I was one of those soul-searching teenagers who at age fifteen read The Tibetan Book of the Dead and philosophers like Plato, Kierkegaard and Sartre. It\u2019s not that strange that I at age thirty plus am doing The Bead Movement. I can\u2019t help but ponder life, and I can\u2019t help but reach for the dream. It\u2019s in my dna, it\u2019s in my blood. Now in my thirties I’m on\u00a0an active search for happiness.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a random act that I, during an exercise with my career coach recently, put Meaningfulness on my top 8 of necessities that need to be met in order for me to be happy in my everyday life. Without it I would be lost. Neither am I one of those artist types who believe melancholy is a prerequisite for creating good art. As a matter of fact, for me it’s the opposite, if I\u2019m happy and content I do my best work.<\/p>\n
These past 8 months of doing the Bead Movement have pushed me towards the edge of my comfort zone more often than not, and it has been highly rewarding. To tackle one\u2019s fears, reflect on the present situation and have a fellow Bead traveller on the other side of the world, with whom I Skype once a week, leads to a massive leap in personal development for sure. \u00a0In Mhairi I have found a co-philosopher with whom I tackle\u00a0life\u2019s biggest questions on a weekly basis.<\/p>\n
As our third week of Letting go is coming to an end it hit me. It became clear to me that ever since starting The Bead Movement I have been on this journey of letting go. The whole thing of going against my fears, that I have actively been pursuing for over a year now, has also oddly been about letting go. And what I found out now, as I thought about it all, was that\u00a0Letting Go is absolutely key in living everyday happiness. It might actually be THE KEY.<\/p>\n
Because,<\/p>\n
When I let go of the need to be right in every situation<\/p>\n
When I let go of pettiness<\/p>\n
When I let go of hurt<\/p>\n
When I let go of blame<\/p>\n
When I let go of past conditioning<\/p>\n
When I let go of preconceived ideas and instead embrace the moment<\/p>\n
When I let go of my plans<\/p>\n
When I let go of my need to control something\/someone<\/p>\n
When I let go of negative thoughts<\/p>\n
When I let go of other\u2019s expectations<\/p>\n
When I let go of the need to always stride for my own point of view<\/p>\n
When I let go of the need to punish myself or someone else for hurting me<\/p>\n
When I let go of the future<\/p>\n
When I let go of the past<\/p>\n
When I let go of resentment<\/p>\n
When I let go of mistakes<\/p>\n
When I let go of a getting and instead give<\/p>\n
I am happy.<\/p>\n
And every time I let go, I get or achieve something greater.<\/p>\n
Yes, it is a cliche, but in fact it is also very much so a truth. When I now look back at this past year of letting go, I can see that all the sweetest and most magical things and moments stem from letting go of something old. Despite how scary or hurtful letting go can be or feel, it\u2019s definitely a life lesson to remember – that on the other side of letting go is something so much better.<\/p>\n
Love, Johanna.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was one of those soul-searching teenagers who at age fifteen read The Tibetan Book of the Dead and philosophers like Plato, Kierkegaard and Sartre. It\u2019s not that strange that I at age thirty plus am doing The Bead Movement. I can\u2019t help but ponder life, and I can\u2019t help but reach for the dream. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[261,18,207,259,80,260,6,243],"class_list":["post-661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-johannas-blog","tag-books","tag-johanna-ginstmark","tag-letting-go","tag-soul-searching","tag-soulful","tag-teenager","tag-the-bead-movement","tag-writer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/IMG_1389.jpg","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=661"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":677,"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661\/revisions\/677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}