The new problems we face cannot be solved with the old mind that created them. Yet we try—and in doing so, we create the very stress we are attempting to avoid. We hold tightly to what we do not want to lose, believing we can somehow carry the old life into the new one we envision.
But like the person who grips a cookie inside the jar, he cannot pull it out to taste its sweetness. He forgets that there are far more nourishing foods beyond the jar.
We stress because we lack the tools to solve the problems we cling to. Still, we repeat the same actions, expecting a different result. By holding onto the past instead of letting it go, we strangle our creativity and trap ourselves in chaos. We shrink the self while desperately gripping the ego, prolonging pain and clinging to what will eventually leave us anyway. We endure, believing that what inevitably slips away is somehow within our control.
So where does self-love fall in these acts of desperation and control? The loss of ego is freedom, yet we fear letting go of the old self—the self that created the life now fading. But why hold onto an identity that built a life which could never stay, an outcome we never truly wanted?
Perhaps we have the strength to release it, to trust that becoming a new self will set our creativity free. That same creativity brings joy, relationships, love, and wealth—the very things we know it always has. Holding onto externals while suffocating the self that created them is a misunderstanding. It was always us who created what we have, and it will always be us who creates what comes next.
Stop smothering the very thing that creates. Stop clinging to what was. Let go—and save the energy that will continue to create forevermore. Sometimes fishing in a new environment is where all the good fish are.