The Science of Letting Go

Dana Andrea Veronica C. Mandia

The Science of Letting Go

Have you ever come across the line “no one is the master in the art of letting go?” We also sometimes hear or see the phrase “The art of letting go” anywhere -- on radios, on papers passed by students, on the internet. People write or talk about it.  Well, this actually piqued my interest for quite some time. I may have been over thinking about the topic, and well, brought up a series of complexities regarding the issue. With that comes in the idea of the existence of the “science” of letting go. With the increasing cleavage in the dichotomy of the science-art in almost any topic, does the existence of the “art of letting go” imply that there is some sort of “science of letting go?” Now with that said, let’s delve unto certain situations which call for the act of letting go, and establish the working “paradigm” behind it.

I tried to apply the scientific method in “letting go” and here is the outcome:

• Identify the problem – At first I thought the problem is “Why do people move on?” but I think the right question is, “Why do people have a hard time moving on?” Moving on does not necessarily mean moving on from the past relationships; it may also mean moving on from a career, failure, or hurt. With this, we can formulate the factors that may affect and make moving on hard?
• Hypothesis – We have different cases and the events in our lives vary. I cannot compare how hard it is for me and how hard it is for the other people, but moving on means we lost something or someone – which may mean we cannot have it back. Some things are just gone and if we do not move on, the rate of seeing or picturing ourselves broken is really high. 
• ANALYSIS - In general, what are the stages - or we may call it scientific process- that the people who want to move on goes through?
• DEPRESSION
• Depression is the very first stage for most, if not all, of the people who want to move on. It is a sign where a person does not know what to do and is in complete sadness.
• LOOKING FOR OUTLETS
• An outlet is something that consumes the time of a person subject to moving on and is something used by that person to make him or her forget the things that hurt. A person who is moving on often looks for outlet. After severe depression, a person looks for a way which would make him or her feel better – may it be something good or something bad. 
• DECIDING TO LEAVE THE PAST
• After finding outlets, a person tries to get rid of things – which obviously have sentimental values - that remind him or her of the depression he had. 
• LOOKING FOR “NEW THINGS” IN LIFE
• After getting rid of the old things, moving on requires something that takes the place of the once removed. A person may seek for new friends, hobbies, work, or environment.
• GETTING OVER
• Moving on changes a person’s lifestyle. Signs of getting over may seem kind of weird because of the dramatic changes in a person’s aura.

There are also factors which explain why it is hard to move on.

Factors:

• We cannot accept the fact that something is wrong
• We fool ourselves! We do not accept the fact that we are not okay and that something is wrong within us. It is very hard to move on without accepting the fact that we need to be fixed.
•  Too much attachment 
• As humans we tend to focus on things. We attach ourselves too much and most of the time we are blinded, seeing only the things that we want may put us in a very complicated situation.
• We believe that things will last forever
• We focus our attention on the thing itself and see it subjectively. We do not see what we will be the outcome of our actions years from now.

And here are some tips for moving on:

• See the brighter side of the picture
• In mathematics things are always balanced in an equation. There is always a brighter side in a story.
• Always remember that it is not the end
• In every problem there is a solution. Of all the people on earth that can help you, it is yourself that can build the “you” up again.
• Always remind yourself that you may have lost something but something but it imples that something better will come
• We cannot have everything. Things are there, in our life, for a purpose. If we lost something we should believe that somehow something better will come.

Technologies also help people in their process of moving on. Well, we all know that and we all know how. An example would be that of (if moving on in a relationship) deleting or blocking or mocking that past someone.

The fact that moving on has a process implies that it is scientific and with these things, it shows not only that there is a “science” of moving on but also that moving on is hard and we all know that.