Episode 45
What to Do When LETTING IT GO Is Too Difficult
We dive into the idea of accepting things instead of trying to let them go. I talk about how we often hear advice to just "move on" or "forgive and forget," but honestly, that doesn’t work for everyone. It’s all about recognizing that acceptance is the first step before any letting go can happen. I share some personal stories about my own struggles with acceptance, especially after hitting rock bottom. So, let’s explore how accepting our reality can actually lead to less suffering and more inner peace.
Links to Steven Webb's podcast and how you can support his work.
- Donate paypal.me/stevenwebb or Coffee stevenwebb.uk
- Steven's courses, podcasts and links: stevenwebb.uk
Accepting things as they are is the theme of today's show. We often hear the advice to let things go, but what does that really mean? Trying to let things go feels like pushing something away, and honestly, that's not easy. Reflecting on my own life, I remember when I hit rock bottom at 40. I faced a painful breakup and the struggle of trying to move on. It was tough because I didn’t know how to let go. Instead, I learned that before we can truly let go, we must first accept what has happened. This acceptance is crucial because it leads us to a deeper understanding of our feelings without the added pressure of forcing them away. The show dives into the idea that suffering often comes from our resistance to accepting reality. When we refuse to face what is happening, we create more pain for ourselves. Acceptance is the first step toward peace, and only then can we start to explore letting things be as they are.
Takeaways:
- Accepting things as they are helps reduce suffering and increases inner peace.
- Letting go is an action that often feels forced and doesn't truly work for many.
- Understanding what we can and cannot change is key to finding peace in life.
- Suffering often comes from resisting reality, so acceptance is crucial for emotional well-being.
- Meditation and mindfulness can help manage strong feelings and promote acceptance.
- Using the Serenity Prayer can provide clarity on what we can change and what we must accept.
Transcript
Hey, how is it going?
Speaker A:I'm Stephen Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms.
Speaker A:And I want to talk to you about accepting things and letting things be as opposed to letting things go.
Speaker A:We always get told to let it go, move on, forgive, forget, and all those things.
Speaker A:It doesn't really work.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:So I'm going to talk about that on today's show.
Speaker A:And this is Stillness in the Storms.
Speaker A:And I talk about anything that really gives us a little more inner peace, things that change our perspective, things that allow us to go deeper into our understanding of ourselves.
Speaker A:I cannot remember who said it about wisdom is knowledge is knowing other people.
Speaker A:Wisdom is knowing ourselves.
Speaker A:And stillness in the Storms really is about getting to know ourselves so we can be that stillness in a storm.
Speaker A:And, yeah, that's what it's about.
Speaker A:So, yeah, don't forget to subscribe.
Speaker A:Hit the whatever button.
Speaker A:I don't know if you'll.
Speaker A:If you're on Spotify, hit the follow.
Speaker A:If you're on itunes, I don't know, because I haven't got an iPhone.
Speaker A:So whatever platform you're on, don't forget to do it.
Speaker A:And I do recommend one platform.
Speaker A:Good pods.
Speaker A:That's awesome, because you can follow me on there and you can find out what podcast I listen to, what helps me, what do I wake up in the morning to, things like that.
Speaker A:So, yeah, anyway, let's get on with today's show.
Speaker A:We're talking about accepting things, and we've got a president in America refusing to accept reality.
Speaker A:And what does that do when you refuse to accept reality?
Speaker A:Gives you suffering, right?
Speaker A:It's painful, you know, when you lose, it's painful.
Speaker A:And then you got to suck it up and do something about it, and then you've got to, like, go, okay, fair enough, I lost.
Speaker A:And there might be the odd ballot there and here and there.
Speaker A:And there's always.
Speaker A:When you cast 160 million ballots, you know, every.
Speaker A:There's going to be a few out of sync.
Speaker A:You know, fair enough, we're humans.
Speaker A:But there isn't going to be 6 million.
Speaker A:You know, he's lost.
Speaker A:Suck it up.
Speaker A:And I. I don't want to make this political on this podcast, this particular one, I do talk about politics sometimes, but not on this one.
Speaker A:I want to talk about the difference between accepting things and trying to let things go.
Speaker A:And letting things go really is, to me, whenever we try to let things go, it's like an action that we got to try to do.
Speaker A:We're pushing something away, and it's not easy to do it really isn't easy to do.
Speaker A:So I can remember when I was 40 and I hit my rock bottom.
Speaker A:I was just.
Speaker A:It wasn't.
Speaker A:I don't know, it was a few months after my 40th birthday, and one morning I text the girl I was seeing at the time, and I said, you don't always reply to me like you used to.
Speaker A:And I got the message back saying, well, I don't know what I want.
Speaker A:Well, I've been dumped enough times in my life to know exactly what that was.
Speaker A:That was a dumping.
Speaker A:I'd open the door and boom.
Speaker A:By the end of.
Speaker A:The end of that day, it was over.
Speaker A:She's left.
Speaker A:She walked out crying.
Speaker A:She picked up her things and I was crying, and I sent her a Dear Wasn't a Dear John letter.
Speaker A:It's not as a Dear John letter is like, I'm finishing with you.
Speaker A:What do you call the letter that you give to that person that you just tell them how much you.
Speaker A:Your, your heart's breaking and they're your world and everything is like, yeah, I was about to not let something go.
Speaker A:I was going to grab hold of everything.
Speaker A:Even if I suffered.
Speaker A:Well, I was.
Speaker A:That was the beginning of my rock bottom.
Speaker A:Wasn't quite at the rock bottom, but two or three weeks later it was.
Speaker A:But, yeah, for a few days I felt nothing.
Speaker A:For a few days, I was really numb.
Speaker A:And then when I come back out of it, I was angry.
Speaker A:I didn't want to let things go.
Speaker A:I was thinking about her and doing all these other things that I wanted to do with her.
Speaker A:You know, you do.
Speaker A:Like when, when you're not with that person and you're thinking, they're so living the life with somebody else that I want to live the life with them.
Speaker A:So that was all in my mind.
Speaker A:I couldn't sleep.
Speaker A:My brain was going over time, and people will say to me, oh, there's plenty more fish in the sea.
Speaker A:You can't even say that without thinking about Internet dating, now, can you?
Speaker A:Plenty more fish in the sea.
Speaker A:Anyway, going back, I might tell you at the end of this about an encounter I had on plenty of fish.
Speaker A:Anyway, going back to this, I, I just.
Speaker A:People kept saying, there's, you know, there's other people, more pebbles on the beach.
Speaker A:You know, there's other people.
Speaker A:You just got to let it go.
Speaker A:Well, it isn't easy to let it go.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:It really isn't.
Speaker A:You have to accept it before you let it go.
Speaker A:And everybody always thinks about their forgiveness.
Speaker A:Not just forgive them and let it go.
Speaker A:It just doesn't work like that.
Speaker A:How do you let.
Speaker A:How do you get your mind to stop thinking about something that you're trying to stop your mind thinking about?
Speaker A:It's like me saying to you, right, think of a pink elephant flying.
Speaker A:And now I tell you, don't think of a pink elephant flying.
Speaker A:And I remind you, in five minutes time, oh, don't think of the pink element flying.
Speaker A:Well, you've got to bring it to mind to let it go.
Speaker A:So it doesn't work like that.
Speaker A:So it's about accepting things.
Speaker A:And at this point, I'm reminded of Dan Millman and was it in the way of the warrior?
Speaker A:He says suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens.
Speaker A:Isn't that true?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens.
Speaker A:So like Trump, now, he's suffering because he's accepting to give into it or not give into it.
Speaker A:He's struggling to accept this present situation.
Speaker A:And that's what you're doing.
Speaker A:You're trying to fight it.
Speaker A:You know, if a tree accepts the wind, it can bend with it, but if it tries to fight the wind, it's going to break.
Speaker A:And it's the same with dealing with loneliness.
Speaker A:You know, after my rock bottom, for a long time, I really had to deal with loneliness.
Speaker A:I would sit and I would listen to lonely songs and it would really be overwhelming.
Speaker A:The emotion would come up and eventually it would overwhelm me and I would feel more and more lonely.
Speaker A:I was almost growing it until I was overwhelmed by it.
Speaker A:Until you get.
Speaker A:You get to a stage where you just want to draw the curtains and lock the front door, turn off the lights.
Speaker A:You sit down in front of the sofa and you bend your knees up and you sit there and you just place your elbows and your hands on your knees.
Speaker A:You put your head on your hands or something and you just want to cry.
Speaker A:You want to shut the world out.
Speaker A:Don't text me, don't phone me, don't you dare.
Speaker A:I. I'm fine, but just leave me go.
Speaker A:That's when we're overwhelmed with emotions.
Speaker A:That's when our emotions are then controlling us as opposed to we're in control of the emotions.
Speaker A:And any emotion that is ignored or any emotion that we don't take seriously will overwhelm us eventually.
Speaker A:It'll keep coming back.
Speaker A:I got some good meditations on my website, StephenWebb.com that would help you with that.
Speaker A:And in an app that I'm going to be a teacher on soon, Aura, they will have some really Good meditations about dealing with strong emotions.
Speaker A:Not quite on there yet, but you can go to my website and there'll be a link to it and you'll get an extra special offer.
Speaker A:But anyway, going back to accepting things, it reminds me also of the Serenity Prayer.
Speaker A:God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
Speaker A:And whenever I'm reminded of that, whenever I say it, read it, or someone says it to me means something different.
Speaker A:The older I get, the wiser I get.
Speaker A:Well, I'm not sure if I'm wise, but certainly the older I get, the more.
Speaker A:More it has a deeper meaning or the more I understand it, I think.
Speaker A:Or is it the more that maybe because I'm understanding what I can and cannot change.
Speaker A:You know, when I was a teenager, the only people I knew I couldn't change was my parents because they did my head in.
Speaker A:They were wrong about everything.
Speaker A:They disagreed with everything I did.
Speaker A:I must have had a nightmare to them.
Speaker A:But they disagree with everything I did.
Speaker A:I literally couldn't get out of bed in the morning without them having to go at me.
Speaker A:Okay, granted, I was lying in bed until 11 o' clock in the morning and they were shouting at me for two hours to get up.
Speaker A:But hey, I was a teenager.
Speaker A:I was tired, you know, I didn't need breakfast.
Speaker A:I was out of bed till questions what time in the morning?
Speaker A:Get off my back.
Speaker A:But yeah, I just wanted to change my parents.
Speaker A:I wanted my parents to see the world the way I did.
Speaker A:And it would have been much easier.
Speaker A:I had so much resistance when I was a teenager.
Speaker A:How about you?
Speaker A:I bet you had the same thing, didn't you?
Speaker A:Yeah, so much resistance when you were a teenager.
Speaker A:I bet we're trying to fight the world.
Speaker A:We're trying to fight the weather, the world, and any people we like, our teachers.
Speaker A:We've got the whole world against us.
Speaker A:Any wonder teenagers find it hard?
Speaker A:When I was a teenager, I only had to compete with the kids in my class and my school and my estate.
Speaker A:You got to compete with the whole world.
Speaker A:Now, God wouldn't want to be a teenager.
Speaker A:But yeah, going back to the Serenity Prayer and the older I get, the less I'm trying to be in control of the things around me, outside world.
Speaker A:For a start, I. I spent, you know, after I hit my rock bottom, I learned about meditation, I learned about things that would help me have less stress.
Speaker A:And it didn't take long before I was trying to change 7 billion people to the way I was thinking.
Speaker A:And now I just live that way.
Speaker A:And if I invite people to live in a similar way, and if they don't want to, that's fine, but they often come back and go, hey, can I have some of that inner peace that you've got?
Speaker A:And I just think I just share how it works for me and been paralyzed like I am, and been bankrupt, been cheated on, been.
Speaker A:You know, I could list all the things.
Speaker A:I'm sure.
Speaker A:I'm sure you've had plenty of things happen to you as well.
Speaker A:It's not a competition who's had the most things, but we learn.
Speaker A:We learn what we can change what we cannot.
Speaker A:And the older we get, the less we try to change things.
Speaker A:And if we focus on what we can control and just take the rest as it happens, you know, just, hey, this is what's happening.
Speaker A:It's like the weather.
Speaker A:It's raining.
Speaker A:I can either put on a coat or I can jump up and down and complain about the rain.
Speaker A:Hey, it's cold.
Speaker A:It's still cold, whether you like it or not.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's like me being paralyzed.
Speaker A:I'm still paralyzed whether I accept it or not.
Speaker A:Trump's lost the election, whether he accepts it or not.
Speaker A:And that's where all our pain is coming.
Speaker A:You have to accept things before you let them go.
Speaker A:You cannot change this present moment.
Speaker A:You cannot change a thought once it's arisen.
Speaker A:You cannot even change your feelings.
Speaker A:Take a breath and then try to change that breath.
Speaker A:You can't.
Speaker A:You can only influence the current breath.
Speaker A:You can only influence the next thought, the next thing, the thing you're responding about, you know, and when we start accepting these things, we suffer a lot less and we move from I cannot believe the glass is broken to, oh, the glass is broken.
Speaker A:You know, whichever way, whichever concept you want to do of it and whichever way you want to feel about it.
Speaker A:The glass is still broken and it needs cleaning up.
Speaker A:Brilliant.
Speaker A:Well, wonderful opportunity for growth.
Speaker A:This is the worst day of my life.
Speaker A:Cannot believe this is happening to me.
Speaker A:Or interesting test for my emotional wisdom.
Speaker A:How can I be stoic on this day that's testing me?
Speaker A:It's still a day that's testing you.
Speaker A:It's still the worst day of your life, whether or not you deal with it or not.
Speaker A:Someone answer the damn phone.
Speaker A:I can't believe they're phoning when I'm on the toilet.
Speaker A:Ah, the phone is ringing and I'm on the toilet.
Speaker A:Murphy's Law in It.
Speaker A:That's what they call that.
Speaker A:And that's just.
Speaker A:That's the way things work, you know, you can wait all day for the phone call and the moment your mum gets on the phone, the doctor phones.
Speaker A:At least we got cool waiting now.
Speaker A:Or you can wait all day near the phone and say, I won't go toilet.
Speaker A:I'm bursting for a pee.
Speaker A:And the minute you go to toilet, the phone rings every time.
Speaker A:It's guaranteed.
Speaker A:So the answer is, if you want the phone to ring, go toilet.
Speaker A:If you're waiting for the doctor to phone, you go toilet.
Speaker A:And the doctor will phone.
Speaker A:Just pretend to go toilet.
Speaker A:Just go in there and hold the door slightly ajar.
Speaker A:Yeah, I knew it.
Speaker A:And you can run out and go, yes.
Speaker A:Just a different perspective.
Speaker A:Just accepting things the way they are and it makes a big difference, you know, I got carers that barely any of them can make toast the way I like it.
Speaker A:I had to get some good toast today, though.
Speaker A:I give them the Jew.
Speaker A:And of course, bread's different because my bread that I had at the moment is a bit dry from the freezer.
Speaker A:I don't know why.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:But yeah, it's, you know, I have to accept certain things.
Speaker A:They're not going to shower me the way I would shower myself, but I can guide them.
Speaker A:They're not going to dress me the way I would dress, you know, sometimes I end up my trousers on my head now, it's not that bad, but it's not far off.
Speaker A:It actually, you know, my underpants backwards.
Speaker A:Hey, they've got Superman on the front.
Speaker A:Seriously, can you not even get that right?
Speaker A:Yeah, trust me, that happens.
Speaker A:They're not my genes.
Speaker A:You got my shirt on backwards.
Speaker A:It's okay.
Speaker A:Anyway, yeah, let's go back to what we can control, we can't control.
Speaker A:And in the little book of stoicism, which timeless wisdom and gain resilience, confidence and calmness, they say about the three levels of influence we have on different things.
Speaker A:High influence, our choices in judgments and actions, you know, our thoughts, you know, how we.
Speaker A:How we think about things.
Speaker A:Partial influence.
Speaker A:Partial influence.
Speaker A:Health, wealth, relationships and outcomes of our behaviors.
Speaker A:No influence.
Speaker A:The weather, our skin color, our eyes, you know, how tall we are, and most external circumstances, how that person thinks, what that person does, the traffic, things like that.
Speaker A:So really, when we realize what we can influence and what we cannot influence, we stop trying to influence.
Speaker A:We stop wasting our energy trying to influence the things we have no influence over.
Speaker A:Stop trying to change the weather.
Speaker A:Stop trying to change different things, you know, you cannot even eat a donut and decide where that weight's going to go on.
Speaker A:So you don't even have full control over your body.
Speaker A:You know, your health you can influence, but you cannot have full control over it.
Speaker A:But you can have control over what you do with your thoughts.
Speaker A:You don't even have control over what your next thought is.
Speaker A:You can only influence it by giving weight to it or not.
Speaker A:And it's the same with any skill that we home in on.
Speaker A:Take a golfer, you know, the golfer can practice all the time and he can be brilliant.
Speaker A:You know, even Tiger woods have.
Speaker A:It has his day.
Speaker A:And I watched someone do a hole in one the other day, and they went to hit the ball and they must have missed, hit it, and it went down, it bounced along the water, skimmed the water three times, jumped up on the bank, it went all the way around the green and eventually into the hole.
Speaker A:There's no chance in hell he would ever have planned that.
Speaker A:Even a computer couldn't work that out.
Speaker A:You know, you practice, practice, practice, and then the moment you hit the ball, when the ball was left that club, you've got no influence.
Speaker A:It's down to the weather, it's down to the thing.
Speaker A:So preparation, you can influence it as much as you want.
Speaker A:You know, as soon as you throw it out there, what happens with it is not your business.
Speaker A:We just either get the rewards from it or not.
Speaker A:So accepting things the way they are really, and knowing what we can control and change.
Speaker A:I know this, this podcast has gone slightly off topic, away from the letting it go and let it be.
Speaker A:But if we do accept the things we cannot change, we can really start taking control of the things we can change.
Speaker A:I'll give you a little bit of hints and tips.
Speaker A:We all want to think positive.
Speaker A:We all want a more positive mindset.
Speaker A:So first of all, you need to have some form of negative mindset for the simple fact that will keep you alive.
Speaker A:If you're in a.
Speaker A:If you and a group of friends go to a forest camping out one night and you've got Mr. Pessimist and Mr. Optimist and three o' clock in the morning and you're around the fire and you're playing guitars and roasting marshmallows and the romance and you're cuddling into each other and all that, and you're a bit tired and then suddenly there's a roar in the background or there's a big crash, say.
Speaker A:And Mr. Pessimist says, shut up.
Speaker A:Everyone stop.
Speaker A:Silent.
Speaker A:Stop.
Speaker A:What you're doing.
Speaker A:We need to know what this is.
Speaker A:And Mr. Optimist goes, don't worry about it.
Speaker A:It's just a tree.
Speaker A:It's nothing to worry about.
Speaker A:Well, Mr. Optimus might be right and you might live.
Speaker A:But I'd rather take the chance, I'd rather not take the chance.
Speaker A:I'd rather listen to Mr. Pessimist, the doubter, the negative mind, and check whether or not it's some kind of beast that's going to eat us.
Speaker A:And that's why the negative mind over years has won out.
Speaker A:You know, it's kept us alive.
Speaker A:More often than not, the optimist will get us killed.
Speaker A:So don't be down on your mind for being a little negative.
Speaker A:You need a little negative, you need a little skepticism.
Speaker A:But it has to be healthy and relative.
Speaker A:And when I mean relative, I mean there has to be relative and imbalance to what you're doing, you know, you know, sometimes been a little over cautious in this world, it's a little too much.
Speaker A:And I think, you know, I mean, I don't need to come up with an example for that.
Speaker A:Partly because I cannot think of one right now.
Speaker A:In all the millions of examples, I cannot think of one.
Speaker A:So I said I was going to give you a little help on negative and positive thinking.
Speaker A:Well, look at thoughts as trains.
Speaker A:So you're sitting down here and you're waiting for the next train in the station.
Speaker A:Your mind is the station, your subconscious mind is the station down the road.
Speaker A:And you're waiting for the trains to come in.
Speaker A:And when the train comes in, you can go, ah, that's a positive, that's a negative, that's a happy, that's a miserable, that's a sad, that's a, a clever thought, whatever you want to name them.
Speaker A:And you can choose to get on them or not.
Speaker A:And something magic happens when you sit down and play that exercise for a couple of minutes every few hours a day, you start training your mind into what change you want to get onto.
Speaker A:Now, I'm not going to tell you say, get on negative, get on the positive.
Speaker A:Happy chains.
Speaker A:I don't know, you may want to think negative more than some other people, but you cannot change a negative thought into a positive.
Speaker A:You can't change the thought once it's there.
Speaker A:Once the train's in the station, it's the train, you can't change it.
Speaker A:Suffering is trying to change a train.
Speaker A:What we do is we just allow and accept the train that arrives and go, I'm not going to get on that.
Speaker A:Or I am going to get on with that.
Speaker A:And then eventually your subconscious mind will give you more trains of what you give more weight to, the ones you get on and give more emotion to.
Speaker A:So if you really like a thought, give more emotion to it, enjoy it, revel in it, and vice versa.
Speaker A:If you get a thought that you don't really want, allow it to just move on, ask for another thought.
Speaker A:Thank you for the thought, but can I have another one?
Speaker A:And then just sit back and wait for it?
Speaker A:You know, that'll make all the difference.
Speaker A:So this is Stillness in the Storms.
Speaker A:I'm Stephen Webb, your host and hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker A:And if you did, leave me a review.
Speaker A:You know, I really do want this podcast to be huge, and I want it to help as many people as possible.
Speaker A:So if you can leave a review, that really helps and if you can share it, that'd be amazing.
Speaker A:And, you know, just suffer less.
Speaker A:Pain's inevitable.
Speaker A:It's going to happen, but we can suffer a lot less by trying to.
Speaker A:By not accepting our current situation.
Speaker A:So leave a review.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:Take care, guys.
Speaker A:Namaste, Sa.
