- The Buddha said that all suffering
comes from attachment and desire.
These two things cause more suffering
than anything else.
And the challenge I've had in my own life
is that there's a lot of attachment that I've had
to many different aspects of my life.
Whether that's caring what other people think about me.
Whether that's an attachment
to a past relationship or past friendships.
Whether that's attachment to
beliefs about who I am.
Maybe even a nine to five job at one point,
I felt very attached to,
and it was very hard to let go
of some of these things.
And I've learned some things about letting go
that have completely transformed my life,
that have made this process so much easier,
that I'm excited to share with you in this video
because letting go is actually
extraordinarily simple when we let it be.
So what we're really attached to
when we think that letting go is hard,
is we are attached to the meaning
that we give to something.
So for example, if we're attached
to a past person, what it is,
maybe it's a past relationship
or even a friendship,
it's not even that person
or what we think of as that,
but what we're really attached to
is the meaning we give to that person
and the meaning we have to maybe
even losing that person.
The interesting thing though,
is that it if that meaning were to change,
it would be easier to let go.
What I mean by this is, imagine you have a friend
that it's hard for you to let go of,
maybe hanging out with them or whatever it is,
but imagine they do something crazy,
they light your house on fire or something.
And you then draw the line and you say,
"Okay, you did this crazy thing,"
so now, it's much easier for you
to let that go.
At first, it's probably hard,
but it would eventually be easier
because in your mind,
you would give that person a different meaning.
So the reason I'm sharing this with you is because
the key to this transformation of letting go
is letting go of old meaning.
Everything in life is meaningless,
it has no built-in meaning
other than the meaning we give it.
And with letting go,
what we're really having trouble letting go of
is the past meaning we've given
to different people, to different things
that has us feeling blocked,
that has us feeling stuck,
that has us feeling really attached.
So when it comes to letting go,
realize letting go is extraordinarily easy,
it's just a matter of choice.
But making that choice is normally
what people beat themselves up about.
Because they say, "Well I've been
in this relationship for 10 years."
So I'm letting go of that,
what else are you letting go of
with that meaning maybe?
Maybe you're letting go of a 10-year friendship
and maybe what that means is,
you're letting go of an aspect of yourself
that you felt identified with this person.
When it comes to this,
what you wanna become aware of
is the reasons you may be holding onto
whatever this attachment is.
There's always reasons there.
And the thing with reasons is that
it's normally past meaning we've given to things
that has us keep staying
attached to those things.
Anything we do, it's because
there's a payoff to doing it.
The payoff is some emotional charge we get.
I know that one of the reasons
it was hard for me to let go,
for example, back in 2012
when I went through my awakening
of the pain that I experienced in childhood
from 7 to 16, 15-ish years old,
was because there was a level of anger
that I think I,
that I know I felt towards my ex stepmom.
And by letting that go,
it was invalidating my childhood.
I felt like growing up,
I didn't really have much of a childhood
because I wasn't allowed to have friends
or do normal kid stuff.
So I felt like when I was like 18 to 20,
that's when I started having friends,
that's when I started going to parties,
that's when I started
being able to even watch TV, for example.
Sometimes I think now, even now,
the way I eat food,
is I eat food very quickly and I love food.
But I think one of those reasons is
is because from 7 to 15 years old,
I was deprived food.
I was only given a TV dinner at night sometimes
and a bowl of cereal in the morning,
and one gallon of milk
had to last my brother and I a whole week
with one box of cereal.
So we actually had to measure it out
and make it last, and now,
because I don't have that dynamic,
I love food so much that I find myself overeating
or eating very quickly.
But what I've had to learn to do
is to change the meaning
I give to different things in my life.
Even food, for example.
The meaning of food used to be,
it's like this thing that I emotionally love
because I was deprived it as a kid,
but now, I see food as fuel.
Also, something I could just appreciate,
I can enjoy it.
'Cause I think there there may have also been
some guilt around that.
Something else that I had to let go of
is I had such poor sense of boundaries.
It was very hard for me to let go of
caring what people thought.
I was so attached to how people felt about me
and there was a people-pleasing,
nice guy mentality that also,
I think I inherited from my dad in a way,
it was his pattern.
But one of the things that I had to do
is I had to let go
of the people-pleasing mentality
and the nice guy mentality.
And the key to all transformation is awareness,
I had to first off become aware
that that pattern is there.
And what I had to become aware of was my value.
As a people-pleaser, a nice guy, or whatever,
you value what other people think of you
more than you value what you think about you.
You, in a sense,
need their validation and approval
in order to feel a sense of safety.
So what I had to let go of
is I had to let go of the old meaning
that other people create safety for me.
I had to start creating it
from the inside out for myself.
And if you look to any part of your childhood
or anything that you have trouble letting go of,
it most likely is rooted
in some type of childhood experience
that may have happened
that you may be attached to or holding onto.
I was listening to this talk the other day
and I was talking about how PTSD, what PTSD is.
It's at a certain point in our past,
and especially for people that come outta war,
the army or something like that,
where they felt extreme, extreme emotion.
They felt so much extreme emotion
and energy that now,
they've locked that memory inside of their mind,
to where they replay it over and over again.
You probably remember certain times
when crazy things happened in the world,
because it may be it changed your emotion,
and one of the reasons you remember it
is because there was a highly charged emotion there.
I remember where I was when 9/11 happened.
I remember where I was
in different times of my life
and even just different things
that happened in the collective
because of the heightened emotion
that happened in that moment.
Now, that's what PTSD is,
it's almost like so much emotion
and then it's like,
it locks that memory in place
and the people keep replaying them
over and over again.
So the thing that it really helps though
is to focus on feeling
the emotions that come up
and then allowing yourself
to observe them from a space,
to where then you can reframe the meaning.
You can reframe the meaning
to just about everything.
What I did is, I started looking at
my own level of values
and I realized I valued people's validation
over a lot of other things
and feeling significant and special.
And maybe that, in the beginning,
was a side effect of me trying
so hard to grow on YouTube and stuff like that,
and it was like, "I have to get to more and more
because I have to add value to so many people,
because if I add value to people,
then I can feel worthy and significant
and whole and complete."
When in actuality,
yes, it was like there was somewhat
the energy of wanting to help people,
but on the other side of that,
there was the payoff that I got for it,
and that's why I was making
so many videos back in the day.
Sometimes I'd make three videos a day.
It's crazy, I used to make
three videos a day every single day
and I was 90 days ahead on videos.
And I would meet other YouTube creators
and stuff and they're like, "Aaron, how the hell
do you do that?"
"It's just a part of my identity."
"It's just a part of who I am,"
which is kinda true,
but the other part of that is, maybe,
there was this kind of insidious desire
to gain people's validation, approval,
and I had my identity so wrapped up
in being a YouTuber
that it was like my way of survival.
I didn't wanna lose everything that I've created.
So changing the authentic values is another thing.
Our values are the virtues we live by,
and we live by values that, a lot of time,
were given to us as childhood.
And until we become aware of it,
until you become aware of it,
it remains on autopilot.
So for the process of letting go
and for this video in general,
the thing I want you to know is,
letting go is very easy.
All you gotta do is become aware of the patterns,
become aware of the attachments because it'll
become aware of the person or whatever it is
you're you're having trouble letting go of,
become aware of the meaning
and then observe it,
allow yourself to feel what's ever coming up,
but then you can reframe the meaning.
A lot of times, you can train that meant,
you can find that meaning
with something you gave at childhood
but then there's a new reflection of it.
So what you wanna do is become aware of that meaning
and then simply make the choice to let it go.
That's all letting go is,
it's a choice set you make,
and when you let go, you will feel so light,
you will feel so free,
you will be a new version of yourself.
And it's simply because you've decided
to let go of the old meaning.
Ask yourself this question,
who would you be without it?
Who would you be without that attachment?
You'd be free.
You'd be lighter.
If you let go of the seriousness of life,
how would your energy be different?
These are all things that can really help you
to heal, help you to let go.
If you haven't seen and listened to,
I have a meditation on Ho Oponopono.
It's four simple statements,
"I'm sorry," "please forgive me,"
"thank you," "I love you."
So if you listen to it for the next 21 days,
you'll find that your energy field
completely changes, they called this cleaning,
cleaning the energy field.
So watch this video,
listen to it for the next 21 days
and watch what happens.
This video, I'm gonna show you
the most powerful healing modality
I have ever found called Ho Oponopono.
I'm gonna show you the magic of it,
why it's more than you can even imagine what it is.
And I'm gonna show you exactly how to use it.
(pleasant music)
Welcome back.