The challenge for most of us is to let go. To leave behind. Society has taught us to collect, to gather new things, new information new knowledge – accumulate. So we build up huge “piles” of anything that comes our way or we seek out and carry with us. Some of it is useful experience that will come in handy in our everyday life or at special situations. That is a good thing.
However, much of it turn into what we call baggage, mental baggage. That is a negative term. This is where the challenge lies. We have to let go of our baggage.
There is nothing in our society that encourages us to e.g. unlearn. We don’t now how to do that, we don’t understand why it is important to know the art of unlearning. We don’t necessarily need all the knowledge we have so we should unlearn some of it so it does not inflict on whatever we are currently doing. But then we have this issue that it might just be that we will need it some day, what then? It is the same with things in our home. We collect them but never throw away or give away to a charity, our neighbors, relatives or something the like. No, we keep it. never use it, but keep it. You never know when it will come in handy. Well, most of the time it won’t.
Same thing with our minds. We bring along to much baggage that we think is useful and will be useful some rainy day in a distant future. The thing is when we arrive there we have some other fresher knowledge that we will use anyway. So we might as well let go of it right away.
The ability to let go and start to reorient to a new situation for a new beginning would create better happier lives for all of us. Unfortunately we don’t. We bring it along for no other reason than conventional wisdom.
This applies to our private life, our organizational life and also career to the extent that is not part of our private life. This lack of courage or willingness to go through transitionsruins us for a happier, better richer freer life.
