Are You Attached? Here’s the Way to Freedom

If the world out there doesn’t feel safe and welcoming to you, if you can’t be peaceful inside no matter what you try, then you may want to take a look at what you’re attached to.

What is it like to be attached?

You can’t be happy unless others respect, love, or approve of you;
You’re waiting for someone to apologize so you can be at peace;
You think your contentment in life depends on the right job, relationship, or family;
You expect other people to listen to and understand you—and get upset when they don’t.

We’re attached when we want someone or something outside ourselves to give us what we think we need to feel happy, whole, or peaceful.

caught in a story of what we don’t have or what we lack, and we’re left waiting, hoping, and ultimately disappointed. We feel like a victim, putting our precious happiness in the hands of something we can’t control—what other people say or do and our life situations.

So how to get unstuck if you’re putting off your happiness while waiting for something outside yourself to change?

If you want to be happy (who doesn’t?), you’re called to approach the problem from a different perspective.

As Einstein wisely said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

The new level of consciousness that is needed is to turn toward your experience and look within. Forget about looking out to the world, hoping to get the love or apology you think you need.

Instead,

Identify the story you’re telling yourself because it is a story designed to make you feel separate and lacking;
Experience how it painfully limits you; and
Experiment with losing interest in this story and bringing your attention fully into the present moment.

Rather than focusing on the loop of the story playing over and over in your head, take a breath and come back to what’s here and present right now.

Turning inward, what you might notice first is the pain you’ve been living with. For most of us, it’s the despair of a young child who didn’t get the love and care she or he needed. Putting the story aside, there’s the physical experience of this pain.

Now you’ve gotten to the root of the problem—the emotion that’s been lying here unexplored. And by noticing it, loving it, breathing with it, and letting it be present, it eventually begins to lose its power. It can’t hold up to the light of loving awareness.

You stop justifying the pain and waiting for resolution…and form a friendly and loving relationship with your own experience. This is how you become free of longing for something you don’t have and find the peace and happiness, right now, that you’ve wanted all along. It’s an incredibly kind way to be.

The painful feeling of not getting what you think you need will probably return many times, but each time is an opportunity to lovingly welcome your inner experience.

Being attached to an outcome you can’t control creates a division that reinforces the idea that you’re separate and lacking—and it just doesn’t feel good. Turning toward what arises in you invites love, clarity, and compassionate understanding.

Instead of living in lack, you discover acceptance, celebration, and the simple joy of being alive.