What We Try to Possess Possesses Us.

There is a grand piano in your life that you keep trying to carry to the dining room.

Maybe it is a career you walked away from but still dream about. Maybe it is clothes hanging in your closet from a chapter that is already closed. Maybe it is a story about who you are that you wrote a long time ago and have not been able to put down.

In this episode we get into Aparigraha, the fifth and final Yama from the ancient yogic tradition, and what non attachment actually looks like in real life. Drawing on Deborah Adele's book The Yamas and Niyamas, we explore the difference between loving something fully and clinging to it, why letting go feels like being suspended in midair on a trapeze, and what a teenager with no plans for packing taught one of the wisest women I know about freedom.

Plus a brief tease of next week's guest, who held on to a story she created at age fourteen for decades, and what it cost her.

If you have ever thought you let go of something only to find it still showing up in your dreams, this one is for you.

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Transcript

 What We Try to Possess Possesses Us | A Beautiful Fix

I have a closet full of clothes that I do not wear. It's so silly, and the reason why they're still there is even sillier. We're, we're gonna get into it. So today we're talking about letting go, like the real kind of letting go, the kind that happens before you know what is coming next 

Welcome to A Beautiful Fix. I'm Tracy Hill. Each week we'll dive into the latest thought gem, recharging and reconnecting with what lights you up and makes you feel alive. Let's discover your next beautiful fix together. 

Hey, real quick before we dive in, you're powerful, and sometimes you just need someone to remind you what's already in you. That's what Human Design does. It's the difference between guessing and knowing, so you can stop searching outside yourself and start trusting the answers within. I promise you they're there. 

Grab your free chart at abeautifulfix.com, and when you're ready to go deeper, book a one-to-one session with me. All right. Let's get into the episode. 

So today is the fifth and final yama. Aparigraha. Forgive me if my pronunciation is cringey. I'm just learning it as well, but aparigraha. It means non-attachment, non-possessiveness, non-grasping, non-clinging. But the simplest way to think about this is just the ability to let go, and I have some things to say about that because what we try to possess possesses us. 

That's a quote from Deborah Adele in the yamas, and NiYamas Book, and she asked a beautiful question. She asked, "How do we move through life loving deeply and engaging fully without getting attached?" And then she offers this example. So you have a grand piano, you enjoy playing it, but when it's time to eat, you wouldn't carry the grand piano to the dining room with you. 

Why would you want all that weight on your shoulders? The idea of attachment seems ridiculous in that scenario. I, I, I get it. But it's a really powerful visual for how silly it is to cling to things and how it doesn't serve us to do so. That is aparigraha. You can love the piano completely, you can play it fully, and then you can walk away from it when it is time to do something else. 

The letting go, it doesn't diminish the love. It actually protects it. She also talks about impermanence. Everything changes. Nothing stays the same. And just saying that line reminds me of the song from the '90s, um, "Everything Must Change" by Oleta Adams. If you haven't heard her sing the song, I highly recommend you Google it, you go to Spotify. 

You probably know her from her song, "Get Here," which was really popular in the '90s, but "Everything Must Change." Her voice is just so impossibly beautiful. If you wanna have a quick, a beautiful fix, if you wanna, um, experience something truly beautiful, it's very somber, but definitely check out that song. So I think that song just makes me think and cling, there's that word again, cling to her words of everything in this world is going to change. 

That's really the only one constant. But I digress. Aparigraha is not asking us to stop caring about things. It's just asking us to stop clinging to them as if they are permanent when they never were. So Deborah writes that letting go feels very much like being suspended in midair with nothing to hold onto, like a trapeze artist. 

It's raw, naked, vulnerable, uncomfortable. She says she would much prefer to let go when she knows for sure what is coming. And when she has let go, she wants to somehow stay connected just in case she wants it back. I read that and I thought, "Okay, I'm certainly guilty of this one." I'm guilty of all of the yamas, but definitely this one. 

Most of you know by now that I left my career years ago. I left a whole world really, and by most measures, I have moved on. I built something new. I am doing work I love. I'm living differently than I was then, and yet I still have dreams about that world. Not every night. In the beginning I did, but they're still there. 

Nothing super crazy, just I dream that I'm back there, that I'm, you know, working with my coworkers and having conversations with them. Nothing exciting or out of the ordinary, but it's still there. And for the longest I just thought, "What is wrong with me? Why am I still dreaming about this company, this career that I once had? 

You know, is there something wrong with me that I, I haven't been able to let go?" There's just some part of me that still seems to be clinging to that And then there are the costumes. I call them costumes because I feel like when I was at work, it was very performative for me. You know, they also call it code switching, but I definitely was Tracy at home and then Tracy at work, so they kind of were like costumes. 

But my closet is just stuffed with stuff, and 75% of it could go today. I walk past all of these clothes, the majority of my closet, and I go to the s- tiny little part of my closet and I pick out the same four to five outfits every week and just have them on, you know, uh, a cycle. And I just stop and I think, the majority of my closet I'm not even touching. 

And what's still there? Mm-hmm. You guessed it. It's all of my costumes from work. It's the dress suits and the dress pants and, um, the dresses and just things that have just been hanging there like in a museum. It's, you know, no one, no one has told them that we've moved on. And I ask myself, "Why? Why are you allowing all of this, this old identity to literally take up space?" 

And it's because of the question of what if? What if I need to go back? What if this part of my world is really not behind me? I'm gonna need all these things one day. It's, it's silly, but it's the trapeze right there in my closet. My hands let go. I stepped away. I built something entirely new, and some part of me is still suspended in midair, not quite ready to release the bar I already dropped 

Deborah Adele, she also tells a story in this chapter about a trip she took with her teenage granddaughter, and she's a very organized person. She's always prepared, and so she started asking her granddaughter well in advance of this trip, what, what should they pack? And days passed, and the question kept going unanswered, and finally, the day before they were about to leave, she finally just said, "Listen, we have to make plans." 

And her granddaughter looked at her and said, "That is the whole point of getting away. Make it easy. Do not take anything, not even plans." Oh, I love that so much. Do not take anything, not even plans. And that is the way I like to travel. My mom is super organized. She's the Deborah Adele in the relationship. 

Such a planner, and I do not like to plan, and I'm very last minute, and I like to go places and just not have an agenda, not even really know necessarily what I'm gonna do. I love that. It just... It-- to me, it's so freeing, but I know it, it's not that way for everyone. But Deborah, in the book, she reflects on that, and she just asks, "What if we woke up every morning and took nothing with us? 

What if that was the whole point?" And again, I wanna go back to this idea of non-attachment. It, it does not mean that we don't care. It just frees us up to be even more in appreciation of life and of each other We're being asked to let go of the clinging to the thing, not the enjoyment of the thing itself. 

The piano is still beautiful. The career still mattered. The costumes hold real memories. I'm, I'm not being asked to pretend none of it was real. I'm just being asked to stop carrying it to the dining room This conversation came at the right time because my next guest is someone who held onto a story she created for herself at the age of 14, an identity that she created. 

She carried it for decades, and it cost her in ways she didn't even realize until much later. Dr. Susan Miele. I will be interviewing her, um-- Actually, I've already interviewed her, but her episode will be coming out next week, and her story's fascinating, and she's a amazing human, and you're definitely gonna wanna hear it from her. 

So this week, I wanna leave you with the exact invitation that Debra Adele shares at the end of this chapter. Here it is: "Look at the physical things you've surrounded yourself with. Do these things make you feel free and light, or do they have a hold on you and make you feel heavy? Experience the difference between enjoyment and attachment." 

I know exactly where I'm starting, that closet, and I suspect that you might know where you need to start too. So thank you for being here for all five yamas. I hope you enjoyed them. I've loved hearing from people that they've resonated with them. It's been one of my favorite things to talk to you about, and I'm not done. 

The niyamas are coming. It's same energy, just different territory. So as always, until next time, keep getting high on life one beautiful fix at a time. 

Thanks for listening to A Beautiful Fix. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a quick review to help others find us. And if you'd like to share your own beautiful fix or join me as a guest, reach out any time at tracy@abeautifulfix.com. Looking forward to next time