The Power of Letting Go

If you’re one of those people who’s seen the much talked-about movie, ‘The Secret’ perhaps – like me – more times than you could actually admit without feeling a tad embarrassed, there are probably particular scenes, anecdotes and ideas that stick in your mind.

(Briefly, in case you’re unfamiliar with what might be described as the quintessential ‘self-help’ movie, its main focus is to outline and explain the Law Of Attraction, which essentially states that what you think and, more importantly, feel  about on a regular basis becomes your reality.)

Well, one of the stories that always resonates with me is that of Jack Canfield – one of the people behind the ‘Chicken Soup for The Soul’ series of books – who relates how he has brought wealth, a beautiful home and many wonderful experiences into his life using the Law Of Attraction.

His method, outlined very roughly here, involves deciding what he wants, believing he can have it, believing that he’s worthy of it and then spending a short period of time every day, eyes closed, imagining that he’s already achieved the goal, with real emotion and gratitude. Then he just carries on with his day.

Having tried this myself, I have to say – again probably like a lot of people – my results have been mixed and often less than satisfactory. Or at least that was the case until I really understood the Power of Letting Go, which Jack does include in his description, in the sense of simply carrying on with his day.

Emotional detachment, that’s the way

But the point was only hammered home to me after I’d studied certain written materials by a couple of his fellow Personal Development leading lights – Dr Robert Anthony and Dr Joe Vitale, who’s also a star of ‘The Secret’.

In his best-selling book ‘The Attractor Factor’, Joe outlines five steps to manifesting what you desire in your life. I won’t spoil the surprise here – go get the book as it’s a great read – suffice to say the final step involves ‘letting go,’ or becoming emotionally detached from what you’re trying to achieve.

Apparently, if you find yourself in desperate need of what you claim to be trying to manifest, your emotion is one of scarcity – in other words you’re focusing on the fact that you don’t have it, rather than the experience of already having achieved your goal. So you’re just pushing the desired outcome further away.

Of course, maintaining detachment is easier said than done, but it certainly works. A very simple example from own experience involves the retirement of a colleague and a party being organised on his behalf. As he was a long-standing member of the team, we wanted to invite staff who had long since left the business.

Gratitude and a positive vibration

One name that came up was that of ‘Rocket Ron’ – he was crazy about motorcycles, you see – and no-one had seen him for over a year. Efforts were made to get in contact with him via one or two telephone numbers. Someone even stopped by his last-known address to see if he was still there, but to no avail.

I had known Ron a little through the day-to-day activities of the newspaper where we worked at that time – me as a writer, Ron in the photographic department – and brought to mind both his face and some of the conversations we’d had, laughing to myself about some of the more comical exchanges.

Then I just carried on with my work, without giving the matter any further thought…. or ‘letting go’, if you will. After all, though it would be nice to have Ron at the farewell get together for one of our soon-to-be former colleagues, it wasn’t that big a deal and it seemed we could do nothing about it anyhow.

That evening, I stopped off at the supermarket on my way home – a massive retail outlet, not a small local store. And yes, you guessed it, as I was making my way down one of the aisles, there was the man himself and I was able to invite him to the party.

It’s the kind of experience we can all relate to. You think about someone you haven’t heard from in a long time and someone suddenly mentions their name to you or they call you out of the blue. Some would call it pure coincidence, yet the latest studies in Quantum Physics are suggesting that we all really do play a part in creating our own universe at an energetic level.

So how do you achieve and maintain the level of detachment needed for manifestation? I guess it just takes practice, though one way I’ve found of doing so is to simply feel grateful for something – anything – in my life, once I’ve focused on my goal. This takes my thoughts away from the desire, while keeping me in a positive frame of mind, or ‘vibration’, if you like.

Still, haven’t got it down to a fine art, but I’m getting there!