 Hi everybody. Okay, so recently I came across an old note that just resurfaced and the note was about the four relinquishments from Peace Pilgrim. I have... I think I've mentioned Peace Pilgrim to you before or if you've watched my other spiritual musings, you may have heard of Peace Pilgrim, if you haven't. She was and is my spiritual hero. If you were to say, you know, one person you most admire, George, in history, I would say Peace Pilgrim. You know, I admire other ancient characters, but Peace Pilgrim was a modern person who died in 1982 and lived a deeply, deeply spiritual life, not just because she had good teaching, but she... the way that she lived. You can highly... I highly always recommend looking up Peace Pilgrim's audiobook on SoundCloud. It's free. You can stream the whole thing for free on SoundCloud. So you can just Google Peace Pilgrim audiobook SoundCloud. SoundCloud is an audio hosting platform. Peace Pilgrim audiobook SoundCloud, and you'll find it anyway. So and if you're curious about what her four relinquishments were, you can Google that too, and there are free articles about it. But the four relinquishments... anyway, I just wanted to mention that because it got me to think, you know, Peace Pilgrim's four relinquishments, they were great. They were perfect for her, I'm sure. And there's lots of wisdom there, but I'm like, well, what are my... what are my relinquishments? And I want to share with you what mine are, and I look forward to if you want to share in the comments below what yours are. That's great as well. And so my two relinquishments are... And by the way, relinquishments means letting go. Letting go of something that we've held onto for too long that no longer serves our spiritual path, our becoming... our highest potential, you might say. So one relinquishment I'm making is past and future. Okay. What I mean by that is whenever I notice myself regretting something from the past or worried about the future, so relinquishing both directions of past and future. Okay. Now, I also want to add that I'm not only relinquishing, I'm also recommitting because I've noticed that... and this is something Peace Pilgrim wrote in the four relinquishments too, is like it seems wiser not just to let something go, but to replace it with something better. This seems to be true for habits, which what these relinquishments are is changing a habit. It's hard to change a bad habit unless you replace that energy, that activity, that space that is now opened up with something better. So I'm calling it the two relinquishments and recommitments. So relinquishing the past and the future, when I find myself regretting or find myself worrying or relinquishing that and then recommitting to the now, particularly practicing something beneficial now. So for example, I regret all that I haven't done. You know, I still spend too much time playing video games on my phone and that's the past. Oh, I regret having said these things with lack of kindness to certain people. I regret not working more diligently. I regret not having spent more time with so and so. Anyway, I regret not studying more seriously when I was in school so I can learn more or connecting with certain people, whatever, regrets. It's in the past. What can I do? What can I do is to change what I do now. To practice again, if I regret playing too much video game, will the practice again doing something more useful instead? I regret not connecting with each types of people. Okay, well then practice now to connect with those types of people. I regret not studying more so I can be more knowledgeable and help others better. Well, I can practice now studying better. Okay, so that's now I'm cheating a little bit here by saying the one relinquishment that I'm making first is past and future. That's technically two. But anyway, I'll just say two relinquishments past futures and giving examples here. And by the one more thing I'll say is I always remember that scene from Schindler's List. Remember that beautiful movie with Liam Neeson, Schindler's List about the Holocaust? And I remember that one scene when he says towards the end, I don't think this is a spoiler, but anyway, he says I could have done more. I could have saved more. Schindler's List is about the story of a man who saved a bunch of Jews who would have gone to concentration camps. Anyway, at the end he realized he spent so much of his life in luxury when so much of that time and energy could have been done saving more people. And that scene just always haunted me. It's like I could have saved more. I could have done more, right? And that is giving energy to the past. Now, that regretful energy can be useful if we now bring it to, well, let me practice now. Let me do what I can to help more now. And not just to always be doing things, but always to practice balance as well. So take the energy of regret from the past, channel it towards the practice of something more helpful and more balanced now, right? And same thing about worrying about the future. Some of us might worry about the finances. Oh, what if I don't have enough in the future? Guess what? That we channel that energy of worry into the now to say what can I do now that will do a better job of securing the future, right? Worried about the future of humanity. Okay, well, there are some things that are out of your control. So how can you channel that worry energy into how can I shore up my life now? Relinquishing the past and the future, channeling the energy to practice something good now. It is always possible. There is always an opportunity right in front of you to do something that's helpful for your life now. And I call it practice because I always believe that to me it's impossible to do things perfectly in terms of, you know, we can always look back and say, well, I could have done that better, right? So to prevent the energy of perfectionism, I say practice, meaning I'm practicing something helpful now. I'm practicing in a positive direction. I'm I'm orienting my energies into a positive direction in a spirit of practice, whether or not I do it right or not, I let that go. Again, I get told you, I'm kind of cheating. I could have been relinquishing, relinquishing perfectionism too, but you could add that to yours if you want to. Again, I'm very curious about your comments below. What are you relinquishing and recommitting to? And the reason why I think of two is, well, I will talk about this in the future video, why the number two, but for me, this is meaningful and it's helpful. So relinquishing past feature for practicing now is my first relinquishment and recommitment. Your relinquishing past is you're recommitting to the practice of now. All right. So that's the first one. The second relink relinquishment is what is supposed to be and I'm recommitting to appreciation instead. So, you know, relinquishing past and future is one thing, but it's like, what's happening right now in front of me? I can easily think, oh, it's supposed to be different. It was supposed to happen better. Or so, for example, this year thus far, I have launched two online courses in my business. Well, I've launched six different things and two of them have totally tanked. Two of them, I had high hopes for, that I think, oh, this would be so good for my audience and they have, those two courses have, the launches have totally flopped. Very, very few people enrolled in those courses. Thankfully, I've had two other courses that launched way better than I expected. So, it made up for it. But it doesn't matter. Those are these two courses I launched. I thought, in my mind, my audience really needs this. I hope they are visionary enough. Okay, I'm going to blame my audience. I hope they are as visionary as me. No, no. I'm the humblest person in the world now. I wish they could see how useful this would be for them and sign up for this thing. But they didn't see it. I didn't communicate it well. Both reasons were true, plus many other reasons, I'm sure. And people didn't sign up or very, very few people did. So, I thought, supposed to be, why is it, I could, I found myself wasting energy lamenting at what could have been, lamenting at, gosh, why, this should be different right now. They're supposed to buy it right now. They did. They did. And that energy of saying what should have been, okay, all right, I think I'm still alive. I'm hoping, I'm hoping I'm still alive. It seems like I'm still alive here. So, I'm going to keep talking. Sorry, I'm recording this on Facebook live and something just tried to reload. Anyway, relinquishing what's supposed to be now and instead recommitting to appreciation, appreciation of what is now. And when I appreciate, then I have more positive creative energy to utilize what is true of reality now, use it to create a better future. So, for example, when I, when I had those course flops, launch flops, instead of being in fear or being in lamenting what is happening now, I could say, oh, that's interesting. I could appreciate to say, oh, let me appreciate the fact that my audience doesn't understand this, which means, guess what, that gives me opportunity to do more education on this topic going forward. And if I didn't have any opportunity to change minds, then what's the point of my business? Because my business is an education type business, right? I teach courses. So, if everyone already understood what I believe is helpful to understand, then I don't have an opportunity. But if people don't yet see something and understand something, that gives me an opportunity to educate better, to educate more, so that they go, oh my gosh, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, I want to learn more about this. You see, so I'm learning to take what I think is supposed to be appreciating what is and therefore being able to work with what is better in a more positive energy, positive light. Another example, and maybe some of you can relate to this, especially if you live with somebody, you live with them or you see them on a regular basis, you could say, well, they're supposed to act in this way, right? It's supposed to be, right? They're supposed to act in this way. They're supposed to say this to me. They're supposed to do this for me or for themselves. They're supposed to believe this or think in this way. How come they don't, right? That kind of energy, trust me, is damaging to any relationship, right? Instead, take what is supposed to be replace it with appreciation. Instead of, oh, they're supposed to do this, think this, say this, say, oh, this is what they're doing. This is what they're thinking. This is what they're saying. How can I appreciate the beauty of that? How can I appreciate the benefit of what they're doing, saying, or thinking? How can I appreciate that? And therefore, well, I'm happier when I can appreciate something, right? The practicing of appreciation instantly creates more happiness and better relationship for sure. And the better relationship, of course, creates more alignment, more harmony, which, if I really do believe they should act in a way that's healthier or better, more harmony tends to create more opportunity for that, rather than, you're supposed to do this. You're supposed to think that, no. Appreciate, appreciate, appreciate. And also, when I appreciate that person, I learn from them as well. Because to believe that I know how people should act, think, speak. What am I, God? No, I'm not. I am simply a always learning human being, always learning how to think better, behave better, speak better. And when I observe and appreciate how someone is, it allows me to learn a different way of living, to say, oh, what's the benefit of the way that they're thinking, the way that they're acting, the way that they're speaking? What's the benefit of that? That's interesting. I'm learning something. And I'm also learning how to, I think of this as aikido. Aikido is a former martial art where when someone tries to punch you, for example, instead of blocking their punch and absorbing all that energy, instead we take the energy and we use that energy to take them off balance. This is a martial art where you're sparring with each other. You take the energy and you put them off balance instead. It's very clever. You take that energy and you redirect it towards the direction you want. It's very amazing. So same thing with a relationship is if someone is coming at you with an energy that you don't like, you can still take, it's energy. Energy can be transformed. Energy cannot be destroyed, but if you transform, you take the energy and transform it towards something better. And so, for example, I know some people who are so good at this, where it's like when someone is angry at them, they direct anger at someone, but that person is so clever, they're able to turn that into humor. They're able to turn that into a lighthearted moment or like to redirect it. So that's my second relinquishment and recommitment is relinquishing what's supposed to be and recommitting to appreciation instead. Appreciating people, appreciating the situation that life has put in front of me, whether it's in business, relationship, health, all kinds of situations. So anyway, those are my two relinquishments and recommitments. I am curious if any of that resonates with you or if you would like to share your own relinquishments and recommitments. And again, I find it so helpful to come back to this idea of I'm so grateful I came across peace pilgrims for relinquishments because I'm like, that's right. Letting things go is such a useful act because we often take things on, take things on, take things on, and then we become attached to our way of being and thinking and speaking. We become attached to it. We don't observe it. And sometimes we don't like it, but we don't do enough of let me let that go. Let me let that way of thinking go. Let me let that way of acting go again. And then, of course, when there's empty space, it should be filled with something helpful so that it's that's how we change habits. We let go of something negative and we replace it with something positive. So I hope this is helpful. Thank you for thank you for watching. And I wish you a beautiful day of relinquishing what is no longer beneficial for your spiritual growth and then recommitting to what is truly meaningful and loving or whatever it is that brings you into a positive way of being today. So thank you and be well.