Cut Loose for 2016 - Seize this Moment to Live Your Best Life

Photo by Danila Cuevas

How many of us are wrung out and crawling towards the holiday season? Right now most of you will be more than ready for a break. You’ll have had quite enough of 2015, the layers of ‘stuff’ that you’ve taken on (and are more than ready to shed) as you move into 2016.

The presents that we ‘have’ to buy, the dinners and nights out that we ‘have’ to attend, the time with family we ‘have’ to spend over the coming season will be more than some of you feel you can even face right now.

This feeling of having to do anything is just more of the control you’ve been experiencing since you were born. My 3-year old was singing along today to “Let it Go”, though more accurately you’d say she was belting it out with vehemence; the way I imagine many of you will this holiday season in parties and nights out the world over. She was fully in the moment and the look of intensity on her face told me how much she resonates with the song.

Songs like this are awesome; they cut through all social proprietary and just talk to our inner being. The fact that such a song can gather so much momentum tells me that many of you feel like you lock your emotions away and long to just let your true feelings out. The real you is inside somewhere and, at this time of year, has had just about enough of everything.

Watching my older daughter spiral into a full scale meltdown last week, and then my niece earlier today, I could feel the release they were experiencing. The sounds our children make at those moments can be horrifying (hence the reason most parents live in dread of it happening in public) but come from the depth of their soul.

As a mum, I catch myself constantly saying some form of “no” to my children. It generally relates back to their safety, wellbeing or respect for property but I am questioning more and more where some of my ‘rules’ are coming from. Being the parent of a kid in melt down is no fun; in turn it makes me want to melt down too.

"Let’s face it, who among us likes any level of control being directed at us?"

The same in the workplace, the rigmarole of ‘managing others’ that you know can actually manage themselves pretty well if we just treated them as whole, responsible, individuals. Let’s face it, who among us likes any level of control being directed at us? Often all it does, whether at home or in the workplace, is subconsciously invoke memories of our own childhood and we immediately rebel defensively in one form or another.

We have become beings who seek to control, our own and others' thoughts, emotions and actions. The mere suggestion that control might not be required after all sets most of our minds into red alert and we immediately fear that chaos will reign.

This happens from childhood and continues throughout our adult life, in both the workplace and our homes. We have become so conditioned to believing we need the control in order to avoid the chaos, we aren’t listening to our inner voices.

Imagine for one moment that we all know right from wrong, that we are born with an inner guidance about what is good and bad for us. Then remember what it is like to have that discarded and get told what is right and wrong, even when you knew it wasn’t.

The number one regret of the dying is living life for others, the ‘have to’ stuff, and not doing what they truly wanted to do. Remember that as you head into this holiday season. When you make the time to unwind, listen to your inner knowing, you will start to remember all the things that are truly important to you.
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Seize this moment to make the most of the rest of your life. Consider the role that control takes in your life, the control you’re experiencing from - and are exerting on – others. It’s time to cut loose and go with the flow a little. Perhaps you’ll discover that life is in fact only a stream of wellbeing, if you’ll only go with it. 

​This article was originally published on LinkedIn.