How Letting Go Makes You Happy!

This is the story of how I became happy by letting go of the desire to be productive: One evening I was on the phone with my mom and explained to her that I didn’t want to play computer games because it was a waste of my life. She told me that if I wasn’t playing, I wasn’t doing anything productive worth mentioning, and I should play computer. So I played computer for two or three hours. I finally got to a point where I was getting nowhere and stopped playing. The next day I was on the phone with my brother: he would have written to support or gone back to look for a missing quest. I would have deleted the save game and started over. That was great self-realization that I have little stamina. And I love self-recognition. And so playing was not a wasted life. We often get what we want when we stop pursuing it. Conversely, we usually don’t get what we pursue too hard: When I was about six years old, my grandpa was trimming the hedge with an electric hedge trimmer. I wanted to know the name of the blades. I pointed to it when he paused and it cut my finger so that it had to be stitched and I couldn’t write with it for a while in school. Because I wanted to know something too early, I had a harder time acquiring knowledge in school because I couldn’t take notes. If you want something, you may not get it. I should have worked in the garden physically and not with my mind. In this case, I should have gone with the flow. When you’re in the ocean, if the current grabs you, you should partially give up the desire to swim ashore: don’t swim against the current, but don’t swim with the current either. Swimming against the current robs you of all your strength and makes you drift away. Swimming with the current pushes you out to sea. If you swim diagonally with the current, you can swim out of it! Such compromises, where you don’t completely give up your desire but don’t completely get it either, are worth their weight in gold. Here is another such compromise: A mom requires her two children to go out of the house wearing hats. One of them does it wrong, says no to the cap, gets in trouble, and has to wear it anyway. It’s as if he swims against the current and, completely exhausted, is washed away after all. The other one does it right, finds a compromise, says yes to the cap, goes out, and takes it off again. He goes with the flow. He swims with the current. However, not to the open sea. Just until he’s out of the flow. If you let go of your goal, sometimes you can reach it better. Someone who goes jogging also doesn’t constantly look at his watch or cell phone to see how fast he’s going or when he’ll finally get there. That would only slow him down. If you let go of something, it might come to you. When you let go of your goal and gain distance, you may realize that you want to achieve it instead of needing to: take meditation as an example. If you make meditating a mandatory task every day, then it’s not fun. But if you treat yourself to it twice a week as a highlight, it is. But sometimes you realize that you neither want nor have to achieve it. That’s okay too. In dating, everything that has been said so far applies: If you want a partner at all costs, you appear needy. That is unattractive. And the other way around. If you don’t want one, you seem independent and therefore interesting. With the sentence “I have to achieve something.” you only put pressure on yourself. That creates unpleasant emotions that block you. You need to find a sweet spot.
This sweet spot is best described by the following quote: “Learn to be happy with what you have while you pursue all that you want.” - Jim Rohn. Also, don’t overextend yourself. Ideally, pick one activity each day that takes about 30 minutes that will bring you closer to your goals. Let’s say you want to learn to meditate. Then meditate for 30 minutes every day. Do you want to find an apprenticeship or a job? Then write applications for 30 minutes every day. Of course, you can do more or less. Aspirations are good. We should improve ourselves. But very often we learn and improve automatically if that is our desire. A muscle develops after the stimulus has been set by sport, in the resting phase. The faster and better we can switch between tension and relaxation, the better. But sometimes we want to get out of relaxation too quickly and sometimes we want to get into it too quickly. A balance is important. There is something I call the “self-love loop”:

1. one hates oneself
2. self-love increases
3. something happens and sets us back to number one If you think you have to accomplish something, it’s because you’re at point three or one. With increasing self-love, which should always be unconditional love, it doesn’t matter how much you accomplish: One is satisfied with oneself. This is also like a muscle! You master more and more difficult situations, in which you learn to love yourself unconditionally. Happy Self-Love!!