letting go- snippets from the cosmo feb 07

So this is why I like cleaning my room and decluttering, this article from the Cosmopolitan, explained it all

Struggling to let go of a relationship, an idea or a thing is a sign that you've grown irrationally attached to it, say psychologists. As Oliver James, a UK psychologist and author of Affluenza - How to be succesful and stay sane (Vermillion) puts it, if you can't break free, it's because the object of your attachment has come to represent self esteem, security or status you'r afriad you won't get elsewhere.

'Ironically, we cling to them BECAUSE they hold us back from reaching for what we really want in life, protecting us from failure and disappointment.' Letting go is essential if we are to empower ourselves, she says, 'by challenging our dominant logic (an entrenched way of thinking we're often not even aware of) and hauling ourselves from our comfort zones to achieve what we are capable of. It's all about resillience, about achieving a sense of realistic optimism that comes from being in full control of your life. You owe it to yourself to be strongand happy - learn to let go!'

WHY YOU STRUGGLE

The insecurities that encourage you to hang on are almost always rooted in early childhood, when you were passive and had to submit to the wishes of others...this will be generally more extreme if you were raised in an authoritian home...there can be other triggers too, such as abandonement...

HOW TO LET GO

..delve into underlying emotional issues in your past, coaches help you to be in the present, mibilise your strenghts an dunlock new possibilities, and empower you to move into the future. 'We encourage you to picture your life as a book...is the current chapter helping me grow in the direction of the bigger picture? If so, hold on. But if you're off track or stuck in a comfort zone, losing confidence and the eneergy neccessary to complete your book, there are tools that can help you get back on track...help you identify your strenghts and use them to make the process of letting go less frightening and more rewarding'

Professional organisers have a different approach, helping you to let go of material baggage first, then to look at what your reactions tell you about yourself, says Tracey Foulkes of Get Organised in Cape Town. 'Your first step is to acknowledge you have a problem.' she says. 'Then set goals-decide exactly what things you're going to let go of and how. And finally, give yourself a reward.' A better life should be motivation enough, she says, but often something more tangible, such as a day at the spa,' can help.

The most common reason people hang on to things, Foulkes says, is just in case. She advocates asking yourself: ' When did I last use it? Do I like it? What's the worst that can happen if I ditch it?'

While Kingston is concerned primarily with posessions, the principals can be applied to people, jobs and even beliefs.