How to Let Go of What No Longer Serves You
The less you hold, the more your hands are open to what’s here
Ten years ago, I received some of the biggest identity labels of my life: Fibromyalgia, Myofascial Pain Syndrome, arthritis, and possible Lyme disease. The illnesses blindsided me, although the diagnosis didn’t, because when you’re in serious pain, you know that something is seriously wrong.
Because for more than a decade, I had battled chronic pain, anxiety, and depression, and had experienced more and more body systems seemingly falling apart each day.
But after ten long years of battling doctors, health professionals, and myself, I finally decided that a clear-cut diagnosis wasn’t necessary in order for me to begin healing.
On paper, my new identity implied that I was a very sick woman, but I knew that no diagnosis or disease truly had me, that it was just a symptom of something larger, and that even in the absence of answers, I could heal.
These multiple diagnoses marked the end of my old life, where I was an athlete that worked long hours and high-stress jobs, and the beginning of a new, gentler, more aware existence that I had always been seeking even if I didn’t know it yet.
Because when nature insists that you stop, you do.
There is no question.
But this pause was the key to a deeper understanding and awareness of the identity given to me by myself and from others.
It was a luminous opportunity and I realize that now, finally and perhaps counterintuitively, I was free.
Free to envision a new future for myself.
Free to be who I really was, whoever that may be.
But first, I had to let go of my old identity.
Like an old hat that had lost its shape, color, and vibrancy, it was time to recycle and reimagine a new existence.
Interestingly enough, the diagnoses helped me accept my new normal, and even though I routinely heard statements like, “Patients never get better from this. This is as good as it gets. You’re not going to be active anymore. You need to think about going on disability,” the limitations imposed on me by these conditions didn’t phase me.
Those limitations, while they angered me at the time — who tells a 30-year-old that they are too old to exercise anymore? — they actually went in one ear and out the other. I was convinced that these diagnoses and all of their imposed limitations would not be the new identity that I was crafting for myself.
I knew that no diagnosis “had me” and that life exists on a fluid spectrum, always shifting, evolving. Things can and do change in the blink of an eye, both for good and bad.
And so, here I am, ten more years down the line.
I still struggle with some aspects of my health, but it’s largely isolated to my neck, head, thyroid, and sometimes my left shoulder.
But this is light years away from where I was then.
If my conditions worsen, I can seek physical therapy, which I do every few years.
Most days, I can do many of the things that I love again.
- I can hold a book comfortably and concentrate on its words in the absence of severe pain.
- I can walk in the woods.
- I can cook and chop vegetables
- I can run my own business
- I can write my heart out.
But best of all, I have created space to reconnect with who I really am, without the haze of assumed identities blocking my inner light.
This was all because, after years of struggle, I decided to create my identity, this time as a serene person, a sage, a flawed but beautiful soul, and a courageous warrior.
However, the biggest transformation occurred when I started to challenge my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors around who I was before my illness and who I was after, while I was still in the early stages of understanding how to heal myself.
Honestly, it was hard. I mourned my former identity that no longer served me. It was all I knew — being active, running marathons, working 12 hour days, basically running myself into the ground trying to keep up with an identity that had been with me for so long that I was no longer sure whether it was actually mine.
Then a conversation with a friend changed everything.
She said, “You know that you might have pain, either way, so you might as well try to do some of the things that you love when you can.” I decided right there to take those ephemeral words to heart. I thought I’ve had enough of this pity party. I may still have a lot of questions about my illnesses, but I’m done living my life this way.
I decided that losing the identity that I thought had been mine was really a pathway, a portal to a beautiful aliveness.
Because to live a full life always confronts us with the possibility of loss. The future is never certain.
And the next morning when I awoke, instead of thinking, I hurt, it’s hard to move, how can I possibly exercise or find joy today?
It turned into, What discoveries am I going to make today? How will I nurture my soul? Yes, my health is in crisis, but getting stuck in a mournful loop isn’t helping anything. It had its place and time but I’m done with that. It’s a new day.
But I didn’t stop there. I dove in deeper asking myself: Is this fear of pain serving me at all? Or am I holding myself in a space of sickness because it’s all I really know?
Sure, I’ve had years where I couldn’t sit in a chair without pain, but I’ve also had years where I could. And even in the absence of that healing, there is still good, there is still hope, and there is still healing.
We each have the power to shift our identity to one that serves us.
The real power is in how we choose to either interact or free ourselves from those labels.
And the labels can be anything. Maybe you overheard as a child, “He isn’t very smart,” an outwardly inconsequential label that can have vast impacts on our identity and what we choose to believe about ourselves.
Deciding our identities is a powerful step toward freedom.
Because without this conscious decision, society, culture, and the world at large will certainly try to decide for us.
After my initial wake-up call and shedding my identity of disease and disability, other profound aspects of my identity came to light.
I decided that being a perfectionist was not serving me. It was not keeping me safe. It was merely an unhealthy belief backed up by behaviors that society deemed acceptable.
But it wasn’t really me. I’m not perfect, so why pretend to be? That didn’t make sense to me anymore.
This is the very face of liberation, the very function of freedom. And really, it’s creating even more space for love, laughter, and joy.
We know that existence isn’t stagnant.
Life is a constant flow of receiving, contracting, and expanding.
We may not always be able to control what we receive, but we can choose to either hold on to or let go of that energy. And in this shifting, sorting, and transforming, we may just find who we really are.
What identity have you been holding onto that is weighing you down?
How much of your truth lies within this identity?
Is this the real you? If it’s not, you probably feel it, that subtle sense of dis-ease.
Or is this something that others (or even yourself) have “projected” onto you?
Who would you be without this identity?
Right here, right now, we can decide what we want our lives to look like.
And so, from this critical internal introspection, here is a five-step process to step out of our disempowering stories. Because when we step out of a false identity and into the truth of who we are, everything is bound to change.
5 Ways to Let Go of What No Longer Serves You
1. Nurturing awareness
The first step in this process is awareness of how we are stuck in our stories and stuck in our pain.
In order to release ourselves from the stories around us and the dramas that are playing out in our lives with various characters, over and over again, we have to bring them into our conscious awareness.
This takes intention, and above all it takes a certain commitment or willingness to change — especially because victim consciousness is a comfortable place to reside.
For example, I had issues with mother figures for a very long time, until I became aware that I was subconsciously fearful of anyone who was a mother, because in my experience, mothers hurt, mothers wound, mothers are the supreme inflictors of pain.
But as I became aware of this belief, I was able to consciously work to change it, and now that I’ve become a mother myself, I know that actually many mothers love, heal, support, and care.
It is far too easy to become a victim stuck in the painful cycle of playing out our dramas, much like watching a theater play of our lives.
The first step to finding a new and better identity is awareness — an awareness that you are probably living out a role in one of these positions: victim, perpetrator, or rescuer.
Where in your life are you playing the victim?
What or who are you perpetuating?
Who are you rescuing or attempting to save?
And ultimately, what stories (and with whom) keep replaying over and over again like a broken record in your life?
2. Honoring our wounds
No matter the script, everything holds a message for us. Every situation and set of circumstances is an opportunity for growth.
As painful as it can be, everyone and everything is a mirror. Everything — whether that be a person, a calling, a circumstance, a rock, a stone, a bird, the gusts of the wind, the twinkling of the stars, or the flow of sacred waters — is an opportunity for us to refine our true selves.
We are all wounded in some way or another. But by bringing awareness to our wounds, we can examine them, dig a little deeper, and pay attention to the messages that come in tow.
For example, as a child, I would read around 20 books a week. But in school, I was repeatedly told to stop lying, that no one could read that fast, and that I was just an unintelligent farm girl. This wounded me. I didn’t ask to be able to read this way; it simply was how I existed. I know now that this was an early lesson to remain steadfast in my beliefs and individuality, to let wounding words roll off my back, and to continue doing what I love while remaining true to my identity.
Think: What is the lesson here?
What is the Universe communicating to you?
What are your guides, or your higher self, presenting to you in this opportunity for growth, change, and transformation?
Look beneath the surface in order to unveil the messages behind the curtain of the dramas playing out in your life.
Once you have shed awareness on them and discovered (or remembered) the wound speaking out to you for healing, you can move to the next step.
3. Seeing ourselves without judgment or outward attachments
Looking within and uncovering our wounds can be a frightening thing. This is why so many of us look outside of ourselves, for anything and everything that might fulfill us.
And so it’s important that we become our own witness, a detached observer of ourselves and our wounds, without judging what that “makes us.”
Because when we are able to look at ourselves and our wounds with compassion, we allow ourselves to be authentic, vulnerable, and real. This paves the way for lasting transformation.
Examining our wounds without judgment or attachment is similar to meeting our inner child, who may be wounded, scared, and seeking healing and compassion.
Witnessing ourselves from this place of non-judgment and non-attachment, without feeling guilt or shame over our behaviors, releases us from the grips of who we thought we were.
4. Cutting the cords
We all have energy attachments to the past, but it is possible to free ourselves from the binding ties of trauma and suffering.
Years ago, I saw an energetic healer to help with my back pain. But I got an unexpected gift along with that energetic healing: cord cutting.
If you haven’t experienced it, it can seem like a fantastical notion, or even fake, but it’s not. The healer spiritually and metaphorically cut the cords that bound me to my past trauma, and specifically the perpetrator of those traumas, my mother.
It worked, powerfully, and I’ve never been the same. I’m much more free and peaceful now.
Cutting the energetic cords that tie us to our pain gives us the gift of emotional and physical freedom. When we cut the cords, we break free from the restraints of the past and the stories holding us into the old paradigms.
You don’t necessarily need to visit a healer like I did. You can also use a simple meditation, or visualization, to cut energetic cords yourself. I’ve used both, and a combination of the two.
Note that when you cut cords, you need to make sure that you are willing to release the attachment.
You can even say out loud, “I am willing to heal. I am willing to release this attachment.”
Here is an example of a simple way to cut energetic cords:
Sit in a quiet place and take a few deep breaths.
Visualize a knife or sword of golden light in your hand. Really see and feel this powerful tool of transformation and healing. Envision it fully.
Don’t worry about whether or not it will work; just trust that it will.
Think about something or someone, a situation, or circumstance that you want to release. Visualize the cord of energy running from your current self to this past wound.
When you are ready, engage in this loving act of freeing yourself from these energetic ties and attachments, cutting the cord with the sword or knife that’s in your hand.
As you do so, visualize severing these ties and sending these energies back to their original destinies, releasing them once and for all.
And then take a few more deep, cleansing breaths.
If you’re having trouble releasing a specific situation, event, or person, think about why you are hesitant to choose a new identity for yourself.
Think about who you could or would be without this toxic or painful energy weighing you down. And then repeat the process again while remaining willing to let it go.
The willingness is the key.
5. Refining our rituals.
As a fifth and final step, you can use the power of ceremony to memorialize the actions that you’ve taken to this point.
Your ritual or ceremony doesn’t have to be a long, drawn-out thing. It’s whatever resonates with you. In this regard, ceremony can look like countless things, but here are a few examples.
- Going for a walk in nature and grounding the earth, connecting with the world around you — the wind, soil, sun, and moon.
- Lighting a candle and burning clearing plants such as sage or palo santo.
- Sharing your experience with a friend as a sacred witness, or perhaps journaling with the Universe as a sacred witness to your actions.
- Pursuing energy medicine with a practitioner to clear the imprints laying in the luminous energy field.
Whatever route you choose, commit to the path and engage in it with all of your intention and attention.
When we fully commit and show up for ourselves, this sends a high-vibrational signal to the Universe, like a beacon of light making itself known, that we are ready to move on from the lesson and finally free ourselves from these energies with which we were once plaguing ourselves.
The act of memorializing this personal work with ceremony is a powerful way to anchor the new energies of change and transformation.
Once you have completed these five steps toward releasing your old identities, you can then realign with love, choose joy in the present moment, and re-commit to following your bliss without attachment to the outcome.
Interestingly enough, when we let go of what doesn’t serve us, we can start to truly serve ourselves. Because when we love ourselves enough to acknowledge that life is always changing, we can welcome in luminous growth, freedom, and the next stage.
“Only the truth of who you are if realized with set you free.” — Eckhart Tolle
With love and gratitude, Aurora