Recently I had to ‘let go’ of something that was very close to my heart. It had been in my life for a long time and loosing it was especially hard. It took many deep breaths and quiet meditations to realise I would be OK without it. That in reality, letting go of one thing allows space for another to come in. It’s the letting go part that we sometimes find really really hard.
Life sometimes has a way of stripping you down. Taking you back to the basics from where you start again. During this process you may loose many things, or even many people but you will also find yourself. It is a human trait to cling to stuff and people but loosing either pushes us out of our comfort zone, and it is out of our comfort zone that we truly realise what we are made of. It’s where our creativity lies.
I want to put this into the context of art. Lets imagine for a moment you are a photographer that loves equipment. Has a passion for that extra stuff, reflectors and strobes, triggers and backdrops. This is your comfort zone. You are happy shooting your portraits surrounded by your expensive complicated gear. Then one day your studio is broken into and all your extras are stolen. You did however, have your camera at home with you. Just your camera. No tripod and trigger. No tethering cable. No flash. Now the next day you have a portrait session booked. It’s really important and you cannot cancel. So you go back to basics. You scramble in your mind for a location with great light. You adjust your camera settings and start to play a bit. You find yourself being less static without the tripod and shooting from new angles. Stripped down you find a new seat of creativity. You are so out of your comfort zone but that alone forces you to be creative. The artist who finds himself with a blank canvas, a brush and three pots of paint will dig deep and get creative. He will mix those paints into every shade possible and create shadows and light out of nothing.
It’s the same with life. Have you ever noticed those people who are hoarders. How they are so often the same people who are stuck in their routines. How they never move forward and expand. They stay in the same house for most of their lives. Shop at the same shop and eat the same food. Hoard their stuff and die never having gone out of their diminutive comfort zone. Then there are the people who have no fixed location and few belongings, that live from experience to experience and adventure to adventure. Always seeking and probably always finding.
It is very easy to get stuck in our space. Both our physical space and the space in our heads. It feels safe and we as humans like to feel safe. We like to feel like we can control our environment and we do this by knowing our comfort zone and staying there. We don’t always choose to move out of our space. Sometimes we are forced to. Life comes along and gives a big kick and we are blasted out of our comfort zone into a new space that is unfamiliar and, to be honest, quite frightening. We take a moment to catch our breath. Thats okay. Then we pick ourselves up and take a look around. This is the point where we start to get creative. Forced to expand we start to move forward. Here’s the good part. Here is where we find our creativity like the guy who looses his job and is forced to go it alone and work for himself. When we loose something we make space for something new. We open ourselves up to possibility. We move out of our comfort zone and somewhere in that space we find ourselves.
When we are stripped down in life and we lose a lot all at once, this is when we have the greatest expansion. This is when we have our greatest growth and become open to the most possibilities. The more space we make the more ‘new’ can come in.
It is not easy. No it is definitely not easy, but it is when we are laid bare, totally out of our comfort zone with nothing but space before us that we truly find ourselves. This is where we find ourselves being deeply creative. Where we find the greatest expansion of our mind and our spirit. If you never leave your comfort zone you will not grow. In fact the opposite will happen. If you do not let go of something there will be no space for the new.
Take a deep breath today and let go of something. It does not have to be something physical. It can just be an idea, a belief, something you have clung on to. Send it away with an exhale. Now there is space for something new and it feels so good just to have that space for a while. Feel yourself expand as you wait for the new to arrive. When it does enjoy the growth. It will often come in unexpected ways but it will come and you will grow. The bigger the exhale the bigger the inhale. The more you let go of the more space you create and the more room for growth.
Let go of something and you will come closer to finding yourself.
nikivanvelden 