Mindfulness: Letting Go

 

I was sitting at my computer early one Friday morning, poised to make some important entries, when I heard some ominous clicking sounds coming from the hard drive.  Some updates for one of my programs had just been completed, and the screen instructed me to reboot.

I rebooted. Not only did the clicking continue, I wasn't able to log back on.  I tried again - nothing.  To make a long story short, my hard drive was history, along with most of my data!  Fortunately, the most important data was backed up, but I would still need to re-create some files.

One of the practices of mindfulness is letting go: releasing whatever one tends to hold onto - be it a person, a mindset, an opinion, a thing, a desire, or even computer files.  We can say we "let go" of what we've been clinging to; it's another thing entirely to truly accept the situation as it is and not dwell on the misfortune.

I'll admit my mind kept drifting for a few days between letting go and returning to thoughts of the data I'd lost. The following Monday, I took the hard drive to a computer shop, thinking optimistically that even if the hard drive had to be replaced, the data could somehow be retrieved.  Once I learned that it could not, something shifted inside of me. I made a conscious decision to redirect my anxious thoughts to what I could do. Once I did this, I actually felt free and accepted that I didn't need the data I had been clinging to. In other words, I let go.

Make a conscious effort to let go of something you've been holding onto and you may free yourself from thoughts that have been needlessly weighing you down.