Transform Your Life - Just Count Me In
Just Count Me In is a podcast designed to help us navigate and flow with our lives through conscious awareness. When we live with less resistance and more receptivity it is easier to express who we came here to be and enjoy life. We are all walking each other home.
Transform Your Life - Just Count Me In
#18 Let Go To Grow!
Letting go is not about loss or giving up—it's about liberation and making space for who we're becoming. This episode explores how true freedom comes when we align with our authentic selves. Let go to grow.
• Letting go requires addressing the root causes of our attachments, not just changing surface behaviors
• Parents often struggle with knowing when and how to let go
• Our habits and patterns serve deeper needs that must be acknowledged before lasting change can occur
• True safety comes from alignment with our authentic selves, not from controlling our circumstances
• Rescuing others from failure robs them of valuable life lessons and growth opportunities
• Journal prompts and affirmations help identify what needs to be released
• Guided meditation to integrate your work
If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend who needs to hear it, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and leave a review. For deeper support in letting go or personal growth, DM me or visit my Instagram to book a free clarity call during the month of May. Thank you for taking the time to listen. I appreciate you.
Thank you for joining me!
Welcome to Just Count Me In, a podcast designed to help you break free from your limitations and step into the life that you actually were meant to live. I'm Sari Stone and I'm a holistic coach with a background in education. For the past six years, I've been guiding people to transform their lives from the inside out. My journey, to be honest with you, was not always clear out. My journey to be honest with you was not always clear. For years, I actually felt like I was living someone else's life, checking all the right boxes but never feeling quite truly fulfilled. That all changed when I experienced a few miracles, met some incredible teachers and had a major wake-up call that forced me to shift my entire perspective. And had a major wake-up call that forced me to shift my entire perspective. Wayne Dyer once said when you change the way you look at things, the things that you look at change. And that is exactly what this podcast is about Helping you see your life in a new way so that you can start living with authenticity, purpose and passion. Each week, I'm going to bring you 30 minute episodes filled with insights, practical strategies and inspiring interviews to help you uncover what truly lights you up and identify what's been holding you back. Eventually, this is going to ignite your motivation and create real change. Are you ready to step into the life you were meant to live? Then just count me in, hit, subscribe and join me on this journey. If this episode resonates, please share it with a friend who needs a little inspiration today. Let's do this together In order to live our best life. We realize at some point that we have to let go, and this episode is about letting go. It's about letting go not just physically, but emotionally, mentally, spiritually Emotionally, mentally, spiritually. This episode is for people who are getting ready to take the next step into their best lives and notice when they look around that there are some things to let go of, a little bit of clutter to clear. So I hope you enjoy it. Thank you again for joining. Transform your Life. Just count me in. Letting go is not about giving up. It's about making space. It's not loss. Letting go is actually liberation. It's making space for peace, making space for truth in your life and making space for who we are becoming. I hope you enjoy this episode.
Speaker 1:In this season of transformation and, as I mentioned before, I have five seniors graduating that I'm coaching and parents I work with and even in my own life there's actually been a few things that have come up lately and letting go of people as they transition, the final transition die. So letting go has come up a lot and letting go is so necessary for us to be able to move on and make the changes that we want to see in our lives and become the person that we want to be in our lives. We take a look around and we're like, oh, I thought I was ready, but I've got this stuff and it's like gum on the bottom of your shoe and you know you think you just wipe it off, but there it is and you've got to figure out another way to get it off because it's sticking to you and you can't take a step without it making a big string. I mean, we've all stepped in gum at some point and it's gummy, it's sticky, and then you realize that you let go for different reasons and that's the thing. Letting go is so much deeper than simply saying I let go, because if we don't make the energetic shift inside of ourselves to figure out why we started doing this to begin with, we're just going to recreate the same thing in another form with. We're just going to recreate the same thing in another form. So example maybe, um, maybe if you're leaving a job or you've got a boss who's abusive, if we don't look at the root cause of why you allow this to go on? To begin with, meaning you've got a belief of about what you deserve. Maybe you've got a belief that you're not enough. Maybe there's a belief that work has to be hard and you have to suffer in order to succeed. I don't know any. You fill in the blank. You're going to then create that same situation in your next job relationship, etc.
Speaker 1:Letting go of children is one of the hardest things and personally one of the hardest things and personally one of the hardest things I have done letting go of habits and letting go of some thoughts. So it's a lot deeper and when it comes to our children and our families, we're not actually letting go of them. We're letting go of our need to control the part of us that wants everything to be okay, everyone to be happy, so that we can feel like we've done our job well, um, and it? This was probably the hardest one for me, worse even than quitting smoking cigarettes, which, I'm embarrassed to say, I ever even did, but I did. I've got to own all parts of myself and this one was hard because I had to look at the reason and you can't blame your parents forever.
Speaker 1:But basically I was raised in a household where I was the strong one, I was the one they could count on to always be okay and as a result, they communicated that it was as if I had control over everything, and I mean my dad, up until gosh. He was in his nineties and calling me saying well, how could you let that happen? Like if one of my children who were adults, adults, was going through a hard time and I fully took that on. I was like, I don't know, they're living their own lives, so I could intellectualize it, but I deeply had a belief that I had to be sure that everybody was okay all the time. Or it was my fault, my responsibility was okay all the time, or it was my fault. My responsibility and that was the deepest one for me to clear and created, you know, for a while, their separation with my children, because they could feel it that I needed them to be okay. I don't, I prefer that they're okay, but I can honestly say finally, I don't need for them to be okay for me to be okay, so that one is a tough one.
Speaker 1:Letting go as a parent also, like we're used to mentoring our children If you have younger children, letting go is very emotional. And the parents I've been talking to, especially the parents of seniors we want what's best for them, we want to protect them, we want to support them, but often we actually end up holding on too tightly, which has the opposite effect. So another thing that came up that was popular this past week in my coaching for letting go was letting go of expectations Expectations of how other people should act, expectations of who our children should be, how they should behave, even how our family should look. We have a lot of affiliation and identity based around our family and this is difficult because when our children are small, we actually are responsible for their safety. So where's the line between protection and control? It's delicate and it takes a lot of self-awareness and redirecting them back to what is their truth so that we can release a little bit knowing and trusting that they've got a strong foundation with who they are from which to make their decisions.
Speaker 1:When we talk about letting go, we've also talked about letting go of habits this week. And it's important to look beyond the surface, because habits don't just come out of nowhere. They often rise up to meet a deeper need, like you can quit smoking and then become really anxious. So you have to look. Why did I start? I started because I wanted to feel grown up, like I could handle what was going on in my life and I could feel calmer and in more control so I could quit the cigarettes. But then I had to deal with why I started them. Right, it's the same thing with clients I've had that stopped drinking and then they started overworking or overeating.
Speaker 1:Because if we don't address the root cause when we're letting go, if we're not, don't sit with it and honestly ask ourselves what started this? When was the first time I felt like I needed to do this, and was it love or was it fear? Usually it's fear if it's something we want to let go of. And where did that fear come from? So we literally, unless we address the root, the emotional need, the wound or the belief that the habit was just kind of covering up or medicating, we're likely just to drift this energy right into something else, which is why so many times when we let go of things. They come back. So they come back just in a different form.
Speaker 1:Letting go isn't really an action. It's the result of a shift of energy, and this was something that Stan brought to my attention. It's a change in our vibration. It's a change in our frequency. Sometimes we let go because we've just had enough. It hurts too much to hold on, or maybe we sense that something is interfering with our highest and greatest good. Or, for me, if it's interfering with my happy because I'm a happy person and I don't like it when anything messes with my happy I've got to figure out how to choose thoughts that align with that and let go of the other.
Speaker 1:Sometimes letting go doesn't come from a moment of pain, like graduating high school or leaving a soccer team that you've been on for five years. It comes from clarity, like there's an inner alignment that says I'm not a match for this anymore, I no longer need this and it just. Those are the easiest because they kind of. You have to think about it, but then they just kind of fall away. You know people that we've outgrown places that don't feel right, jobs where you feel like you've gotten all that you can.
Speaker 1:So at its core, we really don't crave certainty and control. What we are wanting is safety. We want our children to be safe, we want ourselves to be safe, but safety doesn't always come from knowing how things will turn out. We really can't always know how things are going to turn out. We can predict from likelihood, but possibilities are endless. Possibilities meaning what if in a good way, not possibilities meaning what could go along, but technically we're not really in control of as much as we would like to be.
Speaker 1:So then you've got at some point, give up and just let go and trust. What you can count on is yourself. You can count on the wisdom inside of you, you can count on the part of you when you come home. That shows you what feels good, so trusting in the process, that life is going to support us, and life supports growth. So if you're struggling to let go, maybe the real invitation isn't to force the release, but it's to shift your energy and to change your relationship with the thing that you're holding on to, to become more aligned with your truth, and then that which no longer serves you will start to gently fall away. No longer serves, you will start to gently fall away. Letting go becomes a byproduct of healing, of presence, of wholeness.
Speaker 1:Just to give a little recap as parents, we're not letting go of our children. We let go of our need to manage every detail of their life and attachment to the outcome and ensure their happiness, just to feel like we've done our job right. Yes, we do need to let go of that. As far as expectations go, we can let go of how life, family or success should look. What if this is success? What if this is success? What if this is success and it's not what you had on your vision board last year? Or it's not what you thought you would be five years from now or five years ago, you know, and there's a place for those things.
Speaker 1:But sometimes the closer I get to myself, the less I need it, because the more it's just naturally happening. So when we try to break habits, we have to ask what need was this habit needing? And if we don't meet the root need in a new way, the pattern just returns in a different form. Letting go often happens when we just can't carry the weight anymore or our soul knows it's time. But deeper than that, it happens when we shift internally, when we remember that we don't need certainty, we need safety, and safety is actually found in alignment more so than control. Alignment more so than control.
Speaker 1:So what actually does it look like to let go? My coach used to always encourage me to ask is this mine? First of all, if I feel something that is not right, is out of alignment in my life, or if it's a pattern I've been in, she would say ask is this mine or have I just picked up on something around me? Was it a belief that my parents had? Was it something that I saw? Was it trying to compare myself with somebody's perfect life on social media posts? Is this really really mine? Do I own this? And then, if it is, take another deep breath and pause and, instead of pushing, try allowing allowing the people around you to fail sometimes and learn from their failure. When we try to rescue people, we're actually robbing them of the opportunity that they're being presented with to further their soul's evolution, their life lesson. When we go and rescue and fix and prevent failure all the time, we are, in essence, taking the opportunity from them. We're taking the lesson. It's not our lesson, it's their lesson. So then that lesson will just come back again in a different form to them, so we're actually not doing them a favor.
Speaker 1:Letting go also looks like releasing the belief that you're not doing enough. This was a tough one for me because I always felt like there could be more give till it hurts. You can always do better. You know what. These are not beliefs that I would ever want my children to have or my clients to have, and part of it had to do with making peace with the past, and I had to forgive all parts of myself and forgive other people the person, not the actions before I could move on and not keep getting hooked into that pattern. It always starts with this is no longer mine to carry. I let it go. And letting go creates such a beautiful space for miracles to come in and for healing and clarity and a deeper connection with ourselves and others. So ask yourself think about it. What do I need to let go of right now? What would I like to let go of right now? Where can I choose peace over control? Because letting go is liberation and that's your life.
Speaker 1:I'd like to give you some journal prompts if you have a moment, or you can always come back to this if you're listening in your car, because I find that journaling really helps me personally process things. A lot of times things come out when I'm putting them from my mind onto the paper that I wouldn't normally say. So some of these prompts are is there a belief that I have that is telling me I must control things for them to be okay? And where did that come from? When I look at my life, what habit or pattern keeps resurfacing and what's the deeper need behind it? Is it safety? Is it recognition? Is it just? Is it recognition Just?
Speaker 1:Take a look when I think of a time that I've let go before. What forces came into play? How did life support me when I let that go? How can I detach from expectations? What would it look like to trust more and grip less? So letting go creates so much room for healing, for clarity, for a deeper connection to ourselves.
Speaker 1:I would suggest that you spend some time with this. Don't rush. You can also ask yourself what thoughts or beliefs have been feeling heavy and where am I giving my energy to something that does not serve me anymore? And here are some affirmations that you might want to use and please, if you have some, that you write, please share them with me. I love hearing from you. I'm just starting to hear from people now and I hope it's a trend. Please message me. I let go of what no longer resonates with my highest self. I honor this cycle of letting go and welcome the peace. I trust what is meant for me will stay and what isn't will gently fall away. As I lighten my energy, I make space for miracles and my favorite I am safe to grow. I am safe to grow. I am safe to change. It's safe for me to let go. I let go with love. I put together a short meditation to go along with this theme of letting go and I would recommend that you come back to it and play it, even if it's just that section, once a day for a period of a couple weeks, two or three weeks. 21 days is the magic number for your brain, but some people they can listen to it once and get a lot out of it, just to start making those neural connections. I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 1:So begin by finding a quiet place where you won't be disturbed and allow yourself to sit or lie down comfortably and just gently close the eyes down, and you can even, if you like, roll as though you're looking up toward the ceiling, even though your eyelids are closed. Take a deep breath in through your nose and exhale slowly through your mouth. Let's do that again. Inhale deeply and exhale completely, emptying out, and exhale completely emptying out. With each breath, feel your body begin to soften, to settle, to let go. So breathe in, let and breathe out, go. You are safe, you are supported and you have nothing to worry about right now, just your breath.
Speaker 1:Now imagine a gentle wave of relaxation. It begins at the top of your head and it flows down across your forehead. And it flows down across your forehead, behind your eyes, your cheeks, your jaw. Feel your shoulders release, your arms become soft and heavy. This wave of peace moves down your spine, your chest, your stomach, radiates around your heart, all the way down through your toes, and with every breath you're drifting deeper, deeper into the stillness, deeper into the calm You're letting go.
Speaker 1:Now imagine that you're holding a lantern and it's beautiful. Inside this lantern is everything you've been carrying your thoughts, your beliefs, your expectations, your pressure, even emotions that no longer serve you. This lantern's not a burden, it's a blessing. It's shown you who you were. Now it's time to set it down so gently, with love and gratitude and great presence and reverence. You place it on the ground and, as you do, you feel lighter, freer, more connected to your true self. You whisper to yourself I am allowed to feel light, to begin again. I let go and rise.
Speaker 1:You walk forward barefoot, free, unburdened into a beautiful moonlit field. The waning moon shines overhead, reminding you that release is a part of growth. Letting go is letting in. Endings are secret and you don't have to hold on to everything to prove your worth. You are enough just as you are. As you relax into the safe space, allow these truths gently to seep into your subconscious.
Speaker 1:I am worthy of peace and ease. I trust in the divine. I trust in the process. I am safe to let go of the old and make space for the new. What is meant for me will stay. I choose presence. I choose joy. I choose joy. I choose alignment. I choose love. I choose me.
Speaker 1:Let these words echo, gentle in your heart, becoming part of your new inner script. Feel where they land. If they had a color, what color would they be? Where do you feel the most in your body? Now, slowly bring your attention back into your body and feel the ground beneath you, feel the earth supporting you. Your breath is moving in and out. Wiggle your fingers and toes, sw swallow to release your jaw, gently stretch your arms if you want and then, when you're ready, slowly open your eyes, returning to the room.
Speaker 1:The same, yet different, because you are returning with more clarity, more peace, a deep knowing You've gone home, you've cleaned house and you've let go. You had to let go. You're lighter now and you've let go. You had to let go. You're lighter now and you're free to rise. And if this episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend or family member who needs to hear it. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and leave me a review. Your words really help this community to grow and your feedback is so important for me. If you're looking for deeper support in letting go or shifting habits, finding clarity in personal growth or parenting, please DM me or visit me on my Instagram and book a free clarity call. I'm giving those out for this month of May. Thank you.