Just realised that I haven’t blogged anything in a while, been travelling in India and Nepal for the last 1.5 months, but I found this blog that I wrote a little while back so I had a minute to post it today as I think that the subject is a very important one, so I hope you like it!

I also wanted to feature some of the most beautiful photography I’ve ever seen, shot by my soul brother Avneesh Kumar, do check out his website and Facebook here if you’d like to see an amazing perspective of India.

Let go of your expectations

This was the first major life lesson I learnt thanks to my first boyfriend when I was 16. He drilled it into my head that when you expect things, whether from people or from situations, then you may get disappointed if it doesn’t go your way. However, when you let go of expectations, then you may even get more than you had hoped for. I wrote a nice love story about that here.

So next time you go into a meeting, or start a new relationship, or go for a coffee with a friend, don’t assume that your boss will be in a bad mood, or that your date will be perfect, or that your fiend will arrive on time. Just surrender to life and go without a pre-planned idea in your mind of what the day will be like.

Also, don’t expect that other people should know what you are thinking about or what you want. Don’t make your lover read your mind, just tell them that you want to be touched here or there or that you want to go to this place tonight, why keep it in? Why are we so afraid of asking for what we want?

These last few weeks have been amazing for me in terms of letting go in every way and just following the guidance of my heart. Sometimes my heart seems a little crazy and I think to myself, “you want me to do WHAT?” but then I listen to it, and end up in the most amazing situations! I recently went to a tantra festival and I had no clue what to expect apart from lots of massages and looking into each other’s eyes, but what really happened blew my mind and changed my life forever. I wrote a little more about it here, if you’d like to have a read.

Let go of your ex boyfriend / girlfriend

You broke up. Perhaps it was a mutual decision or you got your heart broken, either way breaking up is never nice. No matter the circumstances though, it happened for a reason, so it’s in your best interest to just let them go.

I know it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, I know how painful it is to watch someone you still care about change their relationship status on Facebook or have your plans shattered by the one you love. But one thing I do know is that life gets so much better once you let them go. Emotionally, physically and spiritually.

I was once so scared of being alone that I stayed for a long time with someone who I knew wasn’t “the one”. I was scared of moving on, of never finding love, of being independent. However after a seriously healing and heart-opening tantra festival, everything changed. We had this amazing meditation and I fully let go of my ex. The pain he caused me actually ended up being the best thing to happen to my life. By letting go, I opened up so many new doors, to love, to discovering who I really am and I realised that I don’t need to be with someone just because it is “comfortable”, we are here on Earth to love and have fun!

So I urge you to just release them from your mental shackles, forget all the physical rubbish you left at their house – it’s just stuff, forget all the emotional things they put you through – you’ll feel better once you stop living in the past. I heard a great sentence the other day, “if you drive by only looking through the rear-view mirror, you’ll have a lot more accidents and never reach your destination”, so start looking out of the windshield!!

Let go of your current boyfriend / girlfriend

As important as it is to let go of your ex, it’s also just as important to let go of your current beloved. This is something that I’ve been trying to figure out how to do my whole life, but now that I finally feel it, I can’t even express how freeing it is.

Many of us are jealous, but somehow jealousy is considered almost synonymous with love nowadays, whereas in fact it’s the opposite of love. When you love someone truly, all you want is for them to be happy.

This was a very hard lesson for me to learn as I have always been very jealous, to the point that I didn’t let my first boyfriend have any friends. I could feel it eating at me from the inside, and it took 11 years to work through that, but now I really understand what it means to love someone and be truly free, and let them be free too.

Why do we constantly try to control our loved ones? Why do we try to dress them differently, or make them do things that they don’t want to do? Why can we not just love them exactly as they are? Sure, there’s nothing wrong with asking them to pick up their socks once in a while, but when you look at the larger picture, just love them as they are. And if you find yourself constantly trying to change your partner, mould them into your idea of a perfect man or woman and it just isn’t working, perhaps thats something you should think about.

Let go of your plans and control

It’s good to plan things to some extent, I’m not saying don’t book your flights until the last day (though that’s how I’ve been living my life recently haha!), but this point is more about releasing your control over situations and people.

If you struggle with that, here’s a nice little exercise for you. Drive out to a town you’ve never been to before and just get lost. I’m serious, turn off your phone so you don’t look at the map, and just find your way around by walking, talking to people around you and taking chances. See how that makes you feel and observe your emotions. Are you comfortable, irritated, angry, do you feel the need to take your phone out every 5 minutes?

Or notice how you behave when you’re in the passenger seat of the car. Do you calmly do your own thing, or are you constantly watching the road, telling the driver where to turn and which lane to take? I must admit I do that one haha, but every once in a while I notice my silly behaviour, close my eyes and just let life carry me. Another good way to practice trusting is by floating in the sea, I was surprised to find that many people find that hard to do.

So just let go and let the Universe take you on the ride of your life.

Let go of your physical possessions

I don’t mean throw everything you own away, but I’m suggesting not to be so attached to them. So you lost your hat at the beach or scratched your Mac…oh well, it’s just a thing and even though it may have been expensive, everything can be replaced, and in the grand scheme of things, your Mac isn’t the most important thing in your life (or at least I hope not!).

My cat has been a great teacher in this department. When he was a kitten he had a wonderful habit of chewing all the cables that he could find, driving my ex absolutely crazy. But what’s the point in getting mad at a cat who doesn’t know any better, I just replaced the cables that were lost to unfortunate circumstances and didn’t get stressed.

When I was younger I was really attached to my very first iPhone, I thought it was the coolest thing ever and I was so afraid of anything happening to it…that I managed to destroy it within a week. I flooded 2 more after that before I finally realised that I need to stop being so attached to them!! And once I made a conscious decision to not care about it, my 5S has been perfectly fine for years (and I’m not attached to needing the newer model!). From my experience, the more you hold onto things, the sooner they get taken away from you.

One of my first blogs was actually about “stuff” and why we accumulate so much of it, have a read here if you’re interested.

Let go of judgement

Towards yourself and others. We are all on our own individual paths and no one is ahead of the other, we each have lessons to learn and things to experience, so why judge other people? A lot of the times we have no clue what’s going on in their lives, so unless you have been in their shoes every moment of all of their lives, you have no right to be judgemental.

Jasmuheen told me this summer that St. Germain once came to her and asked her two questions, “Can you remember every moment of every experience you’ve ever had in all of your lifetimes?” and “Can you remember every moment of every experience everyone in this universe ever had in all of their lifetimes?”
If the answer is no to either of them, then you have no right to judge other people because you do not know the bigger picture.

So don’t judge the woman who’s eating on the bus. For all you know, she’s got 3 kids and 2 jobs and the only time she has to eat is travelling from one job to the next.

Don’t judge the vegetarian you know buying meat. For all you know he’s doing shopping for a friend, or buying meat to feed his dog.

Don’t judge the loser in your class who never speaks to anyone. For all you know he may have abusive parents and has a hard time trusting others.

Don’t judge the woman who gets an abortion. For all you know, the father of the child may be threatening her and her child’s life.

Don’t judge the kid who never comes out to parties. For all you know he may have a sick mother at home he needs to take care of every evening.

Don’t judge the guy who rudely takes over on the highway. For all you know he may be rushing to the hospital. Or he may be just a jerk, but the action saved you from a possible accident up ahead.

Let go of your need to always be right

We all do it, we get stubborn and stomp our feet and shut down to other people’s opinions. I’m right and you’re wrong, and that’s it.

Have you ever tried being flexible and open-minded? What is “truth” anyway…isn’t it just a matter of perception? I loved the internet craze about the white-gold and blue-black dress because it really made me realise that people will see that dress in different colours, and that will be their truth! After spending 10 minutes of staring at the photo, I suddenly opened my mind to the possibility that it could be blue, and it turned blue right before my eyes! In that moment I realised then that truth really is in the eye of the beholder.