Letting go of the person you used to be

I’ve mentioned this before, and I’m sure I’ll mention it again, but a huge component of change is remembering to let it happen.


Change, by the way, is inevitable. If it’s involuntary (or someone else’s idea), resisting it can be downright painful.

But a lot of times we resist changing even when we say that’s what we want, and sometimes the resistance is almost unconscious. We simply forget to let go of the person we used to be.

For example, as noted yesterday, you might have an intention of living love. But there’s this little part of you that is either afraid or … well, afraid to actually love (tomorrow: trust). So we fall back in the habit of judgment, as though being critical protects us. Take the homeless person begging for change on the corner. When I started tonglen practice, I found this was an easy place for me to start, although it got tougher when I stopped making up stories about why he was there. Regardless, many of us find it safer to judge him for being there. Not necessarily negatively—judgment is just another word for making up stories.

At any rate, remembering to practice, just as with any other change, involves letting go of the person who didn’t practice. Getting up at 5:30 in the morning to write involves letting go of the person who slept until seven. Quitting smoking means letting go of being the person who reaches for a cigarette.

And so forth.

One practice to bring in here is to consciously let go of that person with a breath. Acknowledge that at this moment, you might want to be that person, but you don’t have to be. Acknowledge that you aren’t the same person you were ten years ago (no one is), and then release being the person you were five minutes ago.