0:00
The feeling of safety actually comes from deep love and acceptance of self aligned with faith in the flow of intelligence outside your mind, the flow that guides you. This has many names depending on your spiritual beliefs. How to Practice letting go. So how do we practice this? Here are a few ways. One, pause and notice when you feel yourself gripping, trying to force an outcome. Stop, stop, everything.
0:38
Take a breath
0:40
and notice the tension in your body, because your body is a barometer of where you're at. Welcome to quiet mind, fearless and free, where we explore what it means to release anxiety quiet the mind and return to the peace of your true self. I'm Leah Danley, a long time mental health, therapist, spiritual seeker and fellow traveler on this journey of waking up from fear based thinking together, we'll look at the stories that shape us, the beliefs that hold us back, and the freedom that comes when we let them go. A quick note, this podcast is for educational and personal growth purposes only. It's not a substitute for therapy or medical advice. Please take what resonates and seek professional support if needed. Now, let's dive in. Welcome back to quiet mind, fearless and free. I'm so glad you're here. If you've been following along, we've been exploring how our stories shape our experience, how judgment closes our hearts and how deep listening all opens new possibilities. Today we're going even deeper. We're talking about control, or rather, how letting go of control can open us to peace, flow and freedom. If you've ever felt like you were paddling upstream in life, exhausted, frustrated, caught in the same cycles. This episode is for you, and don't worry, I promise I'm not about to tell you to just think positive and let go of all your problems in one deep breath. We're going to get real about why this feels hard, and why we all struggle with control, and how we can gently start to shift the river boat and or analogy, imagine life as a great river. It's always moving, always flowing, and we are in a boat carried by the current. The problem most of us are gripping an ore, paddling against the flow, convinced that we need to control the direction, speed or outcome. Why do we do this? Because the mind hates uncertainty. It clings to familiar patterns, even if they cause suffering, the or represents our resistance, our need to control, to force, to make things happen, according to an old script. But here's the thing, that script isn't even a good one. It's based on stories, beliefs, generational traumas and character fixations we came into life with. These are not the best guides. They are what I call the conditioned mind or the program, and like a machine, it only repeats itself, tricking us into thinking we're making different choices, yet leaving us feeling the same way, guilty. Not good enough, ashamed, whatever is encoded in the pro in the program, we cling to the rocks along the river and we avoid the bins because we think we are controlling life, but we're just letting the program keep us stuck. But here's the truth, the river is not just some random force. It is the intelligence that flows through us, animating our bodies, guiding our path and continuing even after this body returns to the earth. It it is trustworthy. It is steady. The conditioned mind, however, would have us believe otherwise. It convinces us that we must fight, grip tightly and control every outcome for when, when we do this, we are not truly navigating life. We are simply replaying an old program, keeping ourselves stuck in familiar patterns that do not serve us. The safety we seek is not in control, but in trusting the natural flow of life, there is something deeper, a steady presence, a guiding force within us. Process that moves effortlessly with the current when we resist it, clinging to the rocks, avoiding those bins in the river, trying to dictate the course we create suffering the river knows where it's going. Our work is not to fight it, but to learn to move with it, to trust that even the rough currents are leading us somewhere meaningful. Why do we cling to control? Let's tie this back to what we've explored in previous episodes. Episode One, who am I? We learned that we are not our thoughts, our conditioning, but control is often a response to fear, the fear of who we'd be without the story. Episode Two, the roots of your story. Many of us learned early that control equals safety. Maybe we grew up in chaos and control became our survival tool. Episode Three, the coat analogy was about protective patterns that keep us gripping that oar, thinking, if we let go, we'll sink. But what if letting go is actually what keeps us afloat? And episode four, deep listening. We saw how judgment blocks connection. Control does the same. It keeps us locked in a narrow version of reality, unable to hear or see new possibilities.
6:35
Short exercise check your or
6:39
take a moment think of something in your life right now that you're gripping tightly, something you're trying to force, fix or control. Notice what happens in your body when you think about it. Do your shoulders tense? Does your stomach clench? Now ask yourself, If I let go of control, what's the worst thing that could happen?
7:06
Just sit with that question.
7:09
Notice what fears come up.
7:12
You don't have to fix them or push them away. Just notice
7:20
what happens when we let go?
7:23
Imagine for a moment that you loosen your grit, maybe even drop the or at first fear rises. What if I drift somewhere I don't want to go. But then something miraculous happens. The river carries you. The tension in your body softens you realize you were never meant to force your way through life. Letting Go doesn't mean giving up or not caring. It means surrendering to the deeper intelligence that has always been guiding you, and this is where freedom begins, breaking the cycle, not repeating the past. Here's where it gets interesting, because when we resist the river, we're not actually creating something new. We're repeating the past. We keep paddling in the same patterns, choosing the same relationships, reacting the same way to the same stresses, because the conditioned mind only knows how to replicate itself, just like a machine. So ask yourself, are you paddling into the same old patterns, thinking you're creating something new? Are you holding on because it's what you know rather than what truly serves you? Are you forgetting where your safety really lies? It's definitely not in following your programmed mind and trying to control the world around you that ends up creating a feeling of increasing unsafety. The feeling of safety actually comes from deep love and acceptance of self aligned with faith in the flow of intelligence outside your mind, the flow that guides you. This has many names, depending on your spiritual beliefs. How to Practice letting go? So how do we practice this? Here are a few ways. One, pause and notice when you feel yourself gripping, trying to force an outcome. Stop, stop, everything. Take a breath and notice the tension in your body, because your body is a barometer of where you're at. Number two. Ask yourself, What am I afraid will happen if I let go? Be curious. Often, it's an old story talking. Sometimes it will use somebody else and say, Oh, it's in their best interest. I'm just doing it for them. Just be gentle and be curious. What am I afraid of will happen if I let go, especially knowing that all I know is what's happening in the present moment. The past is over. The future isn't happening, but the past is always trying to tell us the future is going to be like something that has happened. We don't know that. We don't know what's going to happen in the next moment, day, month, year,
10:51
and then breathe
10:52
and soften.
10:56
Number three, imagine yourself floating, supported by the river of life just softening around it all, not trying to fix or change, just taking that breath
11:11
and allowing it all to be there.
11:16
Now four, do you want to try to actually do a little something you can experiment with small surrenders. Start with something like letting someone else pick the restaurant. Or if that's not your thing, find what you really have a resistance to allowing and see if you can loosen it might be skip checking your email for an hour, or it could be letting your child wear what they want, or your partner letting him have a bad day without you feeling you need to fix it, just some small surrender, doing something slightly different than what you're inclined to from the past, and then notice how it feels. And then five another thing is just to laugh. Sometimes, if we just laugh at ourselves and the absurdity of it all, it is so healing. So many people have issues around anxiety. OCD, maybe your thing is that the dishwasher has to be loaded correctly. Sometimes the best way to release control is just to laugh at the absurdity of our humanness. Does our safety really rely on our perception of a correctly loaded dishwasher. Now it's not to make fun of or to be little, it's just simply to back ourselves away and observe and look at that. What is really going on subconsciously, we feel safer if everything is controlled, we think, but in reality, again, it only makes us feel more unsafe to have to control everything, because that's impossible, and it also makes us Trust that conditioned mind that is are already based in so many things that are not going to be healthy and healing, and it keeps us out of that wisdom, that trusting, that wisdom that flows within us, that intelligence that's outside of any programming. So control is an illusion. The more we fight, the more we suffer. But when we loosen our grip, when we stop paddling so hard against the current, we begin to experience a new kind of freedom. Life becomes less about forcing and more about allowing. And miracles also can be known as shifts in perceptions. Can occur with amazing results, ones we never could have imagined while living confined inside the program, mind only listening to its guidance. So I invite you to experiment with this notice where you're gripping tightly and practice letting go, even just a little you might be surprised at how life begins to carry you in ways you never expected. Thank you for being here with me today. Next time we're diving into the radio channel analogy how shifting your inner frequency can transform your life. Until then, take a deep breath. Trust the river and remember your true self is already free. Thank you for spending this time with me. If today's episode resonated with you, I invite you to explore more at quiet mind collective.com where you'll find meditations, courses and other resources to support your journey. You can also connect with me on Instagram at quiet mind collective with Leah for daily insights and community. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to follow the podcast on Apple or Spotify, and if you feel inspired, leave a quick rating and review. It really helps others find this message, and of course, share this with anyone who could use a little more peace in their life. This journey isn't about fixing ourselves. It's about remembering who we are beneath the noise of the mind, and when we quiet the mind and open the heart, we realize we already had everything we needed to be fearless and free and.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
