1: What happens when we try to control the uncontrollable?
Nothing good.
“The Genius Move,” Gay Hendricks writes in The Genius Zone, “is when we let go of our effort to control the uncontrollable and feel the new space of creative aliveness open up inside us.”
Yesterday, we reviewed the specific five steps of what Gay calls “The Genius Move:”
Step 1: Notice we’re feeling unhappy, whatever the reason.
Step 2: Wonder, “What am I trying to control that’s actually impossible for me to control?”
Step 3: We get an insight about what we’ve been trying to control, or if not, we let our minds continue to wonder about it.
Step 4: Acknowledge that it’s outside of our control, whatever it is. Let it go and let it be.
Step 5: Think of a positive action we can do right away, something we actually have control over, and take the action.
Today, we’re going to focus on Step 4 of the process: The act of letting go.
Doing so triggers a rush of good feelings.
2: “The best way to learn how to let go is to start by actually letting go of something,” Gay writes. “I’ve used the following activity myself and have taught it to three generations of students.”
He encourages us to test them out in the laboratory of our bodies to see which we prefer.
Option one: Loosen our grip on something and let it drop.
We begin by imagining ourselves with our arm outstretched, holding a tennis ball in our hand. The ball faces downward. Our fingers grip the ball so it doesn’t fall to the floor. Take a moment now to imagine how it feels with the ball in our hand.
“Now,” Gay writes, “imagine letting the tension go from our hand, loosening our grip until the ball naturally falls and bounces on the floor.”
Next, we get an actual ball or some other object we can drop, like a pencil or even a crinkled-up piece of paper.
“Stretch our arm out with the object in our hand facing downward,” Gay recommends, “so that our hand must grip it to keep it from dropping.
“Grip it for a long moment, perhaps ten seconds, then release your grip and let it drop to the floor.
“Immediately,” he suggests, we “pick it up and repeat the process: Grip it and let it drop. Do that a few times to get the actual physical feeling of letting something go so that it drops out of our grip.”
Option two: Once again, we begin by imagining our arm outstretched. This time, however, our palm is facing up as we grip the ball or other small object.
“Feel how it would be to grip the object in our hand, palm up,” Gay notes. “Then, in our imagination, release our grip and let the object rest in the palm of our hand. We’ve still got the object in the palm of your hand, but now you have a different relationship with it. We are letting it be.
Then, we place an actual ball or other object in the palm of our hand, facing upward.
“Stretch our arm out and hold our grip on the object for ten seconds or so,” Gay writes. “Then, release our grip and let the object rest lightly in the palm of your hand. Play with how to hold the object in the most comfortable way.”
3: Letting go is that simple. We can let it go by dropping it or by letting it be.
“It never gets any more complicated than that,” Gay writes. “Notice the grip, release the grip, and let it drop or let it be.
“It’s the simplest thing in the world,” he states, “and yet so hard for most of us to learn in real life.”
The good news? We are presented with many opportunities to practice the art of letting go.
“I’ve been working and playing with the concept of letting go for more than half my life now,” Gay writes, “and I hope to keep learning about it until my last whisper.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Am I gripping tightly to something I cannot control, and how might my life change if I simply let it go or let it be?
Action: Practice the physical act of letting go with a small object today, and notice how it feels to release my grip—then apply that same release to something I’m holding onto mentally.
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