Last week I wrote about how we can become an Abundance Magnet as a part of the weekly ‘Purpose Quest’ series I commenced two weeks ago. Today I focus on an aspect of the story that I wrote last week, releasing anxiety’. 

Anxiety was arising due to my  inability to return home  to Sri Lanka and impending drop in revenue when the reality of the pandemic was getting clearer.  This blog post is dedicated to illustrate how I released such emotions using Releasing Techniques that I was learning and teaching since October last year.

When we have an emotion, we either repress it, express it or escape from it. Initially I repressed it by telling myself that this will pass soon, flights will be arranged for me to return and clients will continue their work. My sleep that night was not comfortable as something from within was nudging me to take this more seriously.

So how did I respond to this call?

The next day (20th March), I checked with the airline and realised that there is uncertainty about the resumption’s of flights. I immediately change my ticket to the next available flight on the 27th of March. I spoke to the clients who had upcoming sessions and a few of the session during the week continued and many other sessions were postponed. The natural reaction of many would be to express, i.e to talk about it with others, get angry about it, blame others, blame self etc. I generally do not express, but I went in to the ‘escape’ mode unconsciously. I started getting myself occupied by catching up on work, reading, writing, watching some TV etc. My sleep was quite disturbed that night and the next day I decided to ‘Release’. 

I first did the ‘basis release’ by welcoming up my anxiety, accepting it, appreciating it for trying to serve me. Then I asked my self; could I let go of this anxiety? Answer was Yes. Would I? Yes! When? Now. I started feeling better and I continued to do this during the day. I was able to focus on my work better. My sleep was much better. 

The next day I did a deeper release titled the ‘six-step release’. In this release, after welcoming and accepting the emotion as in the previous day, I identified what ‘want’ this anxiety was associated with. There are 3 basic wants we have: want for Control, Want for Approval and Want for Safety. The basic premise is that when we ‘want’ something we don’t ‘have’ it. So in this process we ‘release’ the ‘want’ and allow ourselves to ‘have’ it. On reflection I realised that there was a want for ‘safety’ both medical and financial. Therefore after the first part of the release that I did the previous day I asked myself.

• Am I willing to let go of the want for safety? The answer was ‘Yes’. 
• Am I willing to let go of the want for safety and allow myself to have safety? The answer was ‘Yes’. 
• Would I have more safety? Yes!. And still more? Yes! and even more? Yes.

While this had reduced my anxiety a lot, on further reflection I realised I had a want for control. To control the date of the flights, to control the way I work, to control my environment to prevent the virus getting to me. I did the above process to let go of wanting control and felt even better. Then on reflection I realised there was a want for approval; wanting approval by the government to include me in the next flight. I used the same process and released the want for ‘approval’ and felt even better. My quality of sleep was even better that night.

The next day, to consolidate the gains, I added a new goal to the other goals I was working on. This goal was; I have returned to Sri Lanka safely through releasing. The next step is to release anything which comes up when I reflect on selected words and phases. For positive feelings I used the basic release above and for negative feelings I used the six-step release above. When I reflected on the word ‘I’ from this goal, I felt doubt and a ‘want’ for ‘control. For the word ‘Have’ I felt I did not have approval to return home and hence a ‘want’ or approval. For the phase, ‘Return to Sri Lanka’ I felt confident being in Sri Lanka. for the word ‘safely’, I had a small doubt about safety during the flight back home and therefore a want for ‘safety’. After releasing the negative emotions  and the ‘wants’ of selected words and phases, I reflected on the entire goal again. I have returned to Sri Lanka safely through releasing. I felt there was a want for ‘oneness’. Oneness and separateness are the other two canopy wants, which are less prevalent. I released that want too and felt truly happy and I released that positive emotion using the basis release and felt even better.

My quality of sleep continued to improve and I started taking action to get passage home and to deliver my services online from the level of ‘havingness’ and life was moving smoothly. I did not feel the time flying through the 10 weeks in Dhaka, 2 weeks at hotel quarantine and now at home completing my home quarantine. This is an amazing testimony to the power of releasing and our natural ability to release and enjoy courage, acceptance and peace while having safety, approval control, oneness and separateness. This I consider purposeful living.

Thank you Omar Khan for introducing ‘purposefulness’ and Lester Levinson for introducing ‘Releasing‘ to my life!

I hope this gives you a practical illustration on how to use ‘Releasing’. Use this technique, customised to your reality and enjoy happiness and success purposefully.