Ep 6: The Art of Letting Go: Returning to the Freedom That Was Always Yours

Every emotion you hold on to— fear, anger, resentment, worry, guilt— is energy trapped in motion. In the moment you stop fighting, stop clinging, that same energy can become fuel, and it rises from the survival centers into the creative centers. Letting go isn't about losing anything, it's about transformation, about transforming that energy. The sky never forces the clouds to leave.. It simply allows. Maybe peace works the same way, always here beneath what you're holding on. Welcome back to the Built for Impact podcast, where inner peace meets high performance and where building your dream life starts from the inside out. I am Jake Burhans, and today's episode is all about the fourth pillar: let go of the past. We have not talked much about this, but this is one of my favorite things because it's so simple, letting go of these emotions that we hold onto— fear, anxiety, and worry. And it's something that I struggle with the most, which is why I think I'm so passionate about it. And it's very simple, but we're gonna dive into the art of letting go, the practice that Michael Singer calls the highest form of spirituality. Michael Singer's whole philosophy is built around this, this art of just letting go. He has 3 books. He has The Untethered Soul, which I highly recommend everyone reads. It's a New York Times bestseller. He has another book called The Surrender Experiment, where he literally surrendered to life's experiences, right? And just practiced this art of letting go for 40 years, 4 decades. And he did some pretty incredible stuff. One of them being building a billion-dollar company out of nowhere. And then his third book, which came out in, uh, 2020 or 2022, somewhere around there, is called Living Untethered. Also really, really good. That was his latest work. And the latest work tends to be the most, you know, robust because he has the most experience at that point, obviously. But let's understand what letting go is. So it's not pushing anything away. It's not detaching from life. It's really freedom within life. So we've already talked about that you are not your thoughts. You are not your emotions. You are the awareness behind them. We understand that, right? You are not the clouds. You are the sky. I think that's such a good analogy. Like, you are the sky. Okay? And your thoughts and emotions are clouds just passing through. So the sky doesn't try to fight the clouds or fight the storm, whatever that may be. It just lets them pass through. It observes them. It identifies, "Ah, I'm the sky. These are clouds. This is a storm that's happening over here. Awesome. We're going to let that just pass through." And then it goes, and then the sky clears. And then what happens? More clouds come in. And that's how our life is. Thoughts come in. We are the awareness, right? Thoughts come in, emotions come in, and then they go. The problem is when things come in, emotions that we don't like— fear, anxiety, worry— we cling to them. We are literally holding onto them. We have to let them go, right? I had a podcast number 4, which is, I think, 2 episodes ago. The audio wasn't as good as I would have liked it. So it was published and it was posted. And this thought in me came up like, oh my gosh, there's frustration. Like, this needs to be perfect. Right? And that emotion, that feeling wanted to consume me. It wanted to consume me. But in that moment, I had to be aware, hey, listen, it's not a big deal. Most people probably aren't gonna even notice it. It's not about getting this perfect audio quality. It's about delivering the message. The message was delivered. It's posted. Everything is perfect. That's one of my favorite, uh, mantras is just listen, everything is perfect. But that thought, I had to consciously let it go. Otherwise, I was gonna be consumed in that and it would've ruined my entire morning. I would've been thinking about that for 3 hours, 2 hours, about how frustrated I was that the audio didn't come out perfectly on episode 4 of the podcast. So that's what I'm doing. Instead of letting that experience come in, feeling the frustration, acknowledging it, seeing if there's anything I need to do about it, and then just letting it go. What did I do? I held onto that energy. I clung to it for a little bit, and I had to be aware that, hey, I'm clinging now. I need to let go. So I've built this muscle up. So when that happened, I kind of instantly recognized it., but when I was building the business initially, all I would do is just cling on to fear and anxiety every day. I'd wake up, you know, afraid that I wouldn't be able to make money or that we wouldn't get deals or this deal would fall through. And I was just clinging to these emotions of these events. So with this example of the podcast audio not being great, I had to let, like I said, let the emotion go. And once I did that, I returned to my natural state, which is just peace. Peace is our natural state. Love. Relaxation, abundance. This is our natural state, but because we cling on to these emotions, it drags us down into these lower level frequencies. Also understand that energy is always trying to move through us. Everything in this world is energy. We've talked about that. Every event, every circumstance is energy. So as that event happens, energy rises, wants to rise through us, right? It starts at those lower level energies of fear, doubt, worry, right? And it wants to rise up into the higher levels, which is love, you know, verbal expression, intuition, your purpose, all these things. So that's what life's about. It's about taking the energy from these events in life and not clinging to these lower-level emotions of fear, anxiety, worry, doubt, sadness, guilt. Let go of those things. So I want you to think about that in your life. Where are things happening that you're clinging on to emotion? Maybe a conversation didn't go well with an employee, or you're frustrated with your spouse, or you're frustrated with your kids, or, you know, your friend might have slighted you in some way. Acknowledge that situation, experience the feeling. We're meant to feel our emotions. That's where I think people say, oh, you just want to, you know, you choose happiness, you're going to be a robot. You're not going to feel any emotions. That's not at all what it's about. People were never taught how to feel their emotions, which basically means feel the emotions, but detach from it. Understand that you are not the emotion. You're the one experiencing it. So something happens like the podcast audio made me frustrated. I am not frustrated. I'm experiencing frustration, just like a cloud passing through the sky. I'm experiencing frustration. And that detachment allows me to really handle that experience. So I feel the frustration. Okay, what can I do differently to prevent this in the future? As soon as I make that adjustment, then I let it go. I let that frustration go. So I feel it, I let it linger, you know, as long as it needs to be, but I don't hold onto it. So I might feel frustrated for a little bit, but then I let that pass like a cloud going through the sky because I am the sky. And the funny part about that though is it kept trying to come in later in the day. It was like noontime, you know, that thought came back in. Right? Like a cloud coming back in. Oh, frustrated about the podcast audio. What'd I have to do again? I had to let go again. I had to let go of it. And it came back like 3 or 4 times in the day, that feeling of frustration about the audio. And I had to keep letting it go. But think about how many circumstances in your life where you're holding onto these emotions. Someone cuts you off in traffic and flips you off and just, and they were completely in the wrong. You're gonna feel angry about that, but feel that anger. And then just let it go. We don't need to hold on to that anger. We want to hold on to it, hold on to the anger, um, but let it go. You don't need to carry that into work or carry that back home to your family. So this art of letting go is just incredibly, incredibly powerful. And it's really another way to look at it too, is like, it's not letting go, it's just stop holding on. Stop holding on, right? It's like we're carrying around a weighted backpack with all this stuff in it that we don't need to be carrying. Just take the backpack off and just walk freely. Like, all these, all these emotions that we're holding on to, that we're fighting for— this fear, this doubt, all this stuff— it's like a heavy backpack we're just carrying around, carrying around as we walk around our lives. And we don't know that all we need to do is just take off the backpack and life will be so much easier. But this letting go is your natural state. Like I said, every event in life is energy. And as you experience that event, you're experiencing energy. The energy always starts from the bottom and rises up. So sometimes you fear, feel anxiety, worry, and that's okay. But if you let it go and you don't push it down, it's going to rise up into more creative centers, right? Into the frequency of love, into the frequency of expressing your truth through what you're saying, into intuition, into understanding your purpose. So when you let it rise into the creative centers you become a more abundant being. You get better ideas, intuition flows freely, you're more at peace, you're more relaxed, all this stuff. So the reason that we're not at peace, the reason that we're not more relaxed, the reason that we're not more loving towards others is because we're trapping this energy in these lower level centers and it's not able to rise and activate these creative, loving, peaceful energy centers. So if you look up the chakras online, you'll understand that. And if you look up The Frequency Spectrum, that'll really help you. And it basically shows you the different frequencies of these different things like fear, anger, courage, love, peace. And it shows you how fear's lower, it's like 100 Hz. And then if you go up, upwards, love is like 500 Hz, peace is like 600 Hz or whatever it is. And it just shows you how, you know, how energy can rise through you. So I want you to practice throughout the day. I want you to, I want you to recognize what is your moment of grip. What is that moment of grip? Something happens to you and you're gripping onto this emotion. What am I gripping right now? What am I holding so tightly that I just need to let go? It's like literally walking around with 100-pound dumbbells in your hands. You're like, ah, this is so tiring. My arms are gonna fall off. What do I do? What do I do? You let go of the dumbbells. Just drop them. That's it. So what, what are you gripping onto right now? Or ask yourself, what am I gripping right now? Where do I feel it in my body? Typically you, you feel it in your body. It might be in your chest, might be in other areas. Is it a contraction? Is it a tightness? What story am I believing that's, that's leading to this? And you know, how can I stop feeding energy into it? So the instant that you see the grip, you're able to release. So that's why being the awareness is so important with all of this. Next thing to understand is samskaras. So samskaras are basically energetic imprints that are stored inside of us. What happens is, say you get asked to speak on stage. 2 years ago and you had a terrible experience and the thought of that experience brings up anxiety and fear. Now, 2 years later, someone asks you to go speak on a stage, you're gonna get that anxiety and fear from that past event because you didn't fully process the emotions of that event, right? You felt the fear and the anxiety and you shoved it down. Like you weren't taught that it's okay to feel that fear and that anxiety and just kind of feel it, right? Feel it. And the feeling dissolves it. Feeling dissolves it, right? But if you're trying to fix it or get rid of it, that just kind of stores it. So feel that and then let it go. So Michael Singer teaches that inside all of us are these stored samskaras, right? Impressions or energetic residues from past experiences we couldn't fully handle. And then every time something happens that we resist or we suppress or we hold on to, that energy of the experience doesn't leave. It gets trapped inside of us. You know, and these, these samskaras become energetic blockages, right? He talks about like a thorn, right? It's like having a thorn and you go throughout life, you know, instead of removing the thorn from your arm, you go throughout life avoiding people, circumstances, and situations not to poke the thorn. It's ridiculous. Just take the thorn out, right? Taking the thorn out is basically allowing yourself to feel the emotion. So if I was triggered by going and speaking on stages, now anytime someone asks me to go I speak on a stage, I feel fear and anxiety. I have to just feel that emotion and let it go, right? But the more I resist that feeling of anxiety when someone tells me to speak on stage, the more it's gonna— it's gonna have control over me. So I have to feel it and then let it go. What you think is a problem resurfacing is actually life giving you another chance to let go. That's the paradox. So when you feel an old emotion arise— the anger, the fear, the sadness, the anxiety— instead of pushing it away or acting from it, You relax and you allow it to pass through. And when you relax and you allow it to pass through, you dissolve the samskara. You dissolve the emotional imprint. It no longer has power over you. You've taken the thorn out. But the moment you resist it, you keep pushing it down, pushing it down, pushing it down, right? One of the biggest samskaras I ever had was when I started out in this business. I was so trapped in fear, anxiety, and worry every single day. Like, you know, if a deal falls out and I needed money and all these things. That I was just, for one, I was operating in that state of being 24/7, which was not, not a great experience. But 2 years later, this was probably like a year ago, I realized whenever my phone rang, this is the perfect example of a samskara. My phone would ring and instantly I would go into fear and anxiety just when my phone would ring and I didn't even realize it. But then I started to notice, I was like, oh, my phone rings, it could be like a spam call, anything. I would literally go into anxiety. It's like, why is that? And then I realized it had to do with speaking with sellers. That was because in the beginning of the business, because I was operating in such a fearful, anxious state, every time a seller called my phone, I was so scared the deal was going to fall through because I know, like, I needed the money to pay rent and do all the things. So I was not able to handle the emotions of that experience, and it literally created some scar where here's 2 years later, I'm scared of my phone ringing subconsciously. I didn't even know why. So I had to consciously be aware of like every time my phone rang, like, hey, it's okay, right? You're not this person. You're not in these circumstances you were 2 years ago. It's okay. Answer your phone. Talk to a seller. Everything's going to go fine, right? But that created an emotional imprint in me of like being almost nervous to talk to sellers because even though I had all these years of— I talked to 40,000 sellers, right? Closed however many deals, and I was still nervous to pick up the phone because of the emotional imprint that was left on me when I was starting the business, operating in fear, right? So what I had to do is every time that phone rang and I felt that anxiety, I detached from it. Hey, I'm not anxious. I'm just feeling the anxiety of the situation. It's fine. It's literally just a phone call and pick it up. Boom. Everything's good. And then as I, you know, I had to do that, do that for a little bit, and then I completely dissolved the thing. And now obviously I can just pick up my phone and not be, uh, have any feeling of anxiety or fear or worry or anything like that. But these things are riddled throughout our life, whether it's, you know, the fear of posting on social media or talking to a seller, whatever the case may be. It was an old emotional event that you didn't let pass through you. So the spiritual path is just about removing these thorns, right? That's what the lifelong practice becomes about, removing these samskaras. Removing these blockages so energy can rise through you. So it's just this continual art of letting go. And then when things trigger you, certain things trigger you, like they trigger the fear or the worry or the anger, the frustration or the guilt. Understand what that trigger is. That's a samskara, that's a blockage, right? Because nothing in the external really should, should affect you. Everything should just kind of move through you. In a perfect world, we don't live in a perfect world, but you understand what that is and you want to let go. And the more you let go, the more freedom you have within life because you're not trying to avoid all these situations. I'm not trying to avoid seller calls. I'm not trying to avoid opportunities to speak on stage. I'm not trying to avoid posting on social media because none of these things trigger me anymore because I've let go. I've let that energy pass through. Everything is just energy. So some integration tools here. One is catch and release. When a thought arises, a stressful thought, I want you to, I want you to, to notice it and just say, caught it. And then say releasing and then breathe and let it move. That's it. That's all you gotta do. Catch and release. So that's the practice I want you to focus on this week, is as things trigger you, notice when you're being triggered. Notice when you're being triggered, notice what it is that's triggering you, and have that separation between, hey, I'm the sky, this is just a cloud passing through, this is a storm passing through. Feel the emotion. It's okay to feel the emotion. That, that's how you let go of it. You can't suppress the emotion. Everyone thinks it's bad to feel these emotions. No, you need to feel them. And relax and literally just practice relaxing. Practice relaxing in the moment. Even when you feel the anger and you feel whatever it is, you literally just relax. And the breath is so powerful. You need to breathe. Take a deep breath in, deep breath out, slow breaths. That's gonna calm your nervous system. And you just relax and you let the thing go. That is a practice all day long, 7 days a week. 30, 31 days a month, 365 days a year. That's it. Moment by moment, something triggers you. Boom. What was it? Why did it trigger me? Try to figure out where it came from, but relax. Feel the emotion. It's okay to feel the lower level emotions and then let it go. And if you can relax and feel the emotion for as long as you need to feel it, but then let it go, that situation will never have power over you again. And that is a beautiful thing. In closing here, like I said, letting go isn't weakness. It's really true power. Because then nothing controls you. It's not giving up, right? It's giving back what was never yours to carry. Take off the dang backpack, drop the dumbbells. Okay, we don't need to be carrying around this weight. The more you let go, the more you return to those peaceful states, right? Because that energy is going to rise right up and you're just going to want to help people, and you're going to be so filled with peace and joy and love and abundance. And if you keep letting that energy rise into your heart right? You're going to want to go serve others. And because what we put out into the energetic field, we get back. We're going to get more loving experiences back, right? If you keep letting that energy rise into your throat chakra, then it's like you're confident in speaking your truth. And you let it rise into your third eye, and then you have those intuitive downloads. And you let it rise into your crown chakra, and you're completely in alignment with your purpose. You know exactly what your, you know, your reason for being on this earth is. But you can't do that if we're holding on these lower level emotions. You can't get the intelligence of those upper chakras, of those upper creative centers, because you're trapping the energy by holding on to those lower level emotions. If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who's learning to surrender as well. Leave a review. Uh, I would greatly appreciate it. Subscribe for future episodes and join us next week as we continue the journey through the Built Framework. All the peace, all the power.