Sometimes we try to hold on to the things that we accumulate in our lifetimes, mostly because it feels like we are losing a piece of ourselves when we let go. I find that in holding onto something that weighs me down, my life begins to feel somewhat weighed down as well. I have been known to hold onto material things for the longest time. I’m not sure why that started. Maybe it was because I didn’t have much of it as a younger person and I was surrounded by people who had plenty. Maybe its because I defined myself and gave myself validation in the nice pretty things I could acquire. It could be that I associated things with people and didn’t want to upset them by moving on and handing them over. Whatever the reason was, I found myself surrounded by things I no longer used, things that I was no longer interested in, but was not willing to part with.

It took me learning that with the weight of past pain on my shoulders came the need for me to hold on tightly to what was familiar. Because so much change had occurred in my young life, that I began to associate change with a tremendous amount of pain and so I did everything in my power to allow as little amount of change in my space that I could possible create. What freed me from this mindset was a seminar I went to many moons ago and the speaker used an example of carrying a backpack of the past around with you all the time and how it slows you down keeping you from being the best version of yourself that you can be ( Not in those exact words but on that path). I related because I too carried every little thing with me everywhere I went. Not because I wanted to , but because it was all so familiar and familiar felt safe for me at that time.

I read somewhere back then that clutter in the home was a sign of holding onto things of the past. Once I correlated the two, a cleaning frenzy began, where I cleared out everything that I didn’t need or use and gave it away to people that needed and would use the items. It was one of the scariest things I had ever put myself through, I was so afraid that I would regret doing this and would need something as soon as it was gone. It was the complete opposite, I had the most liberating experience my young self would have experienced and since then I regularly clean out everything; my closet, my home and my desk. This exercise has led to me to understand how letting go of anything that doesn’t serve me in a positive way will allow me the freedom and give me the room to be more of myself with less distractions making it easier to grow and find the things I need for my next leg of the journey I am on. Sadly I realized as I got older that people too had to be let go when they became toxic or negative and tried to hold me back. This one I struggled with because how do you let go of a human being? With time this task has become somewhat easier as I grow in myself I realize that if I hold onto people like I held onto things, I also will not be able to grow. I learned that letting go of people does not mean that I stop loving them as human beings and that I lose any form of respect for them, it merely means that I have to create a distance between myself and certain people to remove them from my inner circle if they do not support the course of life that I have chosen for myself. If they disrespect me in any way they will have no place in my life, I do not have to explain myself to everybody that disagrees with me and I do not owe anybody anything. People seem to want to hold each other hostage to their beliefs and threaten each other with trying to withhold love in order to coerce another into doing things their way. This is unacceptable and those people need to be let loose and freed from your life.

I was inspired to share this with you because I received a call from a broker who refused to hear what I had to say about my own money. He disrespected me directly by  cutting me off and telling me I should listen to him. Of course he was trying convince me not to move to another company and why I should stay with them, but I had already made up my mind. I was willing to hear what he had to say, but when it was time to listen to me, he would try to cut me off every time I said something that didn’t align with what he wanted. I ended that call without blinking because I felt that my time is way to precious to waste on a person that does not have my best interest at heart and is not willing to listen before he speaks. So I hung up, and in that moment felt proud of how far I have come in the last 10 years, from not willing to let go of anything, to letting go freely of anything that does not serve a positive and uplifting space in my life.

With every thing I do to strengthen myself I grow and with every negative person, moment or thing that I have had to let go of in my journey, I lighten my load that much more. Life is always going to be full of challenges and tests, its important to allow yourself to make the mistakes you need to make until you learn the lessons and then use those lessons to teach you how to keep your load light enough to move in a forward direction. We cannot control other people, we can only control how much influence they have over the choices that we make. Allow yourself the freedom to make mistakes and don’t let the whispers of others keep you from trying again. Make your own decisions without looking for approval from the world. Be bold, be yourself and most importantly, be free!

Live your life in love and boldness.

Tammy Murphy