Time to Check the Baggage
I remember this moment so well…I was in Orlando, FL at a trade show for my clothing line. I was walking around to make some connections and I spied a luggage vendor. They had this huge suitcase that looked like a backpack. It was a great conversation piece and drew people to the booth. As soon as I saw it, I felt an urge to put it on my back.
As I lifted it up I noticed that it didn’t feel very heavy, and yet it took up A LOT of space. It was just like this big thing of air taking up my personal space. I smiled for the photo and then I took it off and put it down, and I noticed how big it was, even though it didn’t feel that big when I was carrying it.
And then, as often happens with me, I immediately thought about life, and how this is a great metaphor.
I thought about how many of us carry baggage. How we carry it around, day after day, and we ignore it. We carry around feelings of inadequacy, and of pain and sorrow. We carry around voices in our head – questions or scoldings from teachers or parents, mean words of bullies or of others who maybe didn’t say very nice things to us. We carry around expectations of ourselves. We carry around disappointments or failures that happened years ago. We carry around limiting beliefs that tell us we will never achieve this or that, or true happiness, or whatever it is we are seeking.
We carry these things around, but they are invisible. They may seem light or maybe just words, but actually this baggage is not light at all. This baggage holds us back - from achieving our dreams, from trying something new, from reaching out to someone for connection, or for help.
This baggage keeps us stuck in patterns.
This baggage leaves us feeling alone, and lonely. This baggage can crush us underneath its invisible weight.
As we begin a new year, I invite you to think about what you are carrying around.
Is there baggage that you are ready to put down?
What negative things are you hanging onto that you are ready to let go of?
The practice of letting go may be new to you.
If so, I’m going to share with you a few ways to begin doing it. It may take practice, but once you get used to it, it can be as easy as taking off a backpack.
Here’s how to let go of baggage:
1) Breathe it out. Feel the feelings of disappointment, of upset, or whatever it is…and breathe it out. As you exhale, envision the feeling actually leaving your body with the breath. I imagine it to look like a puff of invisible smoke or colored air.
2) Create a new mantra: If the voice in your head always says “I’m not good enough,” then recognize that that is a limiting belief, and change the story. Start talking back to the voice. When it starts up, say “That’s not true. I AM good enough.”
3) Get it out of your head - write down the negative feelings or whatever it is you are carrying around. Get it out of your head and onto paper. Burn it if you want, or rip it up, or throw it away. Or put it away in a safe place to read years from now, when you have healed, so you can look back and see how much you have grown. Do whatever feels right to you.
Just like everything else in the personal growth space, this may take time for you to get comfortable with it. Also like everything else, the more you do it, the better you get.
This is a practice, and just like meditation, yoga and throwing a baseball, the more you do it, the easier it will become.
Keep trying. Keep going. Remember how amazing you are. Let’s put down some baggage and step into 2023 together.
Happy New Year to you and yours. May this year be lighter than the last.