https://youtu.be/_NBSuQLVpK4

Angry? You should let that go. Resentful? You should definitely let that go.

But to let go of something, you would have to be holding onto it. You can hold on to a cup or a plate, or even to your chair. You can grip the handrail on an escalator, but you cannot hold on to a feeling or a thought.

What we mean by holding on, is that a thought or feeling is stuck on repeat. It just keeps on reappearing, even though whatever we’re thinking about is in the past. If it’s a person, they are most likely elsewhere. It could even be years since you last saw them

• I wish I hadn’t said that at that meeting (last week)
• She/he should never have done that (3 years ago)
• I should have taken that job (last month)

‘You’ are not holding on, data is getting stuck in mind

The discomfort is caused not by you ‘holding on’, but by the way your mind is processing data. It has nothing to do with you.

What is disturbing you is a clump of stuck data. Data that your mind hasn’t yet been able to process, so it keeps reappearing.

You can think of the stuck data as a large, sticky lump of sand in a colander. Most of the sand (what you experience) pours through the holes, but the lump gets stuck.

We don’t need to fix the colander (your mind), we need to break up the lump so that it can get through the holes

Clear data clumps and be free of stuckness

Do you have a sense – even though it makes no sense – that you can go back and change what happened? That if you can just want it enough, it will happen?

Wishing for something signals to your unconscious to create it, to make it happen.

That unconscious part of mind responds to your wishes by living in the past. It is still back there.

It’s still at the meeting, and you can say something other than what you said. Or it’s right there, at that moment when you could have stopped someone doing something you wish they hadn’t done. Or, it’s opening that job offer and can still reply with a big, bold yes.

While an unconscious part of mind is still actively trying to undo the past (because it thinks it can), you will experience repetitive thoughts and feelings. And you’ll tell yourself you should let them go.

This idea isn’t useful.

The solution

The solution is to update the whole mind, so that it knows the past is over, finished, completed. Once the whole mind knows there’s nothing to be done, troublesome thoughts will fade away.

This is what we do in Rapid Resolution Therapy (RRT). You don’t need to fight with your mind, let RRT clear it.

Once you have experienced this kind of clarity, you’ll never want to return the struggle

Let go of trying to let go.

Changes that come from solving things this way are effortless and easy. When clear troubling thoughts, emotional disturbances at source, we pull them out by the roots. This brings lasting change. It certainly beats trying to use thoughts to control thoughts (exhausting and mostly futile).