What You're Chasing Is Making Life Harder...
How the things you're attached to can keep you stuck in stress, fear, sadness and dissatisfaction, and how to find greater freedom through letting go.
In my recent Inner Shift Newsletter, I explored the importance of reconnecting with yourself...your TRUE self. And with this, I've come to understand that we can't fully reconnect with who we truly are, without also reconnecting with the greater consciousness from which we all come from.
One of the biggest sources of our suffering is attachment. We attach ourselves to money, success, power, relationships, and the circumstances we believe will finally make us feel happy, secure or fulfilled. Yet all of these things are temporary. They change, they evolve, and eventually they leave our lives in one way or another.
This teaching appears across many traditions. Buddhism explores how attachment and craving contribute to suffering. Paramahansa Yogananda, whose teachings have been an important part of my own journey, speaks about directing our love towards what is eternal rather than becoming consumed by temporary experiences. The Bible reminds us that where we place our treasure is where our heart will be. The language differs, but the question is the same: what are you placing at the centre of your life?
Is it material gain? Earthly love? Fleeting markers of success? Or is it something everlasting, something that exists beyond this temporary world? You might call that God, the universe, the creative force or pure consciousness. The name matters less than the invitation to look beyond what we attach ourselves to, and what might prevent us from connecting with our true essence.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't love people, pursue meaningful work, enjoy money or create beautiful lives. It means recognising that none of these things is the ultimate source of our fulfilment, and learning how to hold space for them, without being consumed by them.
If you're exploring what it means to reconnect with yourself more deeply, you might also enjoy my blog, How to Truly Connect with Yourself, where I explore what it really means to reconnect with your authentic self.
What attachment really looks like
Attachment isn't always clinging to a person. Sometimes it's staying in work that exhausts you because financial security must come before everything else, tying your happiness to buying a house by a certain age or stage in life, holding on to an identity you've outgrown, or refusing a new direction because it doesn't fit the picture of who think you're supposed to be.
You can become so focused on making one version of your life work that you stop seeing the other possibilities available to you. A goal quietly becomes pressure, and what once represented freedom starts to feel like a cage.
There's nothing wrong with deep bonds, ambition or working towards the life you want. The suffering begins when you become so attached to one outcome, one person or one way of getting there, that you sacrifice your wellbeing, disconnect from your real truth and close yourself off to other ways forward.
When it's deeply personal
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is easy! Recently, my mum came to visit me in Bali, and after nearly a year of living independently abroad, two weeks with her was wonderful. But when she left, I'll be completely honest...
I cried like a baby! The grief hit harder than I expected, and for almost a week I felt the absence of having her physically here.
Eventually I realised I wasn't only missing my mum. I was confronting my attachment to her physical presence and the reassurance of knowing she was close by, and beneath that was something deeper still: the painful awareness of her mortality, and the fear that one day she may no longer be here.
I love my mum deeply, but I've come to see that the maternal love I experience through her is an expression of something much greater. Beyond the individual people through whom we experience love, there is one eternal source of love expressing itself through everyone and everything. The love itself isn't confined to a person or their physical presence, and it can never truly be taken away.
This is also something I've reflected on through the experience of grief. When we lose someone we love, we're confronted with the pain of no longer being able to experience them in their physical form. Yet the love we shared doesn't simply cease to exist. If you're grieving, please know that feeling the loss doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong, it's a sign of how deeply you loved. I've explored this more deeply in my article, How to Navigate Grief After Losing a Loved One, where I reflect on the relationship between love, loss and finding a way to move through grief.
When we recognise this truth, we learn to love the eternal essence behind a person rather than becoming attached solely to the physical form through which that love reaches us. I can cherish my mum deeply, without making her physical presence the sole condition for experiencing that love.
The same goes for everything else. Like most people, I've experienced financial loss, walked away from financial security, left a beautiful home I loved, ended relationships, lost friendships, grieved loved ones, and let go of milestones I once imagined my life would include. Leaving the stability of my career to follow the unknown path of my higher calling hasn't always been comfortable, but it has asked me to place my faith in something greater than the circumstances in front of me. It's also required me to trust the bigger picture, rather than being consumed by what I've lost or how I thought things were supposed to look.
This is a high level of self-mastery I'm speaking about here: experiencing the full depth of human love and desire, without becoming dependent on its physical expression, appreciating what we have without being consumed by the fear of losing it, and staying connected to something eternal as the temporary circumstances of our lives as well as the people within them change.
The question I'd like you to sit with
What are you chasing, and what are you attaching your happiness to right now?
Money, success, recognition, a relationship, a particular outcome, or the reassurance that everything will go according to plan?
When we become hyper fixated on these external things alone, we lose connection with the true essence of who we are and the one thing that is truly everlasting. We become so consumed by the mind, our fears and our expectations that we feel the need to control everything that happens.
However, when we peel back the layers of ego, conditioning and programming, we create space to reconnect with our true self and the deeper consciousness I understand as our connection to God/Source. From that place, we can express our soul gifts, recognise our higher purpose, make decisions with greater clarity and align with the contribution we're here to make, becoming a clearer channel for the highest expression of who we are.
We all have an inner space that will be filled with something, and the question is what we allow to occupy it.
For me, the highest priority is to be filled with our true essence, because operating in the fullness of who you truly are, at a soul level, offers a level of power no external achievement can replicate.
What if the greatest success isn't getting everything you want from life, but reconnecting with what is already eternal within you?
I believe this is what's missing for so many people, and what prevents them from embodying their true legacy. They're so consumed by what they're trying to acquire, achieve or hold on to, that they never create the space to discover who they're truly here to become. They completely miss where there soul is guiding them to.
My deeper invitation to you is to come back to your spirit, reconnect with your eternal essence, and free yourself to live in the fullness of your highest truth.
Discover the legacy you're here to create
If you're ready to explore who you truly are, what you're here to contribute at the highest level and the legacy you're being called to create, so you can reach your highest expression in this life time, you can apply for my Legacy Blueprint.
Formerly known as Private Recalibration, The Legacy Blueprint is designed to help you gain a deeper understanding of the legacy you're here to build, map out how to bring it into the world, and begin embodying the person who can make it happen.
Because the more deeply you reconnect with your true essence, the less you need the external world to define your worth, your happiness or your direction.
Leanne Nelson | Holistic Psychotherapist | Crystalline Views
Discover more about Leanne, her approach to holistic psychotherapy and the philosophy behind her work.
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