Let That Sh*t Go

Let That Sh*t Go Plot Summary

Introduction

Life isn't always easy. You're constantly trying to check off items on your never-ending to-do list, yet you fall into bed feeling like you've barely made a dent. One thing after another sends you into stress mode at the drop of a hat. Whether it's challenging circumstances around you or your own mind spinning out of control, there are moments when you feel like you're running on a hamster wheel with no way off. This book provides more than a hundred practical tips to help you find peace and tranquility without having to sit oceanside with a beer in one hand and a book in the other. You'll discover that finding calm doesn't require drastic life changes. Often, the stress stems from the million things going on in your head, not just your busy schedule. By becoming conscious of thought patterns that add unnecessary stress to your life, you can avoid blowing a fuse over small annoyances like a coworker who chews too loudly or a partner who misplaces the remote. When you make your mind a priority, giving it a good cleanse now and then, you'll be better equipped to tackle daily challenges or simply accept them and let them go.

Chapter 1: The Power of Awareness: Escaping the Mental Autopilot

It starts before you even get out of bed. Your alarm goes off, you check your phone to find fourteen new emails that arrived while you slept, and immediately think, "I'm behind already." As you drive to work, a parade of thoughts marches through your mind: forgotten tasks, upcoming deadlines, personal worries. By the time you arrive at the office, you hardly remember the drive. Why? Because you were on autopilot, physically going from A to B while your mind wandered elsewhere. This mental autopilot is natural but problematic. When your mind runs faster than your body, weighing you down with unnecessary thoughts, your stress levels increase dramatically. The solution lies in shifting your focus. Instead of letting your mind race through ten different concerns during your commute, try observing the trees along the way or simply expressing gratitude for having a job. Notice the smell of your shampoo or how it reminds you of a scent from high school. Each time you shift focus to the world around you or things you're grateful for, you move away from anxious thoughts and refuse to let them take over. When you consciously swap challenging thoughts for more positive or even neutral ones, you'll notice physical changes. Your heart rate might drop, your shoulders will relax away from your ears, your eyebrows will un-scrunch, and your body will feel calmer. This is where you find moments of peace in everyday life. The beauty of this approach is that it doesn't require drastic lifestyle changes. Keep your routine, social life, and work commitments. The issue is often not how busy your life has become, but rather the million things going on in your head. Being present is where you can find pure happiness. And contrary to popular belief, happiness doesn't exist in external objects or experiences. If it did, the same things would make everyone equally happy. Consider coffee – some people are obsessed with it, others are neutral toward it, and some can't stand being in the same room as it. Happiness isn't in the coffee; it's in how you experience it. The only person who has the capacity to bring you endless happiness is you. You might think happiness exists in future achievements: "Once I land my dream job, I'll be happy" or "Once I buy a condo, things will brighten up." But have you followed up on these thoughts? Often, once you achieve what you were chasing, it isn't long before you're back to feeling unsettled. The pursuit of this kind of happiness sets you off on a never-ending chase because this type of happiness is fleeting. Soon you're wanting a promotion and a new couch, and once you get the couch, you want matching chairs, and so on. It never ends. When you actually start to live in the moment and learn to calm your mind, you access the happiness that already exists within you. This is something worth practicing, because it leads to a naturally happier human being.

Chapter 2: Self-Love: Building Your Emotional Foundation

We often think about love as being external. We love that sport, that restaurant, that car, that TV show. All this is fantastic, but the most important type of love to cultivate is self-love. One instructor once said, "If we don't love ourselves unconditionally, we won't have the capacity to love others unconditionally." Think about love as a glass of water. If your glass is empty, you won't have any water to pour into anyone else's glass. When you don't love yourself fully, your love for others can be compromised by your own emotions. You might love someone because you crave their love in return, or because you have certain expectations of their love. But when you love yourself unconditionally, there's no need to expect anything back. It's loving with a whole heart, freely. And it's liberating. Loving yourself helps keep you on firm ground. When you practice self-love, the chatty voice in your head stops talking so much, and you begin to know yourself better. Many of us know how to be nice to others but forget to extend the same kindness to ourselves. We hang around with negative self-talk for so long that we start believing what it says. These negative thoughts might not even have originated from you; they could have come from what someone told you over and over as a child, from advertisements with perfect-looking people, or from carefully curated social media posts showing only the best parts of people's lives. And so, the negative thoughts come marching in, accompanied by their perfect emotional companions: jealousy, sadness, annoyance, frustration, and more. These emotions may not always be your fault, but they are your responsibility. What we mean is that no matter who made you feel crappy about yourself, and regardless of how that thought came into your head, it's your responsibility to decide what to do with it. The key is to look at the thought without judgment. It might be a really tough one, such as "I don't think I'm worthy of this relationship." Hold that thought, and then use your observing mind to figure out whether it's a true statement or just something your chatty mind has decided to let loose in your head. Once you do this, you'll be in a better position to tackle that thought, because you've actually acknowledged it. Research has shown that negative thoughts and emotions have real physical impacts. Dr. Masaru Emoto conducted experiments showing that water molecules exposed to positive words formed beautiful crystalline structures, while water exposed to negative words formed distorted, broken structures. Considering that 70 percent of your body is water, this suggests that every time your chatty mind picks something negative to whisper into your ear, you're essentially turning your molecular snowflakes into warped piles of broken-down structures. Self-love is a journey, not an overnight transformation. It involves uncomfortable conversations with yourself and possibly letting go of people or things that don't align with the remarkable person you are. When you start to know yourself better, you begin to know what you like and don't like, and it becomes easier to say no to things you don't want to do and pursue what you are meant to. It becomes easier to be happy.

Chapter 3: Acceptance: Embracing What You Cannot Change

So much of what happens in life is out of your control. Let's start small. You're on your way to an important meeting, but the highway is closed because of a huge accident—not within your control. The comedian you've been excited to see is in town while you're away—not within your control. You plan a vacation to Jamaica and it rains every day—not within your control. You can ladder up to big things, too: someone you love becomes ill—not within your control. Understanding that a whole ton of stuff is out of your control is a stellar first step to living a more peaceful life. So, what can you always control? Your reaction to what's going on. As composer Irving Berlin said: "Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it." Life is like a long stint at a blackjack table, with a dealer dishing out random cards. It's up to you to figure out how to play them. Being accountable for your emotions means you get to be sad, frustrated, or angry. These emotions are totally okay and needed at some point. But the key to letting things go is not staying in those emotions—especially when the situation is beyond your control. Sure, our emotions kick in when someone is rude. We get mad, upset, or annoyed—and rightly so—but once you let yourself feel all of that, you need to decide how you are going to feel for the next five minutes, or hour, or beyond. Acceptance can help you deal with the need to control what's lurking behind past and future thoughts and get to a peaceful headspace. Non-acceptance—whether associated with the past, the present, a person, or an event—can be a non-productive time-suck, as well as emotionally exhausting. When you try to control how you want life to go, things get messy. True happiness is not in having control over every aspect of your life; conversely, it's in knowing that you actually don't have control over every tiny detail. One way to achieve acceptance is to break down situations into what you can control and what you can't, as suggested by the Serenity Prayer: "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." For example, if you have a long commute that you can't change, rather than letting your blood boil twice daily, focus on making that time enjoyable through podcasts, music, or simply being present. Thoughts about things you can't control are classified as "dead thoughts." They don't propel you forward, so what's the point of thinking them? When you don't waste headspace on dead thoughts, you won't grudgingly sit on the highway each day angry at traffic that never fails to delay you. If you can control certain aspects of a situation, by all means do. But if it's completely out of your hands, it's time to say goodbye to those unproductive thoughts. A powerful example of acceptance comes from a Taoist story about a farmer whose horse runs away. The neighbors say, "Such bad luck!" The farmer replies, "Maybe." The next day, the horse returns with two wild horses. "How wonderful!" the neighbors exclaim. "Maybe," says the farmer. Later, the farmer's son breaks his leg trying to ride one of the wild horses. "This is terrible!" the neighbors say. "Maybe," answers the farmer. The following day, military officials come to draft young men, but pass over the son because of his broken leg. "Such great news!" the neighbors exclaim. And the farmer says, "Maybe." This farmer had an incredible ability to accept whatever cards life's blackjack dealer threw his way. He knew there was absolutely nothing he could do about his horse running away or his son getting hurt, so he kept his cool. He didn't worry about what was coming next. He remained calm, regardless of whether things went well or didn't. When we accept things the way they are and don't try to change them, a tremendous amount of anxiety is lifted.

Chapter 4: Perspective: Seeing Life Through a Wider Lens

One way to mitigate the stress ride your chatty mind loves to take you on is perspective. Perspective can cultivate gratitude, and that's some powerful goodness. It can take you right out of rumination and set you surfing on a wave of stellar feelings. Often, we look at our stresses from a micro perspective. Think of a funnel. We tend to stress about things that are near the bottom of the funnel, the little things. What perspective does is take us closer to the top of that funnel. Suddenly, we're looking at life from a macro perspective—in other words, we're seeing the big picture. And when we look at life from a macro perspective, great things start happening: we start giving fewer concerns about the little things; we feel as if we're on top of the world more often; and we're just happier and calmer. When we get caught up in the micro perspective—forgetting lunch, stressing about deadlines, worrying about mundane tasks—we forget the macro. We forget what's really important in life. We don't mean to; it just happens. And it happens to everyone, all the time. One powerful way to gain perspective is to consider the astronomical odds of your very existence. The odds of you being born—considering the exact sperm and egg that had to meet, plus all the ancestors who had to meet and reproduce—are almost incalculably small. Dr. Ali Binazir calculated that the probability of your existence is essentially zero. You've already won the lottery: you're alive, and that's a miracle in itself! Here's another crazy fact: we are literally made of stardust. A survey of 150,000 stars confirmed that humans and our galaxy have about 97 percent of the same kind of atoms. Your body is made of some of the same components as those twinkling things in the sky. When you actually think about it, you'll realize there are a ton of ways you can look at life from a macro perspective. Take things way beyond yourself. Have you ever been camping, or to a place way out of the city, and looked up at the stars? Did you see the Milky Way, maybe even the northern lights? Sometimes big life events can naturally give us perspective. When tragedies happen, we tend to step back and think big picture. We hug loved ones tighter and say "I love you" more often. We stop stressing about small stuff. You might experience these moments of perspective from time to time, whether from personal tragedy or something you read in the news. But then, all of a sudden, you're back to your routine, and that macro perspective slips through your fingers. This is why it helps to actively cultivate perspective. When your chatty mind has you focusing on small annoyances, use your observing mind to think bigger: I'm so grateful that I have running water. I'm glad I'm in good health. I love my friend Aria; she's always there for me when I need her. Look at those trees that filter the air that I'm breathing. When you switch to the macro view, you access the amazing sunny part of yourself that is filled with pure goodness, and you don't get bogged down with the crap. You realize that so much about your life simply rocks. Looking at life through a big-picture lens is another way to find your peace and happiness.

Chapter 5: Authenticity: Honoring Your True Self

There is no one else on this planet who is meant to do what you are here to do. There really is only one magical you. Your intellect, your personality, your favorite foods, your temperament, your passions, your very essence is yours alone—different from any of the other 7.6 billion humans on the planet. This is, of course, obvious, and yet it's not something we consciously think about on a day-to-day basis. But there is great power in embracing everything that's different about ourselves, right down to the way we sneeze or how we hold a pen. The more you own who you are, the less you'll be bothered by your shortcomings. And when you live your life as your most authentic self, owning even the not-so-perfect stuff—that's freedom. You'll feel more content, happy, and inwardly confident. You'll also be depriving your chatty mind of some of the negative content it loves to chew on, so it won't be able to get the best of you quite as often. Being your authentic self is not always an easy path. In fact, sometimes the process of "owning it" is downright brutal. It might mean you have to speak up about things that are important to you, potentially at the expense of offending other people or not fitting in. But once you're focused on making that shift, the pieces of your life might just start to fall into place in a way that they haven't before, and you could even end up inspiring others to do the same. So many of us have parts of ourselves we've been taught not to love. We try to hide those aspects or just refuse to accept them. But these traits may be the very things that make you the amazing you that you are. What's more, they could actually end up helping others or inspiring them to be who they are, as well. It wouldn't be an interesting world if we were all robots. Imagine if every musician looked and sounded the same, and every artist put out similar work. We are each unique, and that's a good thing. When we embrace the unique qualities in ourselves and in others, we let things go a little more. One powerful way to embrace authenticity is to eliminate the tyranny of the word "should" from your life. "Should" is one of the unhealthiest words out there. "Should" takes you away from who you want to or are meant to be. "Should" pushes you to be more like someone you're not. "Should" is toxic. It often doesn't even come from you but from external pressures and expectations. Here's a list of harmful shoulds: You should be making $X by age X. You should have a house by now. You should have a family with X kids by now. You should start eating this way. You should keep trying to make your relationship work. You should be more active on social media. Give these shoulds the middle finger. They put tremendous pressure on you, and you just don't need it. Another aspect of authenticity is learning to say no. When you're doing things just for the "should," you're messing with your authentic-self boundaries. If you can do it all, go for it, but if something inside you doesn't feel right after you've just taken on the next thing, pause a moment. It's okay to say no to things that might be temporarily fun but not necessarily good in the long term. By constantly making these little choices—saying yes to the things you really want to do and no to things that aren't aligned with your authentic self—you are building the blocks needed to make a great life. The more you own who you are, the more you can escape the "too-many-shits zone." How can you tell if you've crossed into this zone? Simply ask yourself if what you are stressing over is something that's important to you, or something external and out of your control. If it's the latter—say, someone's opinion of you—it falls clearly into the no-shits zone. It has nothing to do with who you really are. It doesn't matter.

Chapter 6: Forgiveness: Releasing the Weight of Past Hurts

Forgiveness is hard. Depending on who or what you're trying to forgive, it can take months, years, or decades—or even be a process that lasts a lifetime. But there's a reason forgiveness can play such a key role in finding your calm: when you start the process, you can finally begin to let go of all the stuff you were holding on to, which opens the door to a more peaceful you. So many things can be brewing within us, and sometimes we don't realize that forgiveness is the golden ticket out of the storm. It can start with forgiving that jackass who stole your parking spot during the holiday mall rush, or a relative for making a snide comment when you were fourteen, or a teacher who always put down your abilities, or a parent for mistreating you. Or how about those horrifying, unexpected cards you're dealt: a loved one who was taken away or your own unexpected illness. Forgiveness can be the uphill battle of all uphill battles, but also the most rewarding. When you forgive, you start to let things go. The shackles of emotion that are holding you back no longer have the same strength. The anger, bitterness, sadness, and resentment, as well as the subtler emotions associated with the very thing that needs forgiving, can be thrown in the trash. Eckhart Tolle, author of "The Power of Now," says, "Forgiveness happens naturally as soon as you realize that the past cannot prevail against the power of presence." In earlier chapters we talked about how thoughts of the past take you away from the present. The reason forgiveness can have such an impact on you is that when you keep going back to what hurt you, you are holding on to the past. And when you're in the past, it's impossible to access the happiness and serenity that are right under your nose. When you are angry at someone or something, the person you are hurting the most is yourself. Anger is like a ball of fire—go ahead and throw it, but know that you'll burn your hand in the process. Of course, anger will bubble up now and again—you can't help it sometimes—but holding on to it just burns you. By all means, look at those emotions. Acknowledge them and then let them go. Allow them to move through you. Forgiveness is not as much about the other person as it is about you. Sometimes it's not even about telling someone you forgive them, but simply forgiving them in your own mind. You're the one carrying this emotional weight around, not them. The person who hurt you might not even remember what they did, while you've been holding on to it for years. For what? One effective way to kickstart the forgiveness process is to try to walk a mile in the other person's shoes. This is not about making excuses for them or even acknowledging that the way they behaved was okay. This is about better understanding where they were coming from. It's an exercise that takes a boatload of courage, so if you're not comfortable with it, no need to go there. That said, it can be a very powerful tool when it comes to letting go. Another key aspect of forgiveness is learning to forgive yourself. Self-forgiveness can apply to things big and small: like "Why did I stay in the relationship for seven years, when I knew on day two that they might not be the one?" Or forgiving yourself for a typo in that email you sent to the entire office. Stuff you've been holding on to about yourself builds anger, resentment, and a whole slew of other emotions. All that heavy baggage can put blockades up in your next relationship, or make you feel more nervous than necessary in similar situations. Remember that letting go through forgiveness doesn't mean that the bad feelings will all magically disappear. You will never forget what happened, but you won't be triggered by the memories in the same way. Life isn't perfect. And how you react to situations is not black and white—so give yourself space to feel all your emotions, and then find ways to gradually release them through forgiveness.

Chapter 7: Digital Balance: Finding Zen in a Connected World

We're basically in a relationship with our phones. We interact with them more than with any living person in our life, and we get annoyed when they don't do what we want. We swear at them, roll our eyes at them, even throw them on the couch when we're fed up. We laugh or cry over the messages we receive through them, and feel sad when we can't find them. We buy them new cases or change the hardware when we're not feeling it anymore. We couldn't live without our phones, laptops, tablets, etc. They give us the ability to stay in touch with loved ones, keep up-to-date on what's happening, share incredible moments, virtually see people halfway across the world, and connect with humans we've never met. Devices have helped us overcome our fears and allowed us to reach out when we maybe wouldn't have otherwise. They help us be our authentic selves and enable us to create a world we feel good about and are comfortable in. But while these social platforms can have huge benefits, they can also sometimes make us feel inadequate. Sometimes you know when you've had too much—maybe after spending longer than you anticipated scrolling through your feeds. It can feel like you have a social media hangover. You're upset but not sure why. You just can't seem to pinpoint it. What's important to understand is that social media posts are, in many cases, everyone's highlight reel of life. Their best moments: the amazing concert, the perfect family picture in front of a landmark, the gorgeous new baby. You love sharing these moments because they make you feel good, and others genuinely do want to hear about your experiences. But these are the "icing on the cake" moments. What you don't often see are the difficult moments: the post-concert comedown, the arguments during the trip, the sleep deprivation with a new baby. Social media can also give you a rush of dopamine, the feel-good chemical that's released in your brain when you eat chocolate or receive affection. This reaction explains why it's so easy to continually scroll. Subconsciously, you crave the hit. This is why it's helpful to lean into your observing mind when you're mindlessly on your device. Notice how it is making you feel before, during, and after. What are your motivations for checking your feeds? When you're honest with yourself about how you use tech, it can help you find the right balance. It's ironic that in this age when we're more connected than ever, we sometimes still feel disconnected. In the midst of this powerful and often amazing shift in tech, we don't want to forget or lose good old in-person human connection. A phone can't replace a warm hug from a family member, a hot date night, dinner out with friends, or bonding time with your kids. Try setting some digital boundaries. For example, don't look at your phone for the first hour after waking up and the last hour before bed, or leave your phone in the car after work so you can't instinctively check email every time you hear it buzz. These steps create space and breathing room so you can experience more of life in the flesh. Some people even report that after taking a social media break, they discover they have significantly more time in their day. Another important balance to strike is between instant gratification and patience. With all the great advancements in tech, we've gotten used to the notion of instant gratification. The challenge is that some things in life cannot be achieved instantly, but because we're so used to instant, we get frustrated when we have to be patient. Make the distinction between what can be gained instantly and what cannot. Music, shows, food, and dates can satisfy your craving for instant gratification, but what are some things that can't be so easily attained? A good relationship takes months to establish, a career takes years to build, and a new skill requires consistent practice. In this hyperconnected world, finding the right balance is key to maintaining your mental health and finding those moments of peace that we all crave.

Summary

At its core, what this journey toward letting go and finding peace reveals is the practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness isn't just about sitting in lotus position in a corner; it's about being conscious of your thoughts and emotions and bringing yourself back to the present moment. When you are aware of your thoughts and the multitude of feelings that go with them, you're leaning into yourself—and only yourself—to access the serenity within. The benefits of this approach are immense. Research has proven that mindfulness can help you be happier and less stressed, sleep better, become less emotionally reactive, and improve your productivity. It even creates physical changes in your brain structure, particularly in areas associated with emotional regulation, memory, and compassion. But perhaps most importantly, mindfulness reminds us that happiness isn't found "out there" somewhere. It's right within us, waiting to be accessed when we clear away the mental clutter and learn to simply be. As Thich Nhat Hanh said, "Mindfulness is the energy that helps us recognize the conditions of happiness that are already present in our lives." By using awareness, self-love, acceptance, perspective, authenticity, and forgiveness, you're creating a path to that inner peace that exists beneath all the noise.

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Nina Purewal

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