With the first week of August being National Simplify Your Life Week, how about simplifying your emotions and your psychological baggage as well.

Identify the times and events in your life that are dragging you down. The, identify those in your life who are dragging you down.

Do you desperately want to change jobs, but you find there is always someone telling you to stay where you are, things will get better, don’t jeopardize your insurance?

Do you have that one friend who continues to tell you their problems, which you perceive as trivial next to what your life has/is handing you?

Is your past holding you back? Do you continuously feed the negative memories by dwelling on them?

It’s time to let go. Let go of the negative. Let go of what drags you down. Let go of what dwells in the recesses of your mind.

HOW?

One of the best ways I found to help me let go consisted of paper, ink, and fire.

I sit and write my frustrations down on paper with ink. Ink is permanent and by putting it permanently down on paper I can release it from my mind and my soul. I write and write and write – for several days.

When I sit down to write and the frustration of the past and how it affects me no longer flows to the page, I know I have nothing left to release. Everything has bled to the pages in that notebook.

I let them sit in a desk drawer for a few days, maybe a few weeks.

Finally, I take those pages outside and tear them out of the notebook. I take each page, one at a time, and tear it in half again and again. “This part of my past will NEVER haunt me again, NEVER hold me back, and NEVER get my full attention.” Saying the words as I tear the pages feels like I am releasing the anger and hurt from my soul.

But that isn’t the last thing I do.

If I throw the pieces of my past into the trash, they can be re-arranged back into the full pages. I do something more permanent.

I take those pages and a lighter made for starting campfires out to the back yard. Wadding each of the small pieces of paper into loose balls, I build my fire in an old firepit.

I love watching fires. As the paper burns, it feels like the negative memories and feelings are going up in smoke with the words I wrote on the page. I feel freed; I have simplified my psychological baggage.

I’m not saying that the memories don’t surface occasionally, but when they do, it is so much easier to tell those negative memories and feelings that they don’t exist in my life anymore, that they don’t have the power to affect my life, that I don’t care about them anymore.

What about you? How do you rid yourself of the emotional and psychological baggage that is holding you down?

It’s time to let go of the things that are holding you back because if we don’t, they will drag you down forever.

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Thanks for reading.

AND

As you move through your day-to-day activities and responsibilities, please remember to

Live Life –

Keep Things Simple –

Look for the Positive –

AND

Smile.

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