On Moving Forward & Letting Go

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Moving forward is hard. At some point in our lives we all experience something, or get attached to someone that we just can't let go of. No matter how hard we try life becomes complicated, and sometimes we try our hardest to hang onto those complications because they mean that things don't have to change. Sometimes - most of the time - it's easier to cry ourselves to sleep, or to replay a scene in our head in a million different ways, or to just sit & wonder, "what if?", than it is to pick ourselves up and move forward. Advice columns & agony aunts make it seem so easy, but letting go can be one of the hardest things you will ever do.

Of course, it may be easier for things to stay the same, but if they do then things never get better. We never stop crying ourselves to sleep, or running through all the ways that things could have gone, and we could take up forever with our wonderings about all the differents paths that we could have taken. If you're in the process of letting go & moving forward, then I only have one main suggestion: be kind to yourself. Cut yourself some slack, go a little easier on yourself this time. You may know that things need to change, but there isn't any way that they can all change at once. Take some time to do things that make you happy, even if they aren't necessarily moving you in the right direction. Even if you just change one little thing at a time, in the direction that you want to go, you'll get there in the end. It might seem like everyone around you is getting there faster, but remember life isn't a race. You're entitled to move at your own pace, and work through whatever is holding you back at a speed that suits you.

As a secondary suggestion, I would say this: don't torture yourself. Sure, if you'd done that one thing differently ten years ago then maybe your life would as perfect as you're imagining that it would be. Chances are that isn't the case. Chances are, you'd be dwelling on some other past event that would have most certainly made your life perfect if you'd done things differently. Don't beat yourself about about what could have been, or what you should have done, or the way it was meant to be. You can't do anything about your past, but you can work with now. You can decide that "now" will be better. You can decide that today is the day that you let go of your past, and move forward.

Until next time, xo.