Note: “active letting go” is not to be mistaken for “passive letting go”, whereby life rips stuff out of your grip, or you paint yourself into a corner, or things get so heavy they stop you in your tracks and you have to ditch them just to carry on. Active letting go is a little more…pro-active. It’s a practice. It’s awake. It’s somewhat delightful (except for the agony of it.)

7 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT ACTIVE LETTING GO:

1. There’s always more to let go of. It’s endless and it’s beautiful because it’s endless. Just surrender to the endlessness of it.
2. Typically, letting go is painful – in varying degrees, from wince to d-mn near crippling, it’s gonna hurt. Fact.
3. Hard leads to soft. Imagine ripping off a bandage; dropping an heirloom off at the thrift store and resolving to not go back to get it; kissing him or her that way for the last time and tearing yourself away because you need to grow in the other direction; boarding the plane with a heavy heart… When you steel the nerve to be tough enough to let go, you cross over a sacred line. And on the other side, Tenderness is waiting for you, and She’s very proud and she’s very encouraging.
4. Baby steps are okay, but you can’t avoid the pain that surfaces when you commit to the letting go. (See, you just can’t get around the pain part.)
5. From the mundane to the monumental, letting go hurts. Always has, always will. (Yes, a repeat of #2. It bears repeating.)
6. Acceptance is medicine. When you just accept that the pain of letting go is part of the deal, your let-go wound will heal faster.
7. When you let go, the odds are in your favour. Out of, say, 123 people I’ve talked to about letting go of all sorts of stuff – material and emotional – 88% of them wished they’d done it sooner, and 97% of them have no regrets whatsoever. Only 3% are still confused.

I’ve let go of a dizzying amount in a relatively short amount of time. In two years: a business, a marriage that ended lovingly but necessarily broke my heart (open), a home filled with things I chose with great intention. A friendship that grew so small it choked any possibility of newness. Bags of gorgeous clothes and jewelery. Boxes of well-loved books, and photos, and legal documents, and other evidence of how smart I thought I was back then. My proud stack of Dwell Magazines. Wedding shoes. Ambitions. My hair stylist.

By nature, I’m not a collector. I am a ruthless, serial shedder. I was joking to a soul sister that If I let go of anything else, I’m not going to have a sofa to sit on, I’ll be wearing flip flops in the winter, and only two people are going to come to my funeral. But I’ve surrendered to the endlessness of it. And it’s a resolution that softens.

For me to shed even more well, I’m getting close to the marrow these days. Thankfully. The marrow is the source of vitality.

Deep deep deep beneath constructs of time, and idealism, and things I “captured” along the way is the freedom that has been pulling me forward my whole life. Always forward.

(And BTW, Why do we need to capture memories? As if they need to be tamed and penned lest they get away. My memories can come and go as they please, they’re much more meaningful that way. This might explain why I have next to no photos in my home. Anyway…)

So I’m still shedding — taking deep breaths and actively letting go. I’m not waiting until I’m ready to let go. I’ve waited long enough. Carried stuff long enough. Longed long enough. For lightness. For that tender place on the other side of courage.

Empty your hands and your heart. Regularly.

Take deep breaths. Often.

And move stuff over and out.

Make space (what a creative act! space-making!)

The space is full of what you really need.

Empty your hands and your heart. Regularly…Make space (what a creative act! space-making!) The space is full of what you really need. @DanielleLaPorte (Click to Tweet!)

Danielle LaPorte is an invited member of Oprah’s SuperSoul 100, a group who, in Oprah Winfrey’s words, “is uniquely connecting the world together with a spiritual energy that matters.” She is author of White Hot Truth: Clarity for keeping it real on your spiritual path—from one seeker to another. The Fire Starter Sessions, and The Desire Map: A Guide To Creating Goals With Soul—the book that has been translated into 8 languages, evolved into a yearly day planner system, a top 10 iTunes app, and an international workshop program with licensed facilitators in 15 countries.

Named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Women” by Forbes, millions of visitors go to DanielleLaPorte.com every month for her daily #Truthbombs and what’s been called “the best place online for kickass spirituality.” A speaker, a poet, a painter, and a former business strategist and Washington-DC think tank exec, Entrepreneur Magazine calls Danielle, “equal parts poet and entrepreneurial badass…edgy, contrarian…loving and inspired.” Her charities of choice are Eve Ensler’s VDay: a global movement to end violence against women and girls, and charity: water, setting out to bring safe drinking water to everyone in the world. She lives in Vancouver, BC with her favourite philosopher, her son. You can find her @daniellelaporte and just about everywhere on social media.