Letting Go

And making some space for joy, maybe.

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Hello! :)
I’m Nospheratt, and this is Joy Every Week - a weekly quest to find joy in everyday things. You’re receiving this either because you subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. Enjoy!

October is here, and with it the last quarter of the year.

If September is a transition month, a bridge between summer and autumn, October is decidedly grumpier; a month of rain and early sunsets, a time for hunkering down and prepare; last call before the harsh cold of winter.

For me, October is also the open door to the end of the year. Around this time I start, bit by bit, to think about how I want to close the year.

About holidays, yes, inevitably; but also about projects I want to finish, changes I want to make, and things I want to let go.

With all the energy of spring and summer, many ideas, projects, relationships and activities have grown wildly, a bit haphazardly, joyfully. And just like you prune a tree so it can conserve its energy for the new growth that will bloom next spring, I take some time to cut back, streamline and close things — an overwintering of the soul, if you’d like.

Clearing up space for what is to come. Removing stuff that’s unnecessarily weighing me down or blocking my way. Abandoning things that don’t make sense anymore. Finding the places where I want to focus my attention and energy.

Getting ready for the season of contemplation, dormancy and rest.

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Like Plants

Autumn is the time when many plants slow their growth and redirect their energy back into their roots, getting ready to weather the winter.

It’s also the time when they extract as much nutrients as they can from their leaves, to then let them fall.

Trees and shrubs let their leaves go, knowing that new leaves will grow when the time is right. And so do I, so can you; trusting that new things, new growth will happen.

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Space For Joy

Letting go of stuff — not only (or particularly) physical objects — can be very liberating. It opens time and mental bandwidth, and it creates space for joy.

It also allows you to focus more of your energy on the things that really matter to you, and maybe find some time to rest and recharge.

For example (these may or may not be examples from my own life. Hard to say. 🤪), imagine…

If you let go of the need to please people that are never satisfied no matter what you do, you could spend more energy on the relationships with people that appreciate you.

If you let go of the idea of having a spotless house all the time, you could spend Saturday mornings on a walk, enjoying a park or sleeping in.

If you let go of the need to control everything, you’d maybe feel less anxious, which in turn would mean sleeping better, getting more rest and being more present. Feeling more inspired for your poetry, your fiction or your art.

I know it’s not easy! And it may not be simple, either. But it’s worth a try.

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This Week’s Quest - The Joy Of Letting Go

Ideas & inspiration to find your joy.

1 - What would you like to let go?

Think about the things that are weighing you down, that feel constricting, suffocating, outdated or unnecessary.

Some areas to review:

• Standards of perfection.

• Things you’re holding on to too tightly.

• Expectations. Especially unrealistic expectations.

• Plans & projects that don’t make sense anymore, for whatever reason.

• Outdated routines that are out of sync with who you are right now.

• Relationships that only hurt you, or mostly hurt you.

• Social media that leaves you drained, hopeless, exhausted.

2 - Can you find something joyful about letting go?

Letting go is often a sorrowful, painful thing.

Depending on what you’re letting go, it’s going to hurt, I know. Even shedding outdated notions about yourself and the world can be like ripping out parts of what makes the very foundation of you. It can feel like grief.

But sometimes it feels like relief, like freedom, like taking a deep, deep breath and releasing it slowly. Like putting down a heavy weight you’ve been carrying for a long, long time.

What could you let go, that would feel like that?

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📚Reads

As I write this, we’re still waiting to see what’s going to happen with hurricane Milton. I’m far away from it, but freaking out and worrying about the people down there. By the time you’re reading this, we’ll already know what happened and how bad the damage is. Right now, I can only say that the following words feel like a glimmer of light in the darkness of the waiting.

We Are All Still Here

I know everything is on fire right now. Please don’t forget to write. Please don’t forget to take ten minutes or a half an hour to sit down and capture your feelings in this moment in time. Go hide somewhere—even your bathroom—if you need to get away for a second. Take your phone or a little notebook with you. Whatever you need to make it happen.

I just know that whenever I’m at my most distracted or stressed out, if I can make just a little time to scratch a few things down, I always feel better afterward. Because my feelings will have been held for a moment, captured and examined, seen in a new light. Writing allows us to see ourselves when we most feel lost or consumed by the world.

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➡️ Autumn shows us how beautiful it is to let things go

Humans seem to have an almost instinctive nature to hold on to things, people, ideas, ideals, etc…almost as if they are scared of change and what letting go may mean. By holding on tightly and refusing to release they somehow think it means they are exerting control, exercising their power. In reality it’s the exact opposite. By not letting things go, they weaken themselves and the power they have over themselves (for that is the only, and best, power we each of us really have).

I have discovered that by refusing to let go, I dig myself into this small sort of rut and I limit all of the possibilities that life can provide. Instead of growing, learning, changing, I stay stuck in that rut, repeating the same things over and over and over. And the worst part is that those things I’m repeating, that rut I’ve created, is that there is nothing about them that brings about joy, or wonder, or helps others, or even myself. It’s simply a dull, usually negative pretending to be safe, rut. It’s awful.

➡️ Shedding Yesterday for a Brighter Today

This one is about physical clutter, but it can be applied to the accumulation of emotional and mental stuff, too.

The longer we live in a home the more it collects objects from our past. If you’ve lived in your home for any number of years, just look around. It is likely full of stuff from our past: old hobbies we don’t participate in anymore, clothes that don’t fit, kitchen items we used to use, items from when our kids were younger, books from school, souvenirs from trips.

These things used to be a part of our lives, but now they just sit there, taking up space. And the longer we live in a home, the more these possessions from the past have collected.

We often keep these things because they remind us of good times or because we think we might need them again. But life has changed.

➡️ Why do trees shed their leaves in the autumn?

With less food and water on offer and life-threatening low temperatures, the winter is a hard time for most living beings; for many of them it’s just a matter of survival. This is why some animals hibernate in their burrows, others hoard supplies, and almost all of them put on a thick layer of fur. Deciduous trees do it the other way around: they shed ballast – in the form of their leaves.

I found this concise yet detailed explanation very interesting… and inspiring.

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That’s It For Today.

I hope you can find some joy in letting go the things you want to let go.

I hope you’re safe.

I hope someday the world will be a better place for all of us.

Until next time. —Nospheratt

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