Ask any of my current or past students: I have metaphors and analogies for EVERYTHING. Sometimes they don’t make a whole lot of sense, and I’ve hade many eyes roll at me over the years. But most of the time, they get the idea.

One of the hardest things for anyone to do in this life is to LET GO. We love to feel like we’re in control; that if we just work really, really hard, we’ll get a handle on whatever it is we’re struggling with.

In my lessons, I teach that this is anathema to progress. The harder you work at something, the LESS LIKELY you are to achieve your goal.

What?!?

Let me put it this way: Your muscles, and even your brain, need to act and react with lightning speed and extreme dexterity. When you work HARD, your muscles contract, tighten up, and put the brakes on. When you CONCENTRATE, you actually slow down your thought processes so you have enough time to think in conversational language about what you’re focused on. Both efforts lead to failure because you are attempting to SLOW EVERYTHING DOWN THROUGH FORCE.

The more effective way is to LET GO. Allow your body to react in a relaxed, EASY, and balanced manner. It will respond so much faster and with a higher degree of accuracy if you ALLOW it to move.

Don’t concentrate; instead, FOCUS. Refine your attention, hone it to a sharp point, but don’t slow down your thought processes by concentrating. Your brain works a billion times faster than you can speak, and when you concentrate, you are actually slowing down your thoughts to conversational speed. Again, ALLOW your brain to function at peak capacity. It can go forwards, backwards, up, down, in or out, all before you can type WTF? It doesn’t have to make a logical progression; it will get there by any route or all routes, and it will do it faster without you concentrating.

Another thing I counsel my students to let go of is emotion, especially the emotional response we have to mistakes. What we tend to do as humans is say, “Hey, wait a minute! I just screwed up! We’ve got to go back and figure this out, I cannot and will not continue on until this is handled!”

There is a time and a place where it is appropriate to go back and look at one’s mistakes. But here’s the kicker: You screwed up, it’s in the past, and you CANNOT FIX IT. You can work to improve future performance, but you can’t change the past. So LET IT GO. It’s human nature to fixate on our imperfections to the extent that we are “fixed” in place and cannot progress. This frustrates, angers, and depresses us, and those emotions are the glue that keep us fixed in place. Acknowledge the emotions, acknowledge the mistakes, ALLOW them to MOVE through you and then LET THEM GO. MOVE ON.

I have not yet mastered the art of doing this in my own life, but I have found that LETTING GO works EVERY time I apply it. You will find similar techniques in meditation practices around the world.

Check it out for yourself. And please visit my website at www.fiddlin4you.com

~ Michael Kelly