Practicing Non-Attachment

As you would probably expect, working in the field of personal development I get to spend a lot of my time with people talking to them about goal setting and visualisation. I cannot over emphasise the power of positive intention when it comes to manifesting an amazing life, but there is a common trap that too many people fall into while “dreaming their way to success”.

One of the most significant developments in my realisation of what true success requires is the notion of being non-attached to the object or outcome of desire. There really does appear to be a reliable universal law that states good things will flow more readily towards you when you let go of your need of having them.

For many people, including me, it has taken a lot of time and contemplation to completely reconcile with the logic that the best way to get something you want is to not place too much importance on wanting it. We can see how this works out in the subtle examples that we’ve all experienced in our daily lives. An obvious one is when you find that little lost object only after you’ve given up looking for it.

How about when you’ve got yourself so worked up about an upcoming event that the only way of coping with that level of anxiety is to just throw fate to the wind and say “Sod it, whatever happens will happen, let’s just get it over with”, and in the resulting relaxation your experience of that event turns out to be far more positive than you could have imagined.

If you’re a golfer you’ve probably been told that you’ve got a better chance of landing the ball closer to the flag if you do not aim for the flag itself but rather the wider area around it.

Each of these examples demonstrate an important lesson in what your future success is waiting for you to do – let go for your need for it to happen.

When you attach yourself to an outcome and pin all of your hope on it, you might be all excited about achieving the goal, but you’re also buying into the belief that you can’t be truly happy unless that situation pans out the way you want it to. You are unconsciously telling yourself “Right now I’m not complete, but this thing will make me whole”. Without meaning to you have put yourself into a lack mentality and that can make life a lot more difficult than it needs to be.

The problem is not in the goal itself but rather in the attachment to the goal; like your happiness depends on it. This attachment is the equivalent of ‘looking down’ when you are half way up the mountain. It causes you to fantasise about how terrible it will be to fail.

You may have watched the film “The Secret” or learned about the Law of Attraction, where you focus on your desire at the same time as ‘sending our’ your emotional intention to the Universe. Well wanting something too much works in harmony with the opposite law – The Law of Repulsion. Think of a magnet being flipped over so that it repels rather than attracts. Dreaming about your desired outcome is good, but doing it from the confines of a lack mentality will rarely get you closer to where you want to be.

So the big question is how do you let go of your need of things while still encouraging them into your life?

Quite simply, by recognising all of the reasons you can still choose to be happy without the goal having to be met. Everyone has innate happiness in their nature; it just gets a bit covered up with the thought that we are not supposed to feel it until we’ve actually done something to earn it.

The best question I have ever been asked came from the success coach, Michael Neill, and it is this:

What would you want to go after in your life if you knew you didn’t have to be unhappy about not getting it?

It might take you a while to get your head around the meaning of that question but it will eventually lead you to that frame of mind where you can have compelling goals, but without an emotional dependence on them. It is a case of “Yeah, it’ll be great when this happens, but in the mean time I’m just going to be happy anyway”.

Homework:

Take some time to completely relax and meditate on what you would like to have in your future life. Let your imagination run riot, as if you can order anything you like from the Universe’s menu.

Put yourself into the scene and experience it as if it is happening right now. What do you see? What can you hear? Totally immerse yourself into the fantasy so that it becomes more and more real for you, and intensify the good feelings.

Stay with it for as long as it feels really good to do so and then imagine pushing your thoughts off into the distance, as if you are instructing the Universe to deal with them for you.

Next spend a few moments contemplating everything you already love about your life. What are you deeply grateful for? What do you have in your life today that you want to continue having for the rest of your days? Really feel that. Smile at it. Then happily get on with the rest of your day.

To your success!

Namaste.

Paul