Practice Non-Attachment To Other People’s Outcomes

I often talk about non-attachment, one of the shamanic principles that we strive to live by. 

Don’t get attached to things that weigh us down or pull at our energy. Don’t be attached to material plans. Don’t be attached to the picture in your head of how it’s supposed to be. 

Lately I’ve been paying attention to not being attached to the outcome of other people’s choices. 

Random strangers can make whatever choices they want, their choices generally don’t affect me. But when the people that I love and care about, are making choices that I personally don’t agree with or wonder why they aren’t making a better choice? That’s when I get triggered.  

I’m sure loads of people in my life have wondered about my choices at times. My choices probably triggered a lot of people too! 

But we can only meet people where they’re at. 

I realised that I was being annoyed by things because I had an attachment to their outcome. It was born from a place of genuinely caring about them, but this is where it gets tricky in our closest personal relationships and why the people we love the most can trigger us at the deepest level. 

It’s because we do care. We care about their well being, about them feeling their best, making choices that will support them thinking in a positive, healthy way. 

And if we know a way that could help them, we want people to climb onto our bandwagon and join us on that path. 

But people aren’t always ready.

People aren’t in the same place. People don’t have the same belief systems. So we have to leave them where they’re at. But without carrying the angst of that choice with us.

When I consciously start to concentrate about not being attached to the outcome, I come back to that place of knowing that how we feel is always a choice. 

I’m going to choose to allow that person to be in their own place. I will hold space for them. I will educate them on the things that I know. I will help them look at something in a different way. And, I will not take it personally if they cannot see or receive my point of view because it doesn’t have anything to do with me. 

Where they are on their journey is up to them. That’s their choice. And I will continue to focus on all of the things I love and value  about that person

When you chunk things down to choice, their choice, and my choice as to how I’m going to receive it, whether I agree with it or not, then we can let go of that control part of ourself. When we let go of needing to control then we can let go of our attachment to their outcome. 

We’re often thinking about attachment in a personal way, like what am I attached to, ie: these shoes, my cat, my car, except that sometimes we’re attached to how our loved ones are behaving or not behaving or what they’re saying or not saying or the choices they’re making or not making. 

This level of attachment can grind away at us and we spend a lot of energy worrying about other people’s stuff that really has nothing to do with us. 

I encourage you all to take a stance of non-attachment to another person’s outcome because basically it comes down to an expectation. 

When we put an expectation forward, we expect it to be met. And when it’s not met, it triggers up all sorts of things for us. For some people it triggers anger, for others, rejection, upset, not being received, not being heard, not being seen, a whole multitude of things depending on what your default mode is. 

There’s always stuff going on at the deeper level when we’re having an interaction with someone whether it’s an actual verbal interaction or whether it’s just an interaction in our head. 

Usually it’s the people we love the most that upset us the most because we don’t understand where they’re coming from. 

And because at some level, it’s triggering a deeper feeling and that’s the part that we take personally because we feel those stealthier feelings of not being heard or not being seen. 

Everything can be chunked down. If you’d like to learn how to examine the way you think, and unearth the way that you receive information and how you communicate with others, please private message me. 

Another run of From Fear Into Love is starting next week and it’s all about this kind of energy exchange. My students in week one say, “how could I have never thought this way before?” 

You get a big re-frame of how you think and learn how you perceive things the way you do and why. Once you know, the seeds are planted, and you can never go back. 

All of your relationships change, the way you communicate changes, the way you think within yourself and the way that you think about other people will shift in a way that empowers you. 

This is just one aspect of From Fear Into Love. If that interests you, I’d love to hear from you. Isn’t it time to let go of your attachments? Book a call here now – it is free.