Lighten up - Rick Hanson - Haz más ligera tu vida

Why?

On the path of life, most of us are hauling way too much weight.

What’s in your own backpack? If you’re like most of us, you’ve got too many items on each day’s To Do list and too much stuff in the closet. Too many entanglements with other people. And too many “shoulds,” worries, guilts, and regrets.

Remember a time when you lightened your load. Maybe a backpacking trip when every needless pound stayed home. Or after you finally left a bad relationship. Or just stopped worrying about something. Or came clean with a friend about something that had been bothering you. How did this feel? Probably pretty great.

Sure, we are no longer nomadic hunter-gatherers whose possessions could be carried in one hand. You know what you really need in this life; personally, I’m glad about good friends and a full refrigerator. But all the extra physical and mental stuff you lug around complicates your life, weighs you down, and keeps you stuck. There’s enough weightiness in life as it is without adding more.

Putting this subject in a larger framework, consider the Hindu idea that God has three primary manifestations: Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer. I can’t do justice in this brief space to this view, but the simple notion that works for me is that there is a lawful and beneficial principle in the universe that is about pruning, emptying, completing, and ending.

This positive “destroying” – very broadly defined – enables creating and preserving, like exhaling enables inhaling, or emptying a cup of something bitter enables filling it with something sweet.

Dropping loads enables lightening up.

Take a look at your mind: what weighs it down? Guilt about long-ago misdeeds? Needless anxiety? High, perfectionistic standards? Grumbling anger? Grievances? Passivity, lethargy? Doubt? Taking yourself way too seriously? Whatever it is, for a brief period of time – half an hour, half a day – totally drop it. At the first whiff, drop it. See what that’s like: probably pretty great! Then ride that great wave of relief and lightness and continue dropping those lead weights in your mind.

Overall: if in doubt, throw it out.

Play with feeling lighter in your body. As if you are lifted up by invisible helium balloons. Lighter in your step. Your head lighter on your shoulders.

Lighter in your heart.

La propuesta de Rick Hanson de aligerar nuestra vida, soltando alguna de las cargas que llevamos, puede concretarse en hacer una limpieza a fondo y deshacernos de lo que ya no nos sirve, en dejar de asumir tareas que no nos corresponden ni nos interesan, en analizar el contenido de nuestra mente y tratar de librarnos, aunque sea solo un rato, del perfeccionismo, la culpa, la pasividad, la duda, la ansiedad innecesaria…

En una de sus charlas proponía imaginar que llevamos dos maletas muy pesadas y que paramos un momento y las dejamos en el suelo. Son dos pesos: nuestro pasado y nuestro futuro. Cuando dejamos de cargar con ellos, estamos presentes y tranquilos, podemos estar atentos a lo que nos pasa.