Finding Happiness by Letting Go

In the work I do, I meet people at their happiest and most exuberant, and sometimes their saddest. You might think I’m a therapist, a life coach, or a wedding planner. Instead, I’m the creator of Soolip, a 29-year-old boutique design studio and paperie. As such I’ve made it my life’s work to help clients express themselves through highly personal, truly custom, and tactile artisanal-printed communication and hand-scribed messages that announce a wedding, celebrate a birth, memorialize a life, or launch a product.

Because what I do is often very personal and always highly detailed, I have found that my yoga practice enables me to approach each project with vitality, clarity, empathy and insight, and then when the day is done, refill my own creativity and energy.

Yoga is an important practice in my life. I feel strongly that this ancient practice is the best anti-aging medicine around. My interest in yoga began gradually in the mid-’90s when I would dip my toe in every so often. I found that this practice of mind-body-soul connection was both a useful and necessary tool for me to manage the stresses of being a business owner, a mother of three, and a wife to a loving partner with an active alcohol addiction.

In 2016, my interest inspired me to complete a 500-hour teaching certification. I found that through the struggles of life and given that life is always in a constant flux of change, the more I knew myself, and the more I was connected to my center — both of which a yoga practice fortifies — the easier it was for me to move through my life and its sometimes raging and sometimes calm waters, with joy and equanimity.

I routinely dive into continuing education to feed my quest for knowledge and to deepen my own practice. What surprises me most about yoga is the extent of what it is, and how yogic principles can be beautifully and simply applied to daily life in our modern culture. This is represented in the first two limbs of yoga known as Yamas, five outward disciplines, and Niyamas, five inward disciplines. One can also refer to these first two limbs as ethical principles or moral guidelines. It is this aspect of yoga, yoga’s philosophical underpinnings, that I find important in living a life with joy and purpose, and living with right action to support a healthy, sustaining world that we all cohabitate. YogaLand Game teaches these precepts in an understandable, and entertaining, way.

Though all five Yamas and five Niyamas are important to human existence, the fourth Yama, Aparigraha (non-attachment, non-coveting) is an especially notable one that has broad ramifications in our modern world.

I believe that if we all lived with this precept at the forefront of our beings, we wouldn’t be experiencing the planet’s suffering and depletion of its natural resources. We wouldn’t be experiencing such wide swaths of haves and have-nots. Practicing Aparigraha helps us to avoid clinging to material possessions or attachments, and to cultivate a sense of contentment (Santosha, the second Niyama) and gratitude in all aspects of life. This Yama encompasses avoiding greed, jealousy, and the desire for power or status. Aparigraha helps us manage our human tendency to coveting. When we covet, we are approaching our life from one of lack, rather than abundance.

When I talk to my friends these days about this, they sigh and say they wish they could find that deep sense of relief from all that the modern world has placed at our proverbial doorsteps. As humans, it is all too easy to fall into the uncomfortable trap of comparing ourselves with others. This habit only serves to dim our own light and make us feel less than, or unworthy. And within our digital world where social media is not only instantly accessible but is targeted to specific audiences only serves to amplify the problems. 

As a yoga practitioner, and an artist with a passion to inspire others to connect to their true self, I teach Aparigraha to help students find joy in the present moment, to find contentment with what is, to seek the magic or gem in any situation life has served you. We all can be a bright light. They say that a sure way to unhappiness is having expectations — it’s true. Cultivating non-attachment is one very important way to do this.

FIVE WAYS TO PRACTICE NON-ATTACHMENT

Anyone can start right now practicing Aparigraha and enjoying its mental and emotional benefits. Imagine if we all practiced only two of these suggestions each week, how significantly our world could change.

Here are a few tips for incorporating Aparigraha into your life:

1.   Practice letting go. Let go of negative emotions that bind and constrict you. Negative emotions such as resentment, anger, hate all serve to harm you, and take from you, rather than affect the person those emotions are targeted towards. And let go of limiting beliefs about yourself. Somewhere along the journey called life, you picked up beliefs that you’ve adopted to be “true” yourself, most likely emanating from others. You are not how others perceive you. You are your pure, passionate self that resides within.

2. Cultivate a sense of gratitude. Take time each day to reflect on the blessings in your life, extending gratitude for them. This can be as simple as taking even a minute with deep conscious breathing, focusing on the present moment and realizing the things you do have in your life, rather than what you don't have. Gratitude moves you into a space rooted in abundance, rather than lack. Starting and maintaining a daily morning writing ritual with your favorite warm or cool drink and writing in a gratitude journal for 5-10 minutes is a simple and effective practice. 

3.  Simplify your life. Are there ways you can live more simply? Can you reduce clutter? This can help create a greater sense of space and openness and make it easier to cultivate serenity in your environment, both your external and internal landscapes. You may find that some of the busyness you've created in your life is unconsciously created to deflect from being with yourself. When we are not in touch with our inner self and are deflecting from issues, we seek outside of ourselves for comfort or for validation.

4.  Practice self-care. Give yourself grace for occurrences or feelings that arise and keep your heart open. Own and acknowledge your feelings — whether sad, angry, resentful, guilty, or happy, peaceful, joyful, satisfied. All are valid. We all experience this rainbow of emotions, and more. The key, particularly with the negative emotions, is to not react abruptly, but rather to sit with these feelings and internally explore. Notice how these emotions affect your physical body. Take a soothing bath, enroll in a creative class that engages your heart rather than the mind, dedicate time to sit with a cup of hot tea and a journal, attend a rejuvenating sound bath or meditation session, read an inspirational soul-inspiring book. You may discover how self-sustaining you are and how much you can heal yourself by acknowledging the pain and proactively working through this.

5. Give back. Look for ways to be of service to others, whether it be through volunteering your time, donating to a charity, or simply practicing random acts of kindness. Creating a greater sense of connection with fellow humans, exercising your heart, and lifting others all can help move things into perspective, and reduce feelings of attachment to things that in the end, may not matter.

Moment to moment, and in any given situation, we have a choice in how we choose to BE — how we choose to relate to others, and how we choose to be with ourselves. Practicing letting go of attachment, grasping and coveting is a muscle that needs flexing. With consistency, this muscle becomes stronger, and can then turn into habit, and then can simply be "being."

Wanda Wen is the founder of Soolip She produces a series of in-person workshops centered on mindful creativity ranging from SEED, an all-day wellness retreat, to Creative Arts Workshops starting in September 2024, held for the first time at Four Seasons Hotel, Westlake Village. Wanda is also a certified yoga teacher and creator of the educational game YogaLand.