Our columnist Wael Al Sayegh tells how you can welcoming change by letting go.

While it’s important to know that change is inevitable, letting go of all that is obsolete is vital too, says

Are you, or is someone you care about, currently going through a confused stage of life? Do you find yourself disoriented or stuck between two opposing choices? If so, then today’s article is for you.

It has been my life experience so far that when I find myself in situations where I am confused, disoriented and stuck, I am in fact undergoing, through no active choice of my own, an initiation. The word initiate means to begin, to introduce or to introduce to. In life, this can mean to experience a complete change in your way of being – to start something totally new.

As a person goes through the uncomfortable process of initiation, which is deeply personally to each soul, it might seem on the surface that there is no hope. But, instead of adopting a gloomy attitude towards all this why not opt for a more empowering one? Instead of being helpless victims of change, we can become the masters of it. As a martial artist, I would say “let’s Judo flip this baby”.

Things may seem to fall apart in our lives, because they have stopped serving us or are holding us back. Very often we cannot let go of them, so as fate would have it, they will inevitably let go of us, and then we are left with no choice but to move on. Unfortunately, we humans are not so good at letting go. The first thing we all do when we are born is reach out to grab something. From a physiological point of view we are trying to prevent our necks from being snapped. Talk about being born into struggle! That’s why we find it hard to let go. Clinging on for dear life is not just a metaphor, it’s a physical reality. We are geared to grab and hold more than we are to let go. But it is only when we let go that better things can happen.

Nothing is permanent; empires fall, huge corporations go bankrupt, what once seemed unbreakable crumbles. Who are we to be any different? When the signs of collapse appear, it can just mean the end of something old and the beginning of something new.

Allow me to share with you one of my own major initiations. I have for many years been leading and building up my martial arts and fitness academy. I started by teaching every single class myself. As the school grew to over 200 students I found myself getting more and more drained by teaching so many classes. I had very little time to practice the arts myself, and this unsettled me and made me unhappy. I can only teach what I love, and if I don’t train myself in what I love how can I teach it to a high standard? My dream of living a martial arts lifestyle was becoming a nightmare. I was lost, confused and disoriented.

As it happened, I had trained up a second-in-command who was more than able to take my place. She not only got the job done, she actually surpassed my own abilities to teach. The longer I kept clinging to the position of chief instructor, the more I was doing a disservice to the students and families who entrusted me with their time, their challenges, and their investment in themselves.

I was being initiated, without actively choosing it, into a new role, a new position that was vital to the progression and growth of my life, and that of the school and everything connected to me. Life was forcing me to let go of something so it could give me something else, something that was needed at that precise time. Once I realised what was happening, I embraced it, and took charge of it by welcoming it into my life.

Initiation means never going back. Once initiated into a new life, role or position, there should be no pavement back. You cannot profitably return to your old identity or way of seeing the world. Just like a snake cannot return to its old skin, we cannot return to our old ways without damage. When you shed other people’s ideas of how you should live, think, act, behave, you can choose not to go back and pick them up. You will feel vulnerable for a while and you will have moments when you may feel you want to retreat, but the option is not possible if you are to fulfil your life’s purpose.

So for those of you who are confused, try to understand what’s going on. Be aware and ground yourself in the knowledge that you are going through an initiation that will change everything, so embrace the change. If you have the sensation that you are falling in your life then you might as well dive right into it. As the poet Rumi wrote “In falling, we grow wings”

Have a self-transformative

Friday, everyone.