When a newborn is examined, the doctor will check the baby’s reflexes, including the grasp reflex. This is tested by stroking the baby’s palm. In response, the baby will close their little fingers in a grasp. Our natural state is to hang onto things.
You may remember my post on holding lightly, something I wrote after an experience with my daughters during our holiday over three years ago.
There isn’t a day that goes by without my thinking about the power of non-attachment to free us from suffering and to help us reduce stress, be more effective, and be more self-assured.
What is non-attachment? Non-attachment means fully engaging with experiences, thoughts, and feelings without fixating or trying to control them. When we practice non-attachment, we are engaged emotionally and with our attention and energy while still maintaining our perspective.
This is different from detachment. Detachment means pulling away from or becoming unresponsive to experiences and emotions. Detachment can lead to disconnection and avoidance of difficult emotions, sometimes called “spiritual bypassing.”
What does non-attachment make possible? Practicing non-attachment can help decrease your stress, regulate emotions, be more adaptable, manage self doubt and be more self assured, be more creative, deepen your relationships, and become better at problem solving.
What kinds of things might you hold lightly? Here are 8 things you may want to consider placing on your fingertips like a soap bubble, holding as gently as you can.
The need for external validation. As a result of a difficult upbringing, many of us fall into the trap of seeking constant approval. Outsourcing our dignity, our worth, however, can leave us at risk.
Concern for the opinions of others. We may live with some form of this question: “What will people think?” As an aside, have you noticed that when we wonder, “What will they think,” the “they” we are referring to are often a person or people whom we’d rather not be like?
How do you let go of attachments to things? Don’t even try. Effort creates attachment. Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them.
Eckhart Tolle
The notion that we need to or can make other people happy. Here’s a key truth…it’s hard to go through life making everyone around us happy. When we’re asked to make decisions, it’s often the case that some people will in fact be unhappy with our decisions. By the way, this is one reason that leadership can be lonely.
Our limiting beliefs about ourselves, our workplace, or our world. Catching ourselves when we fall prey to cognitive distortions, such as black-and-white or all-or-none thinking and then seeking out evidence to contradict those distorted beliefs and negative self-perceptions are ways to counter such limiting beliefs.
Here are the last four things we might want to hold lightly.
- Our past successes or failures
- Preconceived solutions or desired outcomes
- Our ego or status.
- Time pressure or urgency
A baby’s grasp reflex lasts until the baby is about six months old. After that, I believe that the teachings of the world, incessant messages that more stuff will make us more fulfilled, our experiences and traumas, and our desire to hold certain truths as self evidence can all make it hard for us to practice non-attachment. But like most things, holding lightly can be learned.
How can we hold more lightly?
Here are some things that have worked for others and that may work for you. I’ll ask you at the end if there’s just one thing you can try.
- Cultivating acceptance of situations and outcomes. You can learn to accept yourself, and your life, as they are.
- You can relax your attachment to rigid expectations of how things should be. How many times do we hear ourselves say, “But they should have done that differently”? Or “I never did that,” the implication being that everyone else should act like we think we would have.
- Practicing gratitude for the way things are can help us accept the present. And I don’t mean “at least” gratitude, in which we compare ourselves to others less fortunate than ourselves. Everyone of us has received the smile of a stranger or seen the beauty of the clouds streaking across the sky.
- We can practice being mindful, and this doesn’t require that you meditate (although that is one way to be mindful.) You can pay attention to your body as you walk or to the food you’re eating.
- Focusing on the present moment rather than the past or fears of the future can liberate us from crushing regret or terror of the unknown. It is our overattachment to these events, real or imagined, that can sap us of joy.
- When we have reflexive thoughts or cognitive distortions, we can shift from attachment to those thoughts to inquiry, observing our thoughts without judgment and practicing curiosity and compassion towards others and ourselves.
- And we can take time to reflect on the things we’re attached to and the consequences of those attachments, making a decision over, and yes over again, about the costs of those attachments.
How about you?
Is there something to which you can hold lightly?
Can you imagine a soap bubble on the tips of your fingers? What is in that bubble? Is it the need for validation from others? Is it fear of the future or regret about the past? Is it the idea that you have to be perfect, making everyone happy all the time forever and always? Is it an outcome you can’t control?
And which of those strategies might you try this today?
Photo credit: Braedon McLeod on Upsplash
