{"id":3758,"date":"2014-12-10T03:00:40","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T08:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/?p=3758"},"modified":"2014-12-09T00:24:19","modified_gmt":"2014-12-09T05:24:19","slug":"the-secret-of-letting-go-of-dead-end-relationships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2014\/12\/the-secret-of-letting-go-of-dead-end-relationships.html","title":{"rendered":"The Secret of Letting Go of Dead-End Relationships"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We all know exactly what it is like to be certain we have let go of something sorrowful or worrisome, only to find ourselves in a similar sad situation moments later. Merely wanting to let go of an unhappy circumstance or nagging emotional ache is not enough. Wants are desires, and desires replace one another like bees waiting in line at an open flower.<\/p>\n<p>Dropping this person and picking up that person doesn\u2019t end the loneliness that drives us into dead-end relationships. This isn\u2019t letting go. We have only managed to put the emptiness on hold.<\/p>\n<p>The truth is that letting go is very simple and, above all, natural; as natural for you and I as it is for a tree to shed the heavy, sun-ripened fruit that clings to its branches. Why? Because both man and tree, in fact all living things, are created to drop what is no longer needed. For the tree, the falling fruit carries its matured seed to the ground. No unnatural force is necessary. In a similar fashion &#8212; that is to say, under higher but equally exacting laws &#8211;these same friendly forces are waiting to do for you what you haven\u2019t been able to do for yourself. You need only learn to cooperate with these powerful and timeless principles to be able to let go of any emotional bitterness, relentless regret, anxious worry, or troubling thought. The rest will be done for you.<\/p>\n<p>This is what the secret of letting go is all about. First must come the understanding that we are still carrying around the accumulated defeats of a lifetime, and that these weary weights have only served to make us someone sorry, not someone special. This initial shock may shake us, but it is really a major breakthrough. It heralds the first in a series of miraculous self-separations in which we begin to see that we have been living from an unseen part of ourselves: a self that thinks clinging to wreckage is the same as being rescued! Now we understand why all of our past efforts to let go have only left us holding a new problem. But now we also know, at last, exactly what it is that must be dropped. We must let go of this sorry self that is certain it is better to suffer and feel like someone than it is to just let go and quietly be no one. It is the higher part of yourself alone that has the strength and wisdom to gently open your hand so that out of it may drop all that has been making you unhappy.<\/p>\n<p>Believe me, you are on the verge of the single greatest discovery any human being can make. The secret of letting go not only holds the keys for ending what is unwanted, but locked within this same supreme secret is the beginning of your new life &#8212; the birth of a new nature that never has to hold on to anything because it is already everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We all know exactly what it is like to be certain we have let go of something sorrowful or worrisome, only to find ourselves in a similar sad situation moments later. Merely wanting to let go of an unhappy circumstance or nagging emotional ache is not enough. Wants are desires, and desires replace one another&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":232,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,73],"tags":[525,934,2114,1744,152,2115,336,135],"class_list":["post-3758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letting-go","category-love-relationships","tag-anxious-thoughts","tag-bitterness","tag-dead-end-relationships","tag-emotional-conflict","tag-regret","tag-secret-of-letting-go","tag-unhappiness","tag-worry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Secret of Letting Go of Dead-End Relationships - Letting Go with Guy Finley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2014\/12\/the-secret-of-letting-go-of-dead-end-relationships.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Secret of Letting Go of Dead-End Relationships - Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We all know exactly what it is like to be certain we have let go of something sorrowful or worrisome, only to find ourselves in a similar sad situation moments later. Merely wanting to let go of an unhappy circumstance or nagging emotional ache is not enough. Wants are desires, and desires replace one another&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2014\/12\/the-secret-of-letting-go-of-dead-end-relationships.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Guy-Finley-260924340633\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-12-10T08:00:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-12-09T05:24:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@guy_finley\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Secret of Letting Go of Dead-End Relationships - Letting Go with Guy Finley","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2014\/12\/the-secret-of-letting-go-of-dead-end-relationships.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Secret of Letting Go of Dead-End Relationships - Letting Go with Guy Finley","og_description":"We all know exactly what it is like to be certain we have let go of something sorrowful or worrisome, only to find ourselves in a similar sad situation moments later. 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His ideas cut straight to the heart of our most important personal and social issues - relationships, success, addiction, stress, peace, happiness, freedom - and lead the way to a higher life. Finley is the Founder and Director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit Center for Spiritual Discovery. He is the acclaimed author of \"The Secret of Letting Go\" and more than 45 other books and audio programs that have sold over two million copies in 26 languages worldwide. His work is widely endorsed by doctors, business professionals, celebrities, and religious leaders of all denominations. Through Life of Learning Foundation, Guy has presented over 5,000 unique self-realization seminars to thousands of grateful students throughout North America and Europe over the past 20 years and has been a guest on over 700 television and radio shows, including national appearances on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and NPR. The Foundation's popular Key Lesson e-mails featuring inspirational quotes by Guy are read each week by a hundred thousand subscribers in 142 countries. Guy speaks four times each week on inner-life principles at Life of Learning Foundation's home in Merlin, Oregon. These meetings are ongoing and open to the public. For more information about Life of Learning Foundation, Guy Finley, and their life-changing messages, visit guyfinley.org. \"Guy Finley is...one of the leading experts at the forefront of human potential.\" -Nightingale Conant \"Guy Finley has helped millions live fuller, more peaceable lives.\" -Barnes and Noble","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.guyfinley.org","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Guy-Finley-260924340633\/","https:\/\/x.com\/guy_finley"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/author\/gfinley"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/232"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3759,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3758\/revisions\/3759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}