Why Everything Changes When We Let Go

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Welcome to the Practical Mystic podcast where universal wisdom meets modern life. I'm Nicki Kuurman and this is a space for thoughtful conversations around intuition, meaning, and our lived experiences where awareness doesn't always make things easier, but it does make things clearer. These conversations about how we live spiritually in our everyday lives. This is about the patterns that we keep returning to and letting go of what no longer serves us. This is a new way of being in the modern world. This is practical mysticism.

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The moment you stop pushing, everything shifts.

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This isn't the episode I was planning on recording today, but something that I've been sitting with this week and watching and observing in myself is the ups and downs of my own emotions when things aren't quite going how I want them to. This sense of discomfort that I'm doing something wrong that I don't quite get it yet, or what am I missing?

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And my mind goes searching and seeking answers, and I can feel myself just race out into the future trying to collect all of this information. All of these predictions that I think are going to happen, but they're all based on this past annoying reality of the experiences I've had before. And I'm watching myself trying to manage everything out in the future.

00:01:26:28 - 00:01:59:03

I caught myself several times in the last week racing into the without any real facts or not even really based in any kind of truth. It was all just past fears and past experiences that were driving this anxiety and stress that was building inside of me awake. And I finally changed into myself for a few seconds and I said to myself, “what would I tell a client right now?”

00:01:59:06 - 00:02:24:06

What I heard was, “you tell them about the avalanche”. And so, this is an example that I use with clients quite often. It's that when we're pushing an agenda, when we're striving for something and it's not working right, like it feels literally you pushing crap uphill. And no matter how hard you push your agenda, no matter how hard you try, you work out all these different ways around it.

00:02:24:08 - 00:02:53:28

It's just not coming together. And whether this is in relationships, whether this is at work with the with a personal project or something that you're working through, even with, fitness and our health and all those sorts of things, we, we feel like we pushing and then it kind of feels like it's a plateau. And when we're in that plateau or it's not moving fast enough, I notice that our mind starts to go into this willy, Willy of what else can I do?

00:02:53:28 - 00:03:20:09

What else can I do? I must have all the answers. I've got to find something else. And immediately I leave my body. Immediately. In that situation, I notice that I'm looking for answers outside of myself. And so, what I say to clients in that moment is I walk them through. Imagine all of this is you trying to push up a snowball up a mountain, right?

00:03:20:12 - 00:03:46:18 

And it's pushing and pushing and pushing, and you're trying to hold back the snowball because it's or rock because it's holding back the avalanche above it. And you're like, if I let this go, it'll all fall down. If I let this go, what's going to happen? I can't let this go. I've got to hold it all together for myself, for this project, for my team, my people, family, whatever that is.

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The hardest thing that we have to do in that moment is surrender. And that's where I found myself last week. I was like, you are in the avalanche, Nick. You are trying to push that rock up the hill. That big snowball. You're trying to hold it all together. You need to step to the side and let it all fall down.

00:04:08:24 - 00:04:47:12

And not in a “the avalanche is going to take you down to the bottom of the hill” way, but in a conscious, just stepping aside, way. As I stepped aside, I could feel everything go crashing down, and the fear slid right off just as I stepped away. In that moment of surrender, when I can let go and just see what happens, is when I must get out of my own way. I must get out of the mind's way of trying to know the answers from an intellectual point of view and trust my knowing that I don't know.

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I don't know how this is going to work out. I got no idea. All the things I've been doing, all the things I've been trying, not working.

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So that do something different.

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I like to think of it as stepping out of my own way. Right. And I visualize myself just stepping out from under the rock, doing a quick dash, letting go and just letting it all crash to the bottom of the hill, and sometimes that crash in that surrender can take a couple of days to settle, but usually it only takes a couple of minutes. To be honest.

00:05:23:13 - 00:05:36:02

And I look at it and I go, okay, if I'm looking at all the debris and all the things at the bottom of the hill, now, what am I going to pick up and take with me into the next stage to try again?

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And so, I imagine myself picking up the pieces, all the people that I need in this situation, and off I go marching up that hill again. That's the resilience.

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It's when everything that we've tried and we surrender it; we just pick up the things that are true and we go again.

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I realise now that I've been doing this unconsciously for a really long time, and then over the years that I've been working with clients, I give them this analogy of the analogy. But what I really, truly realize now is that when I let go of the agenda, when I let go of my mind, often when I let go of the ego and trying to be right, that I surrender it and I let it go.

00:06:24:07 - 00:06:38:28

Yeah, it might not look exactly how I wanted it to look before, but it always comes out with a slightly different twist or turn a slightly different edge to it. And usually, it's better than where I was going to begin with.

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I want to give you another example of this is a client a few years ago was really trying for another child. They had one child already, a very happy family, but she didn't feel complete. She felt like there was another child; to complete their family and they had tried everything. They'd been trying everything naturally, and IVF and the gap between the children was getting bigger and she was starting to panic.

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She was getting really anxious that they weren't going to be friends. These children were going to have two big an age gap, and that her happy family wasn't going to be complete. And the more she kept pushing, the more she kept trying and the more interventions she tried. The disappointment was crushing. The stress was starting to break up their relationship, and it was not a peaceful environment.

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Home.

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And I said to her, what happens if we just let it go? We let the avalanche. And she was like, no, I can't go there. I can't let this guy; I want it so badly. The desire is so strong, and the wilful mind tried like she was so determined. And this is what it had to look like. And so, I offered another way to look at it.

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I was like, what if we just put this situation into a box and just pop it on the shelf? It's not going away. It's not going anywhere. It's not falling down the bottom of the hill. It's not crashing. You don't have to give up in any way, shape or form. You don't have to surrender. This idea. We're just going to pop it on the shelf.

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You can take it down as many times a day as you want. You can look at it. But every time I want you to ask yourself, is there anything I need to do about this right now? Is there anything I can do to change it? Are there any decisions I need to make? And just like, okay, let's give this a try.

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In two weeks, she came back to me and she was like, oh my God. The stress. Like I feel so different. It's like, yeah, I still want the same thing. I still want another child, like with all my heart. But that Reiki pressure, all the things of my mind trying to fixate on what can I do next? What can I try?

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What's the solution? Started to quieten and as it became quieter, she could start to hear her soul and what was going on for her.

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And she had this image that she needed to go and see an acupuncturist and a different acupuncture said she'd been saying before. Somebody had mentioned it in passing to her, and she'd been resistant because she'd tried that, been there, done that in the past.

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Anyway, she said to me, I just woke up, I called my friend, I got the referral, and I went to the acupuncturist.

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A few weeks later, they were pregnant.

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That space of being able to drop things for a little while, to let God in, to let our soul in, to let whatever you see source as light into a situation. It can change everything. It can be the one tiny shift that makes all the difference. It can be the one piece of information that you couldn't see before or wasn't available to you.

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Because when we're fixated on the how, how it has to happen, when something has to happen, all of the detail we can't let all of the magic in. And the magic is usually thousands of times better than what you could possibly imagine the outcome that you want, the desire you want. When we let our soul in,

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when we let ourselves speak to our self for guidance, when we listen to a higher self, our God spirit put God, Buddha, Allah, whatever you say that. 

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And when we start to just allow a little space between the fixation of the issue, what we want, what we desire, and how we imagine it has to show up, we just create a crack. I leave the door open just a tiny bit and the light comes in 

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And when we can surrender a little bit more and sit back in the body a little bit more and just allow, okay, let me just allow it to crash. Let me allow this to drop. Let me allow this to pause in the shell for a moment.

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We're letting more light in. We're letting more wisdom and knowledge and knowing and opportunities to show up. And people, the right people, the right timing, the right places, the right situations. 

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So that's what I was going through this week, too. I had an agenda. I was trying to push something that just wasn't working quite how I wanted it to be, and it was moving, but not fast enough.

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And then it just let go for a minute.

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And the next piece of information arrived. The next hit of intuition arrived, the next piece of knowingness arrived, and all of the stress that I had caused myself last week, all of the ups and downs and the emotional turmoil, I was like, oh my God. The solution was so simple.

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I always say that spirituality is simple. It's just not always easy. 

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And surrendering is the key to opening up our awareness again. So, when we feel our mind is tight and our body is time, we're holding all of these agendas, then we can't breathe fully. And it's like feeling like you're enclosed in a straitjacket or, a cocoon, almost like an. In order to get out, we have to let go.

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Because the caterpillar can't be a caterpillar and a butterfly, both at the same time. It creates that cocoon and crawls in, and it has to dissolve itself completely for the new to arrive. It has to surrender its idea of identity completely in order for this next version of itself to appear.

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So, when I'm in this struggle, when I'm sometimes even in the liminal space, the quiet space where I just can't get momentum or movement into the project or idea that I'm trying to manifest. I think about that caterpillar, and I think about, okay, what if I just stop struggling for a minute? Now's not a time for struggle. If it's not working, if all the things I'm trying and not working, something's wrong.

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Something needs to change.

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Something needs to shift. Something needs to pause. And it's usually me.

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I think. Step back. Nick, don't touch this. The more I can pull myself back from the situation. Don't touch this. Don't touch this.

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Start to feel myself. Let go of the outcome. Feel myself. Let go of the urgency. Doesn't mean I don't desire. It doesn't mean that I'm letting go of the idea of something just giving it some space. So, it's not just here. I can start to feel it in my body. And when you relax, like your shoulders open and your heart opens and the light can come in a little more.

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And then we have to integrate this idea of release and surrender.

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With embodiment how it feels in our body. And we have to integrate it into how we're going to let it move through us so that we can step forward again. And that little moment of where we let it go completely back to the earth, and we move it down through our body into our feet, we hand it over to the universe, Mother Gaia, whatever.

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You see that as soon as we hand the situation over, we leave some space for ourselves.

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We can breathe a little bit deeper, a little bit longer, and go, okay.

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When I get out of my own way, I can allow the shift to happen. 

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When I get out of my own way, I can allow the light in. When I get out of my own way, the shifts happen.

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And the alignment isn't pretending that I don't care. It's not. I'm not trying to force. 

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a different outcome than what I had before. I'm not trying to change the agenda in any way. I'm just surrendering my idea of how, when, where it shows up.

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The desire, the feeling. Still on board 100%.

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How it comes out softens a little, and usually, the next right step arises from that softening. When I allow myself to soften even more, it becomes clearer and clearer. And sometimes it's just a little pivot, sometimes it's a new person, sometimes it's asking for support or help.

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Sometimes it's just starting again with a slightly different perspective.

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These moments of awareness, when I have the of the next step that remind me why I trust this work, that remind me of why I do the work in the first place, and why I take these moments to understand myself and my energy system and what's going on for me. Because the minute I can tune into my whole self, not just my mind, I have a completely different awareness of what the situation holds for me.

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And quite often the desire either rises up and makes me want it more, but there'll be a slight difference to it. Or sometimes I just go, oh, it's not quite right yet. And whether it's divine timing, whether it's just this isn't for you, or maybe I really am going in the wrong direction, I need to crash it down because this isn't for me in any way, shape or form.

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I have to lean back into trust and faith that something bigger than me knows the way.

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these small shifts, quiet pauses, real change, they create you shift and the opportunity for new information. They create this space for the new to come in. And whether you call it a reset, an alignment, a pause, just taking a breath, these little, tiny micro adjustments in the way you see things, the way you feel about things, create massive change 

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And the more we become aware of our energy and our system, and we know it really well, we know when we're out of kilter, we can know when we're going off path quicker because we go, hey, this is no longer feeling right, and we don't have to get to the avalanche stage quite so often.

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It is this kind of experience and reset that you need. I'd love to invite you to join me at the Quick Shift on Thursday nights at 7:30 p.m., Australian Eastern Time. Every week we look at the realignments and the shifts that bring us back into these alignments, and we practice little tips, shifts, tricks that I've learned along the way to guide us into surrender, to guide us into allowing, softening, opening.

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Because and we hold everything so tight. Nothing can breathe. We shift one tiny thing and everything starts to change. So, if you can feel your mind's agenda is holding and grasping and you're not getting where you want to go, sometimes you need a little support with that. Sometimes you just need a quick shift.

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This is not about letting go of what you want. This is about changing how you hold it for yourself. Doesn't mean you're letting go, doesn't mean you're giving up. Just means a slight shift in how you've been holding it to allow more light in and make the change that you wish to see.