Trust: A Cornerstone of Faith

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.

Alan Watts

How to Find Purpose in Life

What does it mean to let go and let God? From a psychological perspective, this process creates the foundation from which the psyche, or what the Ancient Greeks called the soul, makes meaning for our personal life to unfold. In the last article, we explored how creating a personal myth drives the storyline of the life we wish to create. Today, we will explore how the idea of letting go and letting God frees us from the past, liberates us from future anxieties and allows us to be present in this moment.

When we let go, we release the need to control everything in our lives. We have faith that things will work out even if we do not know how they will. This does not mean that life will be easy or without challenges. It simply means that we nurture the ability to face those challenges with hope and trust in the unfolding process.

To let go, first, we need to forgive ourselves. We all make mistakes, and we all have things in our past that we are not proud of. If we learn to forgive ourselves, it becomes easier to let go of the hurt and pain those memories bring.

Second, we need to learn to trust. This is not always easy, but it is essential if we want to move forward. When we trust, we are saying that even though we do not know what the future holds, we have faith that everything will work out for the best. This does not mean that bad things will not happen, but it does mean that we can face them with confidence, knowing that ultimately everything will be okay.

While trust is imperative, it is an often misunderstood phenomenon. Trust cannot be earned until it is given. This is because it works against our innate drive for survival.

As a species, we assure survival by identifying danger versus comfort. However, by letting people into our personal world, threats may lurk that we can often be unaware of. That is why trust is an experimental construct until it is earned by the person towards which it is extended. As with love, you can’t receive trust until you are willing to give it. However, once the initial olive branch of trust is developed, we can move towards the second stage of trust. This stage simply includes observing whether a person, people, or entity holds that trust through consistency in actions over time.

Lastly, we need to have hope. Hope is what gives us the strength to keep going even when things are tough. It allows us to see the possibility of a better future even amid times of darkness. When we have hope, we know that we will be okay no matter what happens in our daily lives.

So how do we let go and let God? We do it by forgiving ourselves, learning to trust, and having hope. These three things create the foundation from which we can live our lives with purpose. When we can let go of the past and not focus so vehemently on the future, we are free to be present in the here and now, open to finding the things that may bring purpose to our lives.

As always, many blessings, my friends. May hope, faith, and trust in the process find you on your journey to advance confidently in the direction of your dreams.

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