Why you should start practicing non-attachment and how to get started right away.

Everyday life can be full of stress and anxiety. Negative thoughts and emotions can creep in and lead to emotional suffering daily. There are many ways people choose to cope that can lead to self-destructive behaviors. Non-attachment is a practice that can help you navigate life at peace with yourself and those around you, gaining control of your emotions and negative feelings.

In the simplest terms, non-attachment is the practice of letting things go and accepting things as they are and as they come to you. You give up the permanence of things and learn that things are transient. When you think of non-attachment, was your first thought about your relationships? Do you think about the things you own or perhaps how others view you and your social status?

Non-attachment is a way of not letting your emotions or events in your life own you. You can benefit from non-attachment, where you can find peace and live life freely.

Gain control of your emotions

Changes throughout life can often trigger negative emotions such as anger, hate, fear, or sadness. These can weigh heavily on you, and your life begins to feel less meaningful. Practicing non-attachment helps you to loosen the grip of internal and external happenings and allows you to start to accept things as they are.

You’ll worry less about outcomes

Letting go of the feelings associated with change leads you to learn to accept whatever outcome may be. Making decisions are less trivial, and you stop focusing on what could or should happen and learn to focus on making the best choices for you and accepting the outcomes as they come with peace and understanding. It makes life easier to move through and plan your next steps and how to move forward.

Your relationship with yourself and others improve

By lowering the expectations and standards you place upon yourself, you learn to love yourself freely and as you truly are. You can begin to understand what truly makes you happy as a person through non-material things. As you begin to be easier on yourself, you begin to be easier on those around you. Your relationships with others no longer have unrealistic expectations on how they should be or what they should be doing. You give them the freedom to be unapologetically themselves. The people in your life will open up to you, and they will reciprocate those feelings to you. Your relationships will be more profound and more meaningful.

Material things will seem trivial and unimportant

Many people solve emotional distress through material comfort, i.e., retail therapy. Once you stop looking for happiness in material things, you begin to focus on what truly brings you joy. You no longer feel like you’re filling a missing piece by shopping, and that temporary joy you receive from new items is gone because you are now at one with things that bring you true pleasure.

Happiness will come naturally, and you will no longer need to strive to “find happiness”

Controlling your emotions will open you up naturally to inner peace and acceptance. With the pursuit of happiness out of your thoughts, you feel more in tune with life as it is happening around you. You will naturally find joy in the little things, and gratitude and inner peace will be your natural being.

How to begin practicing non-attachment

The easiest and best way to start practicing non-attachment is to set aside time every day to meditate. Ensure you have a quiet space to bring attention and focus to your thoughts and feelings with intention. Do not resist what naturally comes and assess each emotion and thought. Learn to allow uncertainty to unfold and accept all the possibilities. You can learn to shift your thoughts from being fearful of what’s to come to welcoming anything that comes your way and treating it as a gift.

Learning to let go is easier said than done, and it does take time. You likely have been moving through your whole life with your attachments on autopilot. Allow yourself patience and forgiveness as you learn. You are learning to become more aware of your thoughts and emotions and loosening the grips on the things that do not bring you joy. You are learning to love without expectations, with acceptance and understanding.

The freedom you experience once you let go of all the negative thoughts and emotions is unparalleled. Non-attachment is one of the keys to living in the moment and truly experiencing life without anything holding you back from becoming your true authentic self.