8 Things To Let Go Of Before 2015 Ends

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Bianca Sparacino

1. Let go of your comfort zone.

The truest form of beauty in life, the richness and the experience, is to be found in the areas that are unfamiliar to us. Life opens up in so many awe-inspiring ways when we allow ourselves to face our fears, and trade in our everyday familiarities for things that may breed a lifestyle we have always yearned for. Think about it – if you seek change, if you seek a sense of growth, it is time to do something different, it is time to embrace the unknown.

2. Let go of everyone’s opinion of your life.

There are always going to be people who will try to give you guidelines in regards to the ‘correct’ way to go about living. However, there is no universally ‘correct’ way to live a life that is solely your own. Everyone has different goals, and different views as to what happiness is. People will judge you, people will try to change you, but if you allow for that to alter your path you’re going to end up living someone else’s life. This year – make your life your own.

3. Let go of your opinion of everyone’s life.

No one has a perfect life. You see filtered photos on Instagram and highlight reels on Facebook; you see blissful accounts of seemingly faultless relationships, and hand picked reflections of those you follow on social media, but you never truly see someone in these situations. In an age where we are so easily capable of curating and painting an immaculately false picture of our lives, it is important to remind ourselves that those we envy, and those we compare ourselves to, are capable of doing the exact same thing.

4. Let go of your infatuation with waiting.

It is often easy to get caught up in waiting for the things we want in life to simply happen. We wait for the promotions, we wait for the first text, we wait for the easy way out. It is time to stop waiting for our lives to become what we want them to be; it is time to start making them what we want them to be. We all have potential within us – it is pinned and blooming between our palms, it is coursing through our veins, and if we meet our visions with the same level of ruthless effort, we cannot fail at making even our craziest dreams a reality.

5. Let go of your tendency to favor being cool, over being connected.

In a world that seeks connection we oddly avoid eye contact, we time our text responses in order to protect ourselves from seeming too eager or too interested, and we hold our feelings back because we don’t want to seem overly emotional or unreasonable. We silence our instincts, and at the end of the day instead of feeling good about ourselves, we feel alone, we feel misunderstood. Remember – it is okay to be emotional, to seek help, to confidently tell someone you enjoy being around that you are infatuated with them. There is nothing wrong with vulnerability, with being human, for that is what creates depth within our relationships, and that is what ultimately unifies us.

6. Let go of a love that wont love you back.

Love is quite possibly the only thing that can both build and break a human being, and that makes moving on difficult. Remind yourself that it is often the highlights that leave you longing for the past, the good memories, the beautiful moments, the building blocks – but there were also the downfalls, the breaks, the things that caused the relationship to end in the first place. There are so many breathtaking people in the world, people who have the potential to create with you something that is foundational, something that drives and inspires you to be a better person. Open yourself up to them; open yourself up to the kind of love you deserve.

7. Let go of what you tolerate.

It is quite simple – life is not to be endured, life is to be enjoyed. If there is something that you want to change you have all the power in the world to change it. You do not have to keep toxic people in your circle, you do not have to stay in an unfulfilled relationship or ‘put up’ with any aspect of your life. There is courage to be found within the hearts of those who refuse to simply stomach their life, within those who pledge to confront what makes them unhappy, or ungrateful, and focus on the things that do the opposite.

8. Let go of the idea that it’s too late.

It is truly never too late to change your life. It is never too late to become the person you always hoped you could be, or to love the way you have always wanted to love. We often forget that we are not bound by our past. We don’t have to be who we were a year ago, we don’t have to make the same mistakes we did when we were younger; we can want different things, we can seek different horizons.  We have to believe that we are never too old, never too jaded, and never too broken to take our first steps towards change. We wake up every single day with the ability to start fresh – it is never too late to take advantage of that. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

Read more of Bianca Sparacino’s writing in her new book Seeds Planted in Concrete here.

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