The Strong Within Affirmation Podcast
Education:Self-Improvement
437 I Lay Down My Burdens | March 2018 Tuesday Week 3
Tag Me Tuesdays-#437 March The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast
I Lay Down My Burdens
“Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction
the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.”
Allen Ginsberg- excerpt from his poem Song
What you are carrying is what you decided to pick up. Everything that is weighing us down is something we decided to carry. And that’s a hard thing to hear because it means that we can’t place the blame onto anyone or anything else. But it doesn’t mean we should place the blame on ourselves either. Because if we do that we are not moving forward but deciding to be weighed down by our burdens.
The definition of burden when used as a noun is—that which is carried; load; or that which is born with difficulty. When burden is a verb and used with an object the definition is to load oppressively or trouble. And the burdens we hold onto load us oppressively. They weigh us down; they keep us from being and becoming the people we wish to be.
Holding onto our burdens is a form of hoarding; it’s a form of gathering and stockpiling our pains. We feel it is our duty, our obligation, to go through those pains whether it be for ourselves or for others. And there’s nothing wrong with going through the fires of pain, but when we don’t let go of those pains, the burdens begin to become too heavy to bear anymore.
If you think about why people hoard physical stuff, sure it could be for a multitude of reasons, but I think it boils down to one big point—we think we might need it someday; that we would be the source to the answer, and so hold onto it just in case. But it becomes unhealthy because the motive is based out of fear. The fear thinking that we may use it at the wrong time, maybe we could accidently give it away when we might need it again, or the comfort of having it outweighs the heaviness of continually holding onto it.
Most problems we’ve held onto, or walls that we’ve built, were meant for good measures in the beginning. We held onto them as remembrances to protects us next time so we’d never forget, or we held onto it for another person so we could bear the weight and help them, or maybe it was a way of pushing ourselves to the limit to show how much we care for something. And maybe this is one of the greatest reasons we hold onto our burdens, while we hold it close it gives us an out to not face our fears. Because when we truly face our fears we are able to let go of them as we have come to know what they truly are…and by understanding our fears then we come to understand that they no longer have power over us.
One of the stories I know I’ve told in my life is that great things involve carrying heavy burdens. That the act of being rewarded means I have to be willing to endure pain to have it.
And I do believe in hard work towards something, but when we carry our burdens habitually…it becomes a way of non-living. And what I mean about non-living is we never enjoy the reward because we have allowed the original protective measure to stay with us even after we have reached the goal we wanted. Or maybe we never reach the goal because our burdens keep us from being able to make the journey with such a heavy load on our backs.
We all have our own unique experiences, but I believe our pains don’t differ all that much. We think we are the only ones suffering and no one could understand our pains and burdens, but it’s the opposite actually—we all have become experts at hiding behind our masks.
But I have a solution:
If you are tired of being weighed down, and being ladened by your burdens, you don’t have to carry them anymore. You can decide right now to lay them down. It’s that simple. You don’t have to bear the weight anymore, if you choose to be free.
And while I said it’s simple, it still will take work:
It will take the work of committing of going through the pain. It will take the willingness to not avoid the pain anymore but to acknowledge and recognize it for what it is. It will be the process of accepting the faults and errors in your life from yourself and for others…and growing because of them.
We all will mess up, and a mistake is a learning lesson, it’s a chance to grow…but the more we hold onto the resentments and anger of the past…then the more we live within the past. And if we are living in the past, which is literally impossible except in our minds, we keep ourselves from living in the present to create a better future.
So instead of holding on for dear life to your pains and burdens we need to find a better way to deal with them before they get too heavy and crush our souls. We need to be able to pivot from pain into a better emotion. It’s not necessarily letting go as we will always keep what we have experienced within ourselves, but it’s making the choice to be healed rather than stay stuck in something that isn’t serving us anymore.
And I believe most if not all of healing stems from forgiveness—the willingness to forgive others and ourselves. When we can forgive, we can then begin putting down our burdens.
Everything we do usually started with a good reason, or we thought it would be a good reason. So while we picked up certain things that no longer serve us, I am giving you permission to lay it down if it is not longer helping you. You don’t have to be the answer for everyone and everything. So lay down your burdens and pick up something that you can build on. Pick up things that will help you create a beautiful, free, and hope-filled life. The world is yours when you lay down your burdens.
Today’s Personal Commitment:
Mental check, what burdens are you holding onto that are no longer helping you move forward? The best way to find relief from our pains is not to just lay them down only to come back later to pick them up, but to understand why we picked them up in the first place so we can lay them down for good.
So look at the things you’ve been holding onto that are creating great resistance within and ask yourself:
Why did I pick this up in the first place? What will holding onto this burden do to me? What do I really want? How can I let go of it for good if it’s hurting me?
Everything you are carrying you picked up. Let’s be purposeful at looking at why we picked up things so we can be purposeful in laying them down. That way we won’t ever have to come back to them again.
I Lay Down My Burdens
Thanks for listening. I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together,
Personal Development Life Coach-
Chris O'Hearn
Contact info- email: chris@strongwithin.com phone:865-219-3247
Music by:
- Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
- I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide
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