Sadness can affect all aspects of our lives and yet, what is this sadness exactly? Can you point it out for me? Can you grab it for me and hand it to me? No, you cannot. Sadness is a process, a process in your head and you are the creator of it.
Most of the time sadness overwhelms you. When you drive your car, when you sit somewhere quiet or when something or someone reminds you of a situation that made you feel sad. Sadness is not to be mistaken with compassion. When we see sad things happen in the world, we feel compassion. You can also not compare it with desire, because this is the feeling we have when we want something that we didn’t had before. Sadness is the feeling that something is missing that was there before and now it isn’t anymore. We feel something is missing inside. We feel an unexplainable emptiness for the thing or the person that was there before.
Let us take a closer look on how it is us who creates our sadness, how to turn it into acceptance and how to let it go.
As mentioned before it is us who creates our sadness. It is not something physically that you can touch. It is something mentally in your head that controls you. It is an emotion that can keep you from enjoying life and can make you give up on it. Sadly to say, you are the one who creates it and only you are the one who can let it go. It is that what is missing that makes you sad, but it is you that categorizes it as sad and creates it in your head. What makes you sad doesn’t make your neighbor sad and what makes your neighbor sad doesn’t make me sad. It is a personal, self-created emotion inside you only.
Before you can accept your sadness and let it go, you should define it in detail and figure out what is behind this sadness, because it always is linked with previous events or traumas. Sit down, take a piece of paper and write down, describe your sadness and why you feel like this. When you figured out exactly where it comes from and what it contains you can turn it into acceptance and let it go, but this needs a bit of imagination. Are you ready?
Stand up and close your eyes. Feel where the sadness is located in your body. Imagine you grabbing this sadness out of your body in front of you and cutting it with a big sword into millions of little pieces that burn up in the air and disappear. You feel relieved. You feel in control. You feel good. Now, imagine a beautiful, bright, energetic, warm shining light in front of you that fits just in the empty space you left your body with. Slowly pull this beautiful, bright, energetic, warm shining light towards you and rob it over the empty space until it fills the space. This beautiful, bright, energetic, warm shining light is now filling this spot with energy, glowing warmth, happiness and gratefulness. You will feel thankful for the experience you had and you can accept it now and let go of it. You feel whole again and in control. Open your eyes.
You can let go now of your sadness, it is ok. You have accepted it and moved on. It is replaced now with a nice experience full of lessons and gratefulness. Remember it is you who creates your sadness and it is only you who can make the decision to let it go. Make the right decision! Let go of what is done and embrace what is yet to come. The experience will be much better without your backpack full of sadness.
Maitha E. Coninx – Life Coach and writer of the book Maitha’s Way Of Life.