Life hack #2: Let Them (your new favourite philosophy)
Life hack #2: Let Them (your new favourite philosophy)
[00:00:00] One of the hardest parts of losing somebody with a break up is accepting a loss, accepting the fact that somebody is going to leave you or doesn't want to choose to have you in their life. And we can do a million things in our heads to try and figure out, well, how can I fix this so that they don't leave me?
How can I prevent you know, people from leaving me or cheating on me or divorcing me or finding someone better. And some people will go far, they'll try to lose weight, they'll try to like work on certain things that the other person didn't like as a way of trying to win them back. And I totally get it.
It's a panic response of, you know, loss. And when people do things in your life to hurt you or leave you behind. It can feel like a real primal panic. And what I need to tell you is based on my own experience in life but also going through many break ups and also studying psychology you have absolutely no fucking control over what people do in life.
You really don't. I don't care if it's a wedding vow that someone makes to [00:01:00] you, those are easily broken and then so is divorce, right? So divorce is a solution to marriage if somebody wants out. We take comfort in these things of, oh, well, if I get married, someone will never leave me.
Well, actually that's not true. It'll just be more costly and frustrating and, uh, tragic, frankly, when they do want to leave you, if they want to leave you. So I know we go around trying to safeguard our lives and make it so that people don't leave or don't want to leave. But the real truth, the real harsh reality, and it's a beautiful one when you actually do accept it, is that you really don't have control over anyone and anyone's decisions.
And once you realize that you are all you have in this life, you are the one true person that you can count on, and everyone else is on their own journey and you have no control then you will have peace from that feeling of panic and resistance to all of the loss. And so there is this let them methodology and there's a lot of like poetry written about it.
A lot of people get tattoos with the words, let [00:02:00] them. Um, and I want to read you basically the, like, it's kind of like the sayings that go with let them, but it's basically a philosophy of stop resisting when people are showing you that they don't want you in their life. Stop resisting when people are showing you that they don't, you know, value you or will show up for you.
It's a way of surrender, but for your own mental sanity. So I'm going to read it. It's called Let Them. Just Let Them. If they want to choose something or someone over you, let them. If they want to go weeks without talking to you, let them. If they are okay with never seeing you again, let them. If they are okay with always putting themselves first, let them.
If they are showing you who they are and not what you perceive them to be, let them. If they want to follow the crowd, let them. If they want to judge or misunderstand you, let them. If they act like they can live without you, let them. [00:03:00] If they want to walk out of your life and leave, hold the door open and let them.
Let them lose you. You were never theirs because you were always your own. So let them. Let them show you who you truly are, not tell you. Let them prove how worthy they are of your time. Let them make the necessary steps to be part of your life. Let them earn your forgiveness. Let them call you to talk about ordinary things.
Let them take you out on a Thursday. Let them talk about anything and everything just because it's you they are talking to. Let them have a safe place in you. Let them see the heart in you that didn't harden.
Let them love you. So this is just one piece of poetry I found with the whole let them philosophy. And frankly, it's a beautiful thing when you realize that because you have no control, all you can do is do your best to be a good person, to be somebody that people would want to, you know, feel safe with or or have in their life.
And if people [00:04:00] still don't want to stay, then let them go because you do genuinely deserve people who you don't have to try so fucking hard to keep in your life. You really do. I know it's hard because we are willing to go to bat for people. We're willing to bend over backwards sometimes to just be the partner they want us to be when we just can't fathom the idea of losing them instead.
I get it, but there is no benefit in this resistance of people's decisions impacting you. You have no control and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you stop playing a losing game trying to get that control because it's all an illusion.
So when it comes to a break up, my best advice is do what you can to accept the present moment without trying to decide what will you do in the future if they come back. Should you reach out? Should you not? For now, you need to resolve yourself to the philosophy of let them and also let yourself heal.
Feel free to look on my website, [00:05:00] TorontoUnicorn.com I have additional resources for Life Hack Your Break Up there, and you can get links to other, in my opinion, profound or powerful let them content that kind of changed and resonated with me. So don't forget, you can also get a lot of, uh, break up memes for your doom scrolling needs.
You can go to the break up memes, Instagram account or Facebook page, and I'll put a link in the description of this podcast.
