100 Powerful Ways to Let Go and Free Your Spirit

Life is a steep climb. You won’t survive the exertion without letting go of the negative emotions overflowing your backpack. If your psychic limitations are pulling you backward, stop— take inventory. Decide what is essential to reaching the peak and cut the rest.

You need only the lightest, most versatile spiritual tools available. Letting go is one of those tools; it is your Swiss army knife.

To let go is to stop trying to protect yourself from life. It is taking responsibility for your thoughts, beliefs, and maneuvers. To let go is to humble yourself.

Letting go is not working on the problem. To work on something is to exert force. It’s to struggle, sweat, and bleed. Letting go is releasing, giving up, and walking away.

If your mind tells you it’s not that easy, let go of that thought and act as if it is that easy.

Here are 100 ways to let go of what is holding you back.

1. Let go of the need to win.
2. Let go of the need to ease anxiety by guaranteeing failure.
3. Let go of the need to justify, argue, defend, or explain yourself.

4. Let go of self-punishing perfectionism.
5. Let go of using confusion to stall.
6. Let go of your preoccupation with changing the past.

7. Let go of secrecy.
8. Let go of being right.
9. Let go of the fantasies, excuses, and alibis of youth.

10. Let go of satisfying someone with self-abandonment.
11. Let go of the need to save someone from their consequences.
12. Let go of the need to avoid yourself by focusing on someone else.

13. Let go of compulsive self-improvement.
14. Let go of the delusion that money will save you from yourself.
15. Let go of the belief that you need to earn worthiness.

16. Let go of the belief that emotional pain is love.
17. Let go of the need to pretend that intolerable situations are tolerable.
18. Let go of trying to force someone to care about you.

19. Let go of numbing agents – media, alcohol, drugs, sex, idealism, sugar, work.
20. Let go of an absolute best or an absolute worst.
21. Let go of all the lies.

22. Let go of silent scorn.
23. Let go of magical thinking.
24. Let go of trying to force pain into submission with self-destruction.

25. Let go of the need to accept less than you deserve to avoid vulnerability.
26. Let go of the need to make yourself indispensable to be valuable.
27. Let go of any solution that requires you to shrink.

28. Let go of what anyone thinks of you.
29. Let go of using anything other than character to assess risk.
30. Let go of the idea, good or bad, of yourself as someone who couldn’t possibly ________.

31. Let go of fear.
32. Let go of the need to leather whip yourself into shape.
33. Let go of the belief that there is a limit on opportunities to start over.

34. Let go of the need to be severe.
35. Let go of the need to compare and despair.
36. Let go of requiring yourself to earn the right to relax.

37. Let go of the need to play God by controlling outcomes.
38. Let go of the need to judge what someone is saying before they finish saying it.
39. Let go of the desire to revert to former versions of yourself for fear of what’s next.

40. Let go of your need to have or be a human Savior.
41. Let go of childhood by letting go of childish tactics.
42. Let go of the belief that things won’t go your way if you let go.

43. Let go of using isolation to solve anything.
44. Let go of your willingness to set yourself on fire to keep someone warm.
45. Let go of the need to meet the expectations of whoever is in front of you.

46. Let go of using the past to measure possibility.
47. Let go of agreeing to be less than you are so you can belong.
48. Let go of the dangerous belief that you are alone.

49. Let go of dark forces.
50. Let go of the belief that it’s too late.
51. Let go of a fearful, monotonous, punishing vision of the future.

52. Let go of the need to panic.
53. Let go of the idea that the best of your life is behind you.
54. Let go of your need to scan the environment for threats.

55. Let go of your refusal to enjoy your life as it is now.
56. Let go of the conviction that you are undeserving.
57. Let go of the belief that you don’t have the right to do what’s best for you.

58. Let go of attempts to apply logic to irrationality.
59. Let go of surviving as a life purpose.
60. Let go of the need to problem-solve anything when you are sick or grieving.

61. Let go of unrealistic expectations of yourself.
62. Let go of the need to pretend to be okay.
63. Let go of your undying loyalty to your current feelings.

64. Let go of the need to protect your heart.
65. Let go of believing you can think your way out of reality.
66. Let go of the need to sabotage yourself to control disappointment.

67. Let go of the need for attention.
68. Let go of the need to react to every change in the direction of the wind.
69. Let go of the belief that people should do what you think is best for them.

70. Let go of revenge.
71. Let go of believing your thoughts.
72. Let go of needing anyone to agree.

73. Let go of the need to act tough.
74. Let go of any justification for inaction.
75. Let go of the need to burn good things to the ground.

76. Let go of the idea that rewards without risk exist.
77. Let go of the need to hide in the stories you make up.
78. Let go of the willingness to accept unacceptable behavior.

79. Let go of your willingness to believe lies you know are lies.
80. Let go of the willingness to gain approval by assuming guilt.
81. Let go of the belief that you can somehow avoid becoming what you consume.

82. Let go of the belief that anything is personal.
83. Let go of the need to be exceptional just to feel average.
84. Let go of the belief that anyone can interrupt your destiny.

85. Let go of the belief that motivation comes before action.
86. Let go of the need to create dramatic, self-imposed suffering.
87. Let go of the need to bring about the disappointment you are trying to avoid.

88. Let go of the need to convince.
89. Let go of the need to be in pain to feel alive.
90. Let go of your refusal to live your life on your terms.

91. Let go of your worship of the strategic mind.
92. Let go of the desire for people to bend to your will.
93. Let go of your need to play out a shadow self for fear of the strength of your true Self.

100. Let go of the need to be loyal to someone who is disloyal.
101. Let go of the belief that being nice is more important than being self-respecting.
102. Let go of your victim, know-it-all, hyper-self-sufficient, and self-pitying identities.
103. Let go of “why.”
104. Let go of “what if.”
105. Let go of “should.”
106. Let go of anyone asking you in word or deed to let them go.