Holding on to the things that we don't want

I heard these words in a lyric the other day and I had to stop and think about how true those words were to me. My first thought was to immediately dismiss the phrase as something that did not make much sense. But the more I thought about it, the more I began to realize that we hold on to the what we do not want all the time. I thought of some examples of things we do not want such as:

* We do not want to carry around extra weight
* We do not want to be known as a shy person
* We do not want to struggle financially
* We do not want to be in a destructive relationship
* We do not want to be unhappy

The list goes on an on. I am sure that you can easily add to this list the things that you do not want in your life, yet you are holding on to them and shamelessly keeping them around. You may ask yourself, "why would I want to hold on to unhappiness if I do not want to be unhappy?" I actually do not know the answer to this question. You may have an answer for it, you may not. If after pondering the question you find yourself without a valid answer that satisfies you, then you have the responsibility to do what you must in order to let go of what you no longer want.

If you had an old smelly couch sitting in your living room that you no longer wanted, and you were given the opportunity to get rid of the old thing and get a modern couch and more fits your decor, would you hold on to the old couch? Would you give up the opportunity of having what you really wanted for holding on to something that was old and useless? I hope your answer would be no.

My point is that if you want to lose weight, every time you chose an option that feeds your overweight nature you are holding on to what you do not want. If you do not want to be a shy person, every opportunity to become more social that you turn down is your way of holding on to what you do not want. If you no longer want to struggle financially, every time you spend frivolously or take on consumer debt you are keeping your current situation the way it is today. You get my point.

So now is your time to reflect. Look at every area of your life that you say you want to change. As long as your choices consist of doing (or not doing) the same things over and over again then what you are really saying is "I hate the fact that....but I will be doing the same things that cause it to be so!" So what you really need to do is take inventory of what old smelly couches are just sitting around messing up your physical or emotional ambiance. Find that ragged old thing and chuck it! Make sure that everything you do brings into your life exactly what it is you want and (finally) let go of the rest.

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