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Let Go VIP – Commentary

Hello, this is AJ. Welcome to this month’s commentary. So this is an interesting topic this month and it’s one that I personally focus on, sometimes struggle with.

Sometimes the topics I teach you are topics or strategies that I use in my life very successfully. Sometimes the topics I teach you each month, sometimes the topic is one that I struggle with, that’s not easy for me, that I know it’s important and I’ve learned about it, but I’m struggling with it and this one is probably in the middle, sometimes I’m good at it and sometimes not so good, but it’s an important one. I know it’s important. I know that there are a lot of benefits of letting go in your life and we’ll talk more about what I mean by that.

So really, this is kind of the yin and yang maybe, if you want to this about this of our program. I always forget which one is yin and which one is yang. Yen and yang, these are Taoist terms. They’re Chinese and really these ideas are common all through Asia.

So if you’re an Asian member you already know what I’m talking about, but it’s this kind of idea of soft and hard or it’s the idea of two seeming opposites that create something whole and the idea is that they’re both necessary, that they’re not really opposite.

If you think of a coin, for example, on a coin we usually say one side is heads. We describe it as heads, because usually on American coins there’s the head of a person on one side, you know George Washington or something. Then on the other side we call it tails and there’s usually some other picture on the other side of the coin. So we can think of oh, there are two sides. These are kind of opposite sides, but of course, there’s only one coin and it’s impossible to have a coin with only one side. That would be a ball, right? So, all coins have two sides so both sides are necessary.

This is kind of the same idea of yin and yang, that you might have a hard and a soft or a dark and a light, but the idea is that they’re two sides of the whole thing, of the same thing and that they’re both necessary and that we just need to learn how to balance them and use them both appropriately. So what the hell am I talking about? So what I’m talking about is this.

In our program a lot of time we focus on topics of success and leadership and health.

They’re these kinds of hard topics maybe. We could describe them as hard. In other words, they’re topics that require focus and effort and energy. Like if you have a goal and you’re trying to achieve the goal, then you’re working to get that goal. It’s a very focused kind of energy, but this month’s topic is sort of the opposite. It’s very soft.

Instead of trying to get something, we’re talking about letting go of something you already have. It’s really the opposite kind of feeling, the opposite kind of energy. Instead of going after something, instead of working for something, it’s really about relaxing more, letting go more.

Interesting, but they’re both necessary because if we’re always chasing after things, if you’re always focused on improving your English, improving your English, improving your career and improving your body and nah, nah, nah, all the time it can be very exhausting to constantly be that way all the time, right? It’s unbalanced. It’s unbalanced.

You can burn yourself out that way. “To burn out” means to lose your energy; to use up all of your energy. That’s just like you can imagine a fire burns all of the wood. Well, if all the wood is gone then no more energy, no more fire. It’s that kind of idea.

So we don’t want to burn out so we have to have that balance. We have to have the other side of the coin, right? So it’s great that you’re very motivated. I know as a VIP member in our program that you’re super motivated about improving your English. I also know that you’re doing that for a reason, whatever it is. Maybe you’re a teacher. Maybe you want to use English in your career. Maybe you want to travel or maybe you’re trying to make a big international community of friends or maybe you’re trying to learn a lot of things. Maybe you’re retired and you’re just very active and you want to keep improving your mind.

Whatever it is that’s great, but you also need the opposite side, right? You have to also sometimes just relax. That’s why I’m always telling you just enjoy your English learning.

Don’t always be so focused and serious about it. That’s why I named the company Effortless English. I wanted the idea of effortless effort, which I’ve talked about in the past. That yes, in one way you are using a lot of effort because you are listening to English several hours a day maybe, but on the other hand it should feel emotionally, it should feel fun and relaxed and interesting. So you’re just listening to strange weird stories and you’re listening to interesting topics and you’re chatting with people on our social site, so both sides of that.

So let go is the total opposite, the total yin to the yang of being focused on success and improvement. Letting go is really just about relaxing and it’s very, very, very, very, very powerful and there are lots of areas in our lives where letting go is very important.

Perhaps the most important area, in my opinion, is the area of relationships. Letting go in relationships is so important. It can be very difficult, but it’s very powerful and very important.

By letting go I don’t necessarily mean letting go of people, like they’re not your friends anymore or they’re not your loved ones anymore, but I mean letting go of problems in relationships. Because if you have a relationship with someone, a friendship or certainly a dating relationship or a marriage or anything like that that’s very close, then during that relationship problems will come up and during that relationship you will have your feelings hurt by the other person. It’s inevitable. “Inevitable” means cannot be avoided; cannot be avoided. It will happen. It’s destiny. That idea.

So it’s inevitable. It means that in any relationship you’re always going to get your feelings hurt, always. Every single close relationship I’ve ever had, very close friendships and certain dating relationships, my marriage, family, mother, father, sister, all of that, I’ve always gotten my feelings hurt by them in some way and, of course, I have hurt their feelings at different times too. Usually these are just misunderstandings, but still they can be a little bit painful. Sometimes it could be something very traumatic, meaning very painful emotionally. So there are little things that happen and there are big things that can happen.

The problem is if you keep focusing on those, if you keep holding them, then inside you’re going to feel more and more pain, maybe anger, maybe depression. It will start to poison you, all of these little hurts and regrets and pains and so it’s so important to let go of those, just let them go. You may remember them intellectually, but letting go means that the emotion is gone; that you no longer feel pain from it. Now, it’s not so easy to do that sometimes. Sometimes it’s very difficult and it takes some time, but you have to at least focus on doing it and, of course, the first step of that is forgiveness, forgiving.

That means that you try your best to understand the other person and why they did what they did. So they did something that hurt you, they said something that hurt you, a little or a lot, and the first step is to really, really, really try to be in their mind, in their life and really try hard to understand why they might have done what they did. You don’t have to agree with it. I’m sure you don’t, but you at least need to try to understand. It may be very difficult. Maybe you can never totally understand, but the more you can try to understand the easier it will be to, eventually, forgive and let go.

Another thought that may help you let go of painful experiences is the thought that sometimes what is painful and seems terrible now can create learning and growth that helps us in the future. So, in a way, these painful difficult things may actually help us. So let me give you an example from my own life with this.

Way back my first girlfriend in high school oh, I loved her so much. She was so wonderful and I was in love with her and you know, eventually, she broke up with me and broke my heart. Ooh, poor AJ. And at that time I thought it was just a terrible thing.

It was the worst thing that happened in my life. I had all this upset and anger and regrets and you know all these terrible negative emotions.

If I had continued to focus on those and hold on to them it would have possibly destroyed my whole life. It means today even in my 40s I still might be oh, you know worried and upset and angry about what happened with this first girlfriend back in high school and early college. Well, that would be crazy, because since her I’ve dated several other girls and women who were absolutely wonderful. Now I’m married and I’m very happy and excited to be married and to be with my wife.

So it was very important for me to let go of all those negative feelings. Even more important was to be able to let go of that and to be able to see that in fact it was a positive thing. It felt terrible and awful and painful at that time in the past, but now that I am older and a little wiser I can look back and I can see ah, you know, it’s very good that I didn’t stay with that girl.

She was a great person, but we were very, very different. We wanted very different kinds of lives. She wanted to be in one place with a nice home and family. You know like live on a farm or something, which is great. That’s fantastic, but I had a totally different idea. I wanted to go out and travel the world and constantly be moving around and have this adventurous kind of life. It didn’t fit together at all, so it’s actually very good that that relationship ended.

I can see now looking back that that was a very positive thing. Also, now I can look back and see that the pain and the difficulty of that first heartbreak really helped me to learn a lot about myself. Because of that pain, I thought a lot about myself. I thought about the relationship. I realized a lot of mistakes I made with her and a lot of attitudes I had when I was younger that were not so good and so I changed a lot of things in my life because of that pain and being upset and the break up and all of that. So I can now look back and be very, very, very grateful for that event.

So that’s part of letting go. When you’re in a painful situation now or maybe you’re still holding on to some painful situation from the past, it can be helpful to realize that maybe there’s something positive about it. Even if you don’t feel it now, to at least try to see what might be positive about it, to start asking yourself that question. What could be positive about this, even something super painful?

That’s an important question to ask and you have to keep asking it again and again every day, because the first time you ask it you might just think nothing is positive about this. This is terrible, but you need to keep asking yourself again gently. Well, what could possibly be good about this? What could I possibly learn from this? If I let go of this, how could that possibly change my life or how could I use this to help other people, to understand other people who also have some pain in their life?

There’s many different ways you can learn and grow from something painful, but it’s so important to think about that and to focus on that. If you only focus on the negative parts and the bad parts and blaming the other person then you will tend to be a prisoner. You will tend to have your life go down, down, down. That downward spiral we talk about sometimes, but if you keep asking yourself what’s positive, what’s possibly good about this then eventually you will start to find answers. You’ll start to find those things.

So you look and see if you can find something positive about the painful situation and you try your best to understand the other person or other people. If it was just something horrible and nasty and evil maybe you can’t totally understand it, but try at least a little bit. Then, finally, the last part is to try to let go. Let go of it. Forgive and let go and you do that because you want to be free of it. It’s like detoxification. It’s like emotional detoxification.

You can see your anger and hurt and fear and upset, all that, as kind of a poison inside of you. It’s not hurting the other person. They don’t care. They’re doing whatever they’re doing. You’re the one suffering from it so you have to get it out somehow and you do it, again, through trying to understand the other person, through continuing to focus on forgiveness, by trying to find what’s possibly positive and just working at it, working at it working at it, until you can finally let go of it and when you do it’s this very light feeling that gives you kind of a feeling of freedom. It’s very powerful.

I think I’ve used the Oprah story before. This is a common one I’ve heard many people talk about, but it’s a good example of letting go. Oprah Winfrey is a big, rich, powerful celebrity in the United States. She has her own television network now. She was abused as a young child, sexually abused, physically abused. You know really terrible things happened to her, but she was able to let go of that.

It took her many years, of course. It wasn’t just something she did easily, but eventually she was able to let go of all those awful terrible feelings about what happened to her and to learn from it. By learning from it she became more sensitive and she learned how to understand and help other people who felt painful or felt depressed or had big problems in their lives and, eventually, she had her own TV show where she would talk to these people and help these people. Her whole show was very positive about helping people solve problems and grow and have a good positive life. It was a super popular TV show and then she started her own magazine and now she has her own television network.

If she had never let go, if she continued to be bitter and angry and constantly in pain about what happened to her when she was younger, she never would have done any of those things. She would not have helped anyone. She would just be a miserable person still. So you can see how powerful it is.

So, this month, what should you do? This one seems like a little more of a serious topic.

Try to smile as you do it, but I want you to really, really, really be honest with yourself. I want you to identify two-three things in your life that you need to let go of. These might be regrets. This might be anger towards a certain person. So this is all about forgiveness and letting go. What do you need to let go of? Not achieve, what do you need to let go of? The secret here is to find what is emotionally painful. That’s the key thing. Where is the emotional pain in your life? What caused it and then how can you let go of it?

Number one, identify two or three things in your life that you must let go of. You know what they are. You may not want to think about it, but you need to so write those down.

Step two then is to just do the steps I just discussed. Try to understand the other person or the other people or the situation as best you can. Try to imagine the whole thing from their point of view. It might be very difficult, but try it. It’s okay if you can’t totally do it, but just try your best and do that for a few days.

Then I want you to really think about and ask yourself the question of what’s positive about this. How might this be good? What might this be doing to help me learn? How might this help me grow? How could I possibly use this to help other people in the future? How could this possibly change my life in a positive way in the future or even now? Keep asking that question again and again and again and write down everything you can think of.

Maybe in the beginning you think nothing at all, but keep asking the question, keep writing down things and then, finally, really focus on letting go. You can even imagine this dark black light inside of you and that it’s coming out of you and leaving you and this white light is replacing it. Whatever you need to do, but just keep doing that every day this month. Focus on this, let go, let go, let go.

I won’t ask you to write about this on our social site, because this might be very personal. You can if you want to, but at least do this yourself because this is so powerful. It’s great to try to acquire things and to get more success, but if you don’t do this part you’re going to probably be unhappy even if you are successful. So, this month, focus on letting go and I’ll do the same thing myself.

All right, I will see you again.

Have a great day, bye-bye.