I let go of …”, and bin, burn or flush the results. If we have a belief in Higher Mind, Angels or Heaven, we can hand over our rocks, asking for help to let go. Every time we find we are filling our pannier, it is time to empty it again.

If Only He/She Would Change

If we carry on down the road of our expectations, we will find ourselves in the land of complaints. ‘If only s/he would change!’ Now not only do we have expectations, but we have added on the burden of blame. Think about this deeply. When we say that our partners ‘would be great if only’ … what we are really saying is that they don’t live up to our expectations, that they are not good enough. We all know how that feels. We feel it, have often felt it deeply in childhood, so it is an old wound. None of us can grow or fly in such an environment. If we look closely, with courage, we can see that what we are really saying is ‘I don’t love you as you are’, which is really the same as ‘I don’t love you, I love who I want you to be.‘

Letting Go of Blame

Blame, even unspoken, pollutes love and relationships. As we saw in earlier Newsletters, blame announces that we are victims and have no choices. Blame keeps us and our relationships stuck. If our partner is buried in a heap of blame, then we need to get out our imaginary shovels (the mind is easily impressionable), and see ourselves shovelling all that blame into barrows, or trucks if the habit is very engrained. We can ask the angels to dispose of our blame safely, or just see it evaporating in the light and heat of the sun. It is time to let it go. Are we giving the things we are demanding, or waiting for someone else to step up in commitment.

Our happiness improves when we commit to seeing the best in people, including our partners and friends. Our attractiveness increases when we ask rather than demand. We can state how something feels for us, inviting another to share our world. Understanding and acceptance are powerful tools that can dissolve many problems and issues.

The commitment to a process of accepting and understanding another person’s feelings and meanings is another significant way to express our commitment. … Expressing commitment by welcoming another’s feelings, even if they threaten us, is one of the most effective ways to demonstrate that we love and care for a person.

John Amodeo & Kris Wentworth, In Being Intimate (sadly,  out of print)

Commitment or choosing, also means letting go of judgements, blame and expectations.  It means not imposing our standards and needs on another human being. It means letting go of the ‘shoulds’ and rules, even the ones we impose on ourselves. Its principles are understanding, acceptance and forgiveness. It’s gift to us, is to discover our own freedom, that we are a bird in the palm of life, constantly free to choose, to commit to act, to commit to giving our love, and then loving. As a dear friend sang many years ago …

All is choosing

Commitment and Letting Go are Partners

We choose, we follow our course of action, committing to each step along the way, but we let go of the results. Then they can come back to us, perhaps in a form greater than we could have imagined. We will be able to enjoy and experience the gifts of life more fully, for there is little enjoyment to be had in receiving the things we demanded. When our demands are met, we may have temporary respite and relief, but pretty soon we are thinking up the next test of love for our lover or partner or even God.

Our needs and demands are not our love. Chuck Spezzano

That is not to say we can’t ask for what we need – with our palms open and upwards. Our true lover then gets to freely choose. He or she can then feel the joy of their own giving as well as our response. We can express – share our feelings, so another can understand, but not to insist on ‘my way’. (Link to Transformational Communication)

Being able to let go, at the same time as being able to choose to take the next step and commit, whether it be to ourselves, him, her or an it, is a skill we all need to develop, no matter who we are sharing our life with. After all, commitment and letting go are not so much a balancing act as partners in life. We are letting go to step forward, to step toward something more true for ourselves, our lives and our loved ones.

The Stages of Letting Go

Next month we will look at the stages of letting go – how to let go of our partner and deal with our emotions when a relationship breaks up. Sometimes, we get so clear and clean in this process, that we find love again, and a partner, new or old, responds to our openness.

I have seen spectacular results from friends, including some very young ones, who used Chapter 10:  Independence and Letting Go to develop their letting go skills. If you need more insights into your holding on and expectations patterns, or need help to let go of a relationship, you will find it here on the Life Manual site. Normally we recommend that you follow the course sequentially, but from my experience working with just this chapter, I am confident that it can stand alone.

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Choosing to Move Forward – More Resources

Wounded Relationships

While writing this, I am also deeply aware that there are women and men living in deeply wounding, even violent and addictive relationships. The first priority and commitment we all have is to our own and our children’s wellbeing and safety. If you are holding onto a relationship that clearly is in deep trouble, and are unable to let go, particularly a relationship that threatens your mental, emotional, physical welfare, please read Wounded Relationships in the Wise Women Online site.

On the Wise Women site you will also find

3 Wise Women

All of the emotion and energy freed up from expectations and blame, can now be put into focussing on commiting to living the life we choose. That’s exciting, what will you choose? I have written about the importance of having a vision for our lives in earlier Newsletters which you will find on the POV Lifemanual site. You can also find more information and resources 3 Wise Women on Wise Women Online.

The Stages of Letting Go

Next month we will look at the stages of letting go – how to let go of our partner and deal with our emotions when a relationship breaks up. Sometimes, we get so clear and clean in this process, that we find love again, and a partner, new or old, responds to our openness.

I have seen spectacular results from friends, including some very young ones, who used Chapter 10:  Independence and Letting Go to develop their letting go skills. If you need more insights into your holding on and expectations patterns, or need help to let go of a relationship, you will find it here on the Life Manual site. Normally we recommend that you follow the course sequentially, but from my experience working with just this chapter, I am confident that it can stand alone.

Choosing to Move Forward – More Resources

Wounded Relationships

While writing this, I am also deeply aware that there are women and men living in deeply wounding, even violent and addictive relationships. The first priority and commitment we all have is to our own and our children’s wellbeing and safety. If you are holding onto a relationship that clearly is in deep trouble, and are unable to let go, particularly a relationship that threatens your mental, emotional, physical welfare, please read Wounded Relationships in the Wise Women Online site.

On the Wise Women site you will also find

3 Wise Women

All of the emotion and energy freed up from expectations and blame, can now be put into focussing on commiting to living the life we choose. That’s exciting, what will you choose? I have written about the importance of having a vision for our lives in earlier Newsletters which you will find on the POV Lifemanual site. You can also find more information and resources 3 Wise Women on Wise Women Online.

Wishing you all success in life and all its relationships

Please feel free to email with questions and comments

Christine       email:   christine@pov-lifemanual.com