Drawing the Line in the SandIn this present generation, many people are finding themselves emotionally ripped and torn by their attachments, which is the common root for their pain and frustrations. It’s not as much as what others have done to them; as much as it is as to what they are doing to themselves. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Oftentimes, our suffering comes from our attachments to things, people, and personal desires. You can be at a place that you want something so bad to happen, that you don’t realize that you’re mental and sometimes physical suffering occurred because you wanted something to happen for all the wrong reasons.
Your life is at its finest when you become entrenched and completely invested in the effort but unattached to the results. This is the place when you are intimate with your personal power because you realize that the expedition and the exertion are important. There is a place that you arrive at where you draw a line in the sand that you must let go of that something that has to lead you to a new position or it has to lead to a certain person loving you or it has to lead to making a lot of money. When your desires are discombobulated or targeted towards you feeling better about yourself, you actually become disempowered by making the goal the consummate.
I believe the goal has to do with the process itself. In reality, the end is inherited in the means. Who you are when you are putting forth the effort is more important than what you want to become at the end of your effort. If you are totally convince that you left nothing in you after your effort, how can you not be content with the outcome. I love what Mahatma Gandhi said, “Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.”
All of us have gone through external assessments of wanting our marriage to turn out a certain way, our children becoming successful, our business succeeding, etc. Dr. Brown, are you suggesting that we should be completely unattached from this desire? you might be thinking. I know you feel that if you are unattached, you will stop working hard or you will no longer put out energy because where there is no concern there is no drive. Unattached doesn’t mean uncommitted.
Allow me to explain this process in a way that a layman can understand. When you become unattached, that doesn’t make you out to be a person who no longer cares about winning, or getting ahead in life or wanting your children to succeed. People think that if you think without ambition, that would be chaotic. However, I can substantiate that it is just the opposite. In other words, when you give up attachments, you will settle into a calm peaceful mentality where you are enjoying the process. This, of course, doesn’t mean you have removed your hands from the controls as though the results have no validity. It points to the fact that you understand that true results may not be what you envisioned. You are simply convinced that the true result of what God wanted for you is the quintessential of the true effort exerted by you.
What we think is our deep effort to make something happen, is actually meddling where we get in the way of something happening far greater than if our personal might was involved. The fact that you are attached to a relationship going a certain way actually sabotages the relationship. This is more likely to make you needy, jealous, demanding or pushy. This persona is not attractive, but rather repulsive. The only true control you can exert is when someone can trust you enough to talk with you. Then and only then are others allowed to own their space in your presence without feeling as though you are trying to manipulate them into thinking that you own it.
The idea of giving up your attachments has to be understood or else you will think that when one has no attachments, it shouldn’t equal any effort. In fact, letting go is that your only effort is your best effort. Your results are in your effort; not in how something or someone responds to you. You are not leaving the results up to fate; you are letting others decide without you manipulating them to move in your favor.
You cannot make people love you, but you can love yourself enough where their lack of love for you doesn’t bother you one bit. What you believe to be so is your RESULT!
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