My secrets that make Letting Go easy AF
In this self‑help monologue, Aaron Doughty reflects on his personal journey and distills the central insight that "letting go" is the most powerful catalyst for transformation and manifestation. He recounts formative experiences—growing up with a step‑mother, early beliefs about women, reliance on ADHD medication and cannabis, and a 9‑to‑5 job at Nordstrom—to illustrate how various attachments (to labels, people, beliefs, outcomes, and identity) created resistance and suffering. Drawing on Buddhist teaching that attachment and desire are the root of suffering, he argues that releasing these attachments rewires reality, allowing the universe to provide new versions of oneself. Doughty outlines five specific categories of attachment—labels, persons, limiting beliefs, outcomes, and identity—and explains how each can be recognized, examined for its underlying payoff, and consciously let go of. He shares practical strategies such as becoming aware of the reasoning behind attachments, shifting the perceived payoff, using meditation, and treating actions as ends in themselves rather than means to external validation. The talk reframes manifestation: instead of focusing on vision boards and visualizing specific results, one should focus on the act of letting go, which creates space for desired outcomes to arise naturally. He concludes with a call to action, inviting viewers to engage, and announces a new schedule of podcast‑style episodes, emphasizing that the process of letting go is both easy and essential for personal growth.
Chapters
Is there something that you need or want or feel like you should let go of? And my guess is that if you can hear this right now, then there is something that is trying to make its way out so that you can allow something to actually come in. So I've looked just over the last— like, we actually— yesterday, yesterday I went through this process where I was going through all my teachings and I was looking at all the videos that I've made and asking myself, what is the common denominator here? What is the one thing that has changed my life the most over the last couple of years, even my whole entire story? And I realized that it comes down to the ability to let go. And anytime I have let go, in a way, the universe has rewarded me or given me a direct reflection of a new version of me. Now I think about it, if you know my story, then 7 to 15 years old, the whole stepmom thing, after that left my life and I was 15 and my dad divorced her, I kept attracting into my life women that were trying to control me because there was a belief there. There was a belief that I was holding onto that said that women tried to control me and therefore my reality was a direct reflection of that belief. In order for me to let that go, in order for that to change, I had to let that go. I had to let that belief go. And I also, I had to forgive my ex-stepmom. It wasn't easy because I had a lot of anger. I think I had a lot of my identity around that of the victimization that I experienced when I was younger. Like, you don't, this is what I went through. And in a way, maybe that made me stronger. But the thing that really changed everything was when I let go of that positionality. A positionality is kind of like a perspective. I had to let go of holding onto that. And when I did, that ex-stepmom left my life? What if the people in your life are direct reflections of what you're allowing because you are holding onto and attached to believing that's what you deserve, both in the good ways and the bad ways, by the way? If you have people in your life that are nurturing and that love you, then there's an aspect of attachment there and that may have actually been benefiting you. The time we experience pain in our life is when we stay attached to things. Attachment is the root of all suffering. I have it written behind me right now, and that's something that Buddha said. Attachment and desire is the root of all suffering. And I think what makes the things that I teach a little bit different than the mainstream of what we learn about the law of attraction is I like to focus more on the letting go than just the focus on the Lamborghini or the thing that you want or the manifestation of the relationship. The letting go to me is even more powerful because when you let go, naturally, the things come into your life that you want. Now, I had to let go in my own life of believing and having the identity of having ADHD and taking Adderall. I had to let that go in order for me to become more zen, to become more of like a meditator. And it's funny because we talk about identities and our reality is a direct reflection of who we are being, and it's a direct reflection of how we view ourselves. And when I was taking Adderall, the prescription drug given for ADHD, going to work, what I would do is go to work, and then at the end of the day, I'd have to smoke a lot of cannabis to counteract the side effects of Adderall, which we couldn't eat much and couldn't sleep much, whereas the side effects of cannabis were you could eat much and you could sleep much. And I felt so dependent on those things that eventually I learned meditation. And as I learned meditation, I was letting go of that old belief system of me having ADHD. I started to have this part of me that was like more zen, more of a, I would sun gaze and do these esoteric things and do mantras. It's funny, my buddy Drew just sent me a mantra. He's like, let's chant this and create a bridge from this reality to that reality. And it reminded me of when I was a kid, or not when I was a kid, when I was 12, in 2012, when I was like, I forget, I was 20-something. But back in 2012, or was it 18? Whatever, 22. And back in 2012, I was going through that and doing mantras and all of this stuff. And I started to acquire a new level of identity. And you know what happens to a lot of people that maybe like are trying to lose weight? Well, what happens is they go to the gym for 4 or 5 times. And at first it's resistant because they're literally letting go of an old part of themselves and they're starting to do something that's uncomfortable. But eventually that thing that's uncomfortable becomes comfortable for that identity. And what happens is when that thing becomes comfortable for their identity and becomes natural, they are then not just someone that's going to the gym, they are a gym goer. They've had to let go of the version of them that is eating Cheetos. Or whatever it is, sit on the couch, and they then wired in a version of them that is a gym goer. So letting go though for this is the key. I know that anytime, here's the things that we may remain attached to, okay? There's a list of labels I made. We've got the types of attachments we have are labels. That's one of them. Some type of label, maybe a label is you are shy, you're an extrovert, you're a class clown, you're the joker, victim. These are all different labels that can come with that of a form of attachment. Now, I'll get to that in a second. The second one is a person. You could be attached to an ex, you could be attached to what your parents think, you could be attached to your parents want you to go to college, you can be attached to other people's validation. That was me for years. For years, I was attached to other people's validation on whether they liked me or not, and that turned me into a people pleaser. That's something else that we can be attached to. Then we have that of a belief, a limiting belief, the belief that I am, I can't do it, I'm only meant to be working this 9 to 5 job, I haven't figured it out yet, I'm not good enough, pretty enough, smart enough. These are all just beliefs. They're limiting beliefs, but we stay attached to them because it feels safe and familiar, and maybe someone else told it when we were a kid, and we agreed to it. There's a book called "The Four Agreements," and that book talks a lot about the agreements that we make that are just on autopilot. And if we let go of those agreements, then we create ourselves a whole new world. The next one is that outcome, okay? Outcome, attached to outcome. How many y'all wanna manifest something and you're just so attached to how it's happening and you're trying to control every aspect of it? Well, guess what? When you do that too much, it creates a ton of resistance, tons of resistance. Why? Because we're trying to control something that could happen naturally. Like imagine you're trying to control going on a date. Yeah, it doesn't work that well because when you're trying to control how this person responds to you and how this is going, trying to control something that can only happen naturally. When you let go of control, you'll allow yourself to be authentic, to be natural. Last one's identity. I had to let go of the 9-to-5 job going Aaron and wire in the full-time YouTuber Aaron. I had to let it go, but I got a lot of safety from working that 9-to-5 job. Not only did I get safety from working that 9-to-5 job, but there was fear around quitting because back in 2012, I went through a spiritual awakening. I became very ungrounded and I was totally against the fiat current, the currency system. I was like, money's a system of control. All of this like kind of theory stuff. And guess what? If you believe, if you're attached to the belief that money is bad, then are you gonna attract more money? Probably not. That's what happened to me. I believed money was bad. Within 2, 3 weeks of having this like strong conclusion, I quit my 9-to-5 job selling women's shoes at Nordstrom's. And I went through like 6 months of just living with my mom in a house And then eventually, I mean, it's a longer story as well, but I went through this process where I quit that job at Nordstrom's and I went through 6 months of a lot of judgment, a lot of pain, kind of like the dark night of the soul. And I did not wanna get a job. I didn't wanna be in the 3D world. I just wanted to ascend into 5D. You know, like I said, I was very ungrounded, but it was a mistake. I guess you could say it was a mistake for me to quit and to become that ungrounded. So quitting, once I actually was growing on YouTube, I let go of the 9 to 5 job going version of me. I also had to let go of the perspective that like, I need someone to tell me what to do to be motivated. Like that's having a 9 to 5 job. It's like we were told what to do. You have to take initiative. I had to take initiative. And as I started to do that, as I started to wire in me being this full-time YouTuber, within 6 months I was able to quit. One of the best feelings in the world was going into that job and putting in my 2 weeks. My last day was the Conor McGregor-Mayweather fight. It was a boxing match. And I knew that it was gonna be busy that day 'cause it was in Las Vegas and that's where I lived and worked. And I decided to work, made a lot of money, and I opened that day so that afterwards I go watch the fight. And it was a very, like celebratory type thing. That was the last day I ever had a 9-to-5 job. But I had to let go of the old version of me. And it was kind of scary putting in my 2 weeks 'cause I got so much comfort and like stability around that. I didn't wanna fall off the rocker again and become that ungrounded version of Aaron. But the reason, by the way, the reason that we are so attached to the past versions of us, and not only the past version of, but sometimes we may be, attached to abuse. We may be attached to like allowing other people to treat us like shit. Why would we do that? Why? Because it feels familiar. All those attachments that I point to over here is label, person, belief, outcome, identity. These attachments are normally replayed from childhood dynamics. So in childhood, there are certain themes and certain patterns of things we're attached to. And if we were people pleasers, then we probably as kids had to please one of our parents, or we had to be a certain way, conditional way for us to receive love. Now, becoming aware of these attachments is 90% of the transformation, 90%. And people sometimes say, "Letting go is hard." Letting go is only hard if you believe that letting go is hard. If you can allow letting go to be easy, what is letting go being hard? What is the payoff to that? Because anything that we do that has a payoff, it has some type of payoff or we wouldn't continue to do it. Sometimes the payoff can be negative, but we might be addicted to that negativity. If we believe that letting go is hard, what does that do? That keeps us the same. We may associate a lot of pain with branching into the new, with stepping out of the known. There's a quote by Anthony DeMello. It says, "It's not that we really fear the unknown, we fear the loss of the known." We're afraid of losing, losing what has felt so familiar and so comfortable. Now, the reasons we stay attached to different things though is a lot of times a form of addictive energy. If you're attached to an ex who maybe it was very toxic, maybe they gaslit you, maybe they made you feel not worthy. Well, they didn't, I mean, look at the dynamics here. If they made you feel that way, they didn't make you feel that way. It's more so you allowed them to feel, to impact you that way. We get in life a direct reflection of what we believe we deserve. And that once again, normally is a form of the childhood trauma, the childhood experience that keeps that stuff in autopilot. So everything in our reality, there's some form of payoff for us to continue to do it. If you go to the gym and, you enjoy the way it makes you feel, even when you're pushing through pain sometimes. You might be like lifted more than you normally could and you push through a plateau or a barrier and then it feels really good. Well, that payoff, that feeling of even just waking up feeling strong will keep you going, will keep you going there. Now, when it comes to the things that we're attached to, understand, like I have this board behind me and on it there's these two stick figures. Now one of the stick figures has these threads, this little line that goes to these attachments. The attachments are 9 to 5 job, validation, past pain, weed, 'cause I was talking about my attachment to cannabis that I used to have. So the thing and the thread to all of this is reasoning. It's the reasoning in the mind. It's the beliefs. It's the meaning. And the meaning we have to the 9 to 5 job is the 9 to 5 job gives me safety. It's familiar, I'm used to it. The meaning to the validation is that if people give me validation, then I feel worthy, I feel enough, I feel safe. If we feel the past pain and we're attached to it, sometimes we'll feel like it justifies what we went through when we were kids. We're afraid that if we let go of the past pain, then we'll allow it to happen again. These are a lot of times subconscious things, some of them. The cannabis, I'm afraid that if I let go of cannabis, I mean, cannabis was something I did in 2012 for like a year, all day, every day. If I would smoke, I'd immediately change my state. So I was afraid to let that go, but that was the meaning I gave it. Now, the key to letting these things go is becoming aware of the reasoning, becoming aware of the meaning, and then making a choice to let it go and even switching the payoff. When I started realizing that cannabis was actually, I was numbing my emotions. Not everybody goes through this, by the way. I know cannabis for some people is very healing, but I started to switch the payoff and I started to see what is my life gonna be like in 5, 10 years from now if I just keep doing this? And I realized that when I did it, I got very lazy. I didn't do anything. And now some people are productive, but that was me. Oh, I probably wouldn't be in a great place. When I was working that 9 to 5 job, I looked around at my other coworkers. Some of them enjoyed and liked working. Selling women's shoes. There's nothing wrong with selling women's shoes. It just wasn't my passion. But I looked around and I noticed there were 2 or 3 other people that hated selling women's shoes, but they did it because it made good money. They justified it. And they were like 50, 60 years old, some of them. Is that what I want my future to be? I would remember that and it would refuel and it would then help me to release that attachment to then let go. So today's message for you is that there's some form of attachment you have that may have felt familiar. And it probably feels familiar because it may be some form of childhood theme that's continuing to move itself around. But what is that thing, the thing that you feel attached to? And can you just make the choice to let it go? I'll tell you this, when you let go of that thing, you will allow in something even better. Let go. Let go to let in. The secret of manifestation is that when we let go, we then let in. That's the secret to this whole game. The key is letting go. We were taught that you gotta focus on the vision board and visualization and all this other stuff. But in actuality, when you focus on letting go, you actually make room for it. When I've been trying to control the outcome of like how many people watch my videos, videos doing well on YouTube and all this stuff, Guess what happened? I'd create resistance and people could feel that I was making videos to get views. It's a different energy when you're doing something that is an end of itself. That's what makes all the difference here. Being present to the moment and not trying to control the outcome. Instead, making things an end of itself. Making this episode right now is fun for me. I'm enjoying it. It's my passion. And you could probably feel that energy because of it. If you could feel that energy, Can you like the video below or share it on Instagram or whatever if you're listening to the podcast? And from now on, I'm gonna be doing Wednesday, Fridays, I believe I'm gonna be doing podcast style episodes. That's something you guys like or want, then like this video, let me know. Other than that, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I'm gonna be doing quicker videos for the podcast, like 20-30 minutes long, and I'll still do some longer podcast episodes, but This is something that I'm enjoying doing, these different videos and showing how to let go and be a big focus on that moving forward. So with that being said, hope you guys enjoyed. And as always, peace, much love, and namaste.
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