Unhook yourself: Releasing the outcome is a pain reliever that will move you towards your desires
Bridges - best crossed when you come to them.
A benefit of being in emotional agony is you get to feel which painkillers work. One of the most powerful analgesics I’ve found is to release the outcome. And not only that, paradoxically it’s a more effective way of achieving and enjoying any desired outcomes.
What does releasing the outcome mean?
Releasing the outcome for me means a willingness to let go of any way I think things should turn out and any attachment to a rigid format of what I want or believe has to unfold.
It means a readiness to stop hanging onto a particular desire as if my life depends on it.
It means being willing to trust the process of life, and my own ability to generate the resources for dealing with whatever arises, if or when it does.
Jon Kabat Zinn’s definition of healing is ‘coming to terms with things as they are’
It means allowing myself to be as I am, in this moment, messy as that may be, and not trying to be anything else. It means releasing the outcome of how I think I should be feeling or thinking or doing too. And if judgement arises, accepting that too.
Magically, when I can release the outcome then experiences I want start to appear in my life of their own accord. Sometimes they don’t look exactly how I thought they would, and sometimes they are even better than I believed possible. And when they do arrive, I am able to enjoy them more, because I’ve learnt how to be present and it’s all a bit of a bonus.
I fucking love Max Erhmann’s quote from the Desidereta: Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
But I still fucking want shit?
I hear you. And desire, and our visions for the future are creative - wanting things isn’t the problem. But once we’ve set our intention and started taking the first steps towards making our dreams manifest, we can make the choice to release the outcome.
I don’t know who drew this, but I think of it a lot. Whilst not letting go.
As opposed to torturing ourselves that it isn’t here yet, berating ourselves for not being there right now and compulsively racing after it like a greyhound chasing a rabbit.
Desire is life force, but try and capture it and pin it down and all you’re left with is a dead albatross round your neck.
Desire is not the problem; attachment, or how you relate to it is.
There are three compelling reasons to recommit yourself to letting go.
Albatross - a large seabird, and definitely not a necklace.
1.Pain sucks
Holding onto an outcome hurts.
There’s a spectrum of how tight we grip: perhaps a bit of yearning is OK, even exciting, but at its worst, clenching around a desired result creates so much psychic tension, it makes us brittle.
When we feel insecure it’s natural to grip tighter, but paradoxically if we relax around pain, rather than contract, things get easier.
“Change happens when the pain of holding on becomes greater than the fear of letting go.” Spencer Johnson
Plus, our world view can expand to allow other things in that aren’t anxiety producing. Holding onto an outcome has our world shrink to the size of the thing you think you need, and the gloss and opportunity falls out of every part of the world that isn’t that.
You become obsessed with the problem and planning and plotting, distracted from everything else. Multiple scenarios and conversations are played out in your head.
Help there are too many people in my head and I am playing all the parts and I have no idea where I am and I just missed my stop
You feel desperate, scrabbling for imaginary power footholds in your psyche constantly. Maybe you tell all your friends about your problem, getting advice, and muddling yourself further. It dominates your field of attention. You can’t settle. You hate thinking about it but you can’t not think about it.
Releasing an outcome stops the constant pain of trying to live in a desired future and feeling the lack in the present, which saps any nourishing joy available now, whilst also increasing tension in your body.
Shibari is Japanese rope binding, aka Kinbaku, which involves lots and lots of intricate and visually unusual/artistic rope ties. Not for me, but then I had those curly no need to tie your shoelaces, basic bitch I was.
Simple, but not easy. I have a high pain threshold and my attachment style is something like shibari with an extra shot of caffeine (but hold any pleasurable titillation). So the torture of holding onto something has to get pretty great for me to be willing to release it to the gods.
Yet when I do, perhaps after some initial helpless sobbing, maybe a sense of defeat, grief and overwhelming sadness, (situation dependent) suddenly a huge reservoir of energy is returned to me and the most liberating sense of freedom and strength.
2.Holding on feeds shitty beliefs about yourself that aren’t true
Underneath the outcome that is being gripped onto, another idea is also being hooky.
The idea that if we don’t get this, we will not be enough, or life will not be enough for us to stand.
By holding onto needing something a certain way, we feed this idea.
Many things in my life I thought I needed to be OK. And it wasn’t till I was tested, and things fell apart, that paradoxically I could actually feel my own power.
If I could emblaze anything on my former self it would be ‘Don’t waste your fucking life thinking you’re not loved or lovable. That you don’t deserve to be here. And that you don’t have to do anything to warrant a space on this earth being yourself. You do simply by virtue of being.’
We think by hooking ourselves up to something or someone, a person, place or situation, even a goal, we are saving ourselves. The opposite is true. We are draining ourselves.
Hooks blind us to our inherent power here, as part of this world, made of the same stuff as trees and stardust.
They have us focus on what we can’t control, instead of the impact we can make.
Trees make a huge impact, but they don’t try and negotiate trade deals. I suspect they might not be good at it. We have power and impact, just perhaps in different ways than we imagine.
Imagining our power outside ourselves in some outcome sets up a hierarchy with us at the bottom. It’s simply not true. There is more in you than you know.
Hooking ourselves feeds a not enough problem.
The only thing we don’t have enough of in this situation is belief in our own personal power.
3. It doesn’t work
The third reason it’s worth releasing an outcome is because holding on doesn’t actually make a blind bit of fucking difference to what happens. In fact it usually makes it worse.
We cling to the notion that we are utterly responsible for what outcome happens. That brute force and manipulation will manifest our dreams. That worry changes anything. That some key sentence or well timed action will unlock the entire situation, if we can just find it and say it in the right way at the right time to the right person.
We are deluding ourselves. Often there is nothing we can do or not do, especially when other people are involved. That is their work.
Ask yourself: What if it all wasn’t up to me? What if there’s nothing I can do or not do about it? Could I simply release the outcome and let the universe take care of it?
We waste so much energy holding onto an outcome that we don’t have much available for the day as it comes, for the people as they show up.
Some examples of holding onto an outcome might be - I want someone to like me (and if they don’t I won’t be OK) or I want this job interview (and if it doesn’t go my way I won’t be OK) or I need this deal to go through (and if it doesn’t it will be a disaster) or I need them to reply to my email (and if they don’t I will explode on them).
So much energy is siphoned into making sure what happens fits what we think should happen (or how we think we should be) and then managing our anxiety and tiredness because living that way is so much effort.
Most of the time, I have the capacity to deal with things in this moment. I often don’t have the capacity to deal with things in this moment and 20 other projected scenarios of what might happen and how I might feel then and what I need to do next and how to make it happen. In short, I cannot solve all my life’s problems all at once.
Living in this controlling way not only wears us down but actually blinds us to potential opportunities.
We aren’t open to receiving unexpected good things, because we have our attention all pointing in one direction. We can’t see things as they are, fogged by our own hypervigilance and fear.
When I am able to release the outcome, hard though it is to break the illusion that in order for things to happen how I want, I must grip and cling to my desire, mentally, emotionally and sometimes even physically, to ensure I am taken care of, time after time I am shown the wisdom in this way of living.
That power and presence are an infinitely more rewarding and effective wellspring for a creative and joyful life than trying to force, manipulate, dominate or people please my way through challenging times.
This doesn’t mean not taking action, expressing oneself, or making a request. It doesn’t mean being a doormat. It means conserving your energy so that you have the clarity, courage and faith to move forward towards your desires and trust wherever the chips may fall, you have enough in your tank for the long haul.
HOW TO
If you made it this far and found this piece helpful, I thought I’d add a how-to if you’re struggling.
Letting go is a process, to be returned to again and again and again. It’s one of the highest spiritual maxims, and while we are spiritual beings we are also human beings.
If you’re in really high anxiety it’s unlikely you can think straight because survival brain has kicked in, so that’s OK, you don’t need to force yourself to do anything, or be anywhere.
Releasing the outcome is a practice. I start with just releasing the outcome of how I think each day should go, and welcome the unexpected.
Additionally, if you’re struggling, sometimes in order to let go of one thing, we need some extra security in another form. This can be externals or internals - creating a physical safety net for ourselves, in the form of a community group or a coach, or an internal environment that supports us.
For me, I often find this security in the form of attention and gentle acceptance. I ask myself: what’s really going on inside me here? What is the part of me that feels so insecure it is gripping so tight? Can I give that part some tender attention? And accept myself here, being human? And reassure that part of myself?
You can ask yourself:
What could I give myself to provide a sense of security here? How can I reassure myself of my resilience?
Is there one thing I can trust right now, even if it’s the ground beneath my feet or gravity? Can I simply do one thing to help balance myself?
What would being available to myself right now look like? We can get people in to help us when our resources are low. Perhaps recognising that someone has gone through something similar and survived via a friend or a TV show or an inspirational youtube video . And that might allow you the security to stop gripping so tight.
Recognise you are feeling anxiety and acknowledge that
Name it - even out loud to yourself
Identify what you are holding onto
Be willing, or be willing to be willing to release the outcome
If this is hard, ask yourself what you might need to feel secure enough to release the outcome.
Notice what arises as you release the outcome and allow for that, as you are
Repeat