Tips for Letting Go and Being More Carefree

1. Release Attachment To The Outcome

It’s not that you shouldn’t care. Caring means that it’s important, and it’s absolutely 100% okay to want what you want.

But when you get so attached to things having to turn out in one specific way in order for them to be deemed a “success” then you set yourself up for disappointment.

Often things turn out far better than we can imagine with our current, limited perspective. And sometimes the path and the outcome look very different than what we originally planned.

Action Step

One of the keys to feeling more carefree is making a conscious effort moment by moment to appreciate what’s awesome right now.

Set a goal, shoot for it, but realize that as you take action and learn more about yourself and what you want, the path to get there may change. There may be bumps or shifts in the course along the way, but that doesn’t mean that you are off track.

Bumps are not a failure, they are feedback.

2. Release The Struggle

In society, school, and our early life we are taught to set goals and then strive for them with all of our might. We believe our will and determination is what creates results.

In many ways, this is true because the more action you take, the more you learn, grow, expand, get comfortable with what used to be uncomfortable, and therefore, become more confident in who you are and what you do.

Realizing that life, achievement, and growth don’t have to be an uphill battle is so freeing.

The journey to wherever you are headed CAN be a fun, exciting adventure. It just depends on how you choose to look at it — or as I like to say, what color glasses you put on that day. My preference is rose colored glasses.

Action Step

“I look with wonder at what is before me.” 

This is one of my current favorite affirmations. What if we decided to look at whatever circumstance is before us with wonder and awe?

Ask yourself the following questions and write out your answers in your journal:

• What can this experience help me to clarify about what I want for my life?

• How has this experience given me the opportunity to expand and show up more as who I want to be versus who I think I’m supposed to be?

The more you look at the world with wonder, the more carefree your everyday experiences will be.

3. Practice Daily Appreciation

One of the most “positive momentum creating” habits I have taken on is making a nightly list before I go to sleep of 5 things I appreciate most about my day. 

It feels so good to fall asleep in the mode of appreciation and it always helps me to clear out the worries and stress and sleep better too.

Action Step

Start tonight! Before you go to sleep tonight, make a list of 5 things you appreciate about today. It can be as small as a smile from a stranger or as big as unexpected checks in the mail.

It doesn’t matter what it is, all that matters is that it made you feel good. Do this for a few days and you’ll begin to notice your typical thought patterns throughout the day changing.

Appreciation begets appreciation. The more things you find to feel good about, the more easily you feel good. Over time, stress doesn’t get you down (at least, not for long) and you just feel more carefree and optimistic about life as a whole.

4. Set Your Intentions For The Day First Thing

Rather than jumping out of bed, hitting the ground running, and barreling through your to do list for the day (taking on stress the moment you open your eyes) — instead — take a few moments to set your intentions for the day.

You create your own reality by choosing how you show up each day. So the question is, how do you want to show up today?

Action Step

Before getting out of bed each day this week, take a few moments to decide how you want to show up for whatever the day may bring.

How do you want to feel? 

• Confident

• Clear

• Peaceful

• Full of love and compassion

By making a conscious decision on how we are going to show up, we start off on our best foot — in our power. We are choosing our emotions and being proactive (in the driver’s seat), rather than being reactive to whatever experiences and emotions are thrown at us.

5. Fill Your Day With Fun

When it comes down to it, being carefree, at peace, happy, confident or however you want to feel is a choice. It’s frustrating to hear that when you feel so far from anything related to carefree, but it’s true.

We’re just super conditioned NOT to be carefree. We could have 9 things going well and 1 not so great thing going on, and we’d focus 99% of our attention on that 1 thing not going well in order to “fix” it.

Let me tell you from experience, it doesn’t work like that. You just can’t get there from here. The more you focus on all that needs to be fixed, the more your mind gets conditioned to always see what’s wrong and totally miss out on all that is right.

Find freedom and “carefree” right now in any way you can. Fill your day with fun. Laugh a lot, spend time with people you enjoy, make the monotonous silly and goofy.

Look at little kids. It’s so cool to watch how they make the most ordinary experiences fun. They truly believe that life is supposed to BE FUN… ALL THE TIME.

Action Step

Pretend you are seven years old again. Put on those “fun” colored glasses, look around at your life, your schedule, and what you need to do today and open yourself up to allowing more fun in.

In your work meeting, make some jokes and be a little less serious. In your relationship, leave a love note for your partner or send him a sexy text. :-O

Do whatever you can to infuse some fun!

6. Give Others Permission To Be Who/Where They Are

The fact is, you can’t change other people. So stop trying. You are giving away your power by believing that they need to act a certain way so that you can be happy.

Being carefree means taking control of your emotions and realizing that nothing needs to be different in order for you to feel good. The only thing that needs to change is your perspective.

Choose to feel good no matter what anyone else is doing or saying.

Action Step

The next time you interact with someone that ruffles your feathers, shower them with compassion. You don’t need to do this by saying anything in particular to them, just send them love from your heart.

Understand that they are acting the way they are for a reason, usually to protect themselves in some way. 

Most people truly are well-meaning and are doing the best they can with what they know. Give them the benefit of the doubt and give yourself permission to feel good even if others don’t.

7. Replace Limiting Thoughts/Behaviors With Empowering Ones

I have a friend that recently had a health scare and she called me for some support. She was in quite a spiral of fear by the time we got on the call. 

She wanted to vent all of her worries and fears to get them off her chest because frankly, she was really scared and this is what we often do when we are scared — we want someone to comfort us and tell us it’s going to be okay even if we don’t believe it will be. (Can you relate? I know I’ve been there!)

After we went around a few times with me giving her a possibly different perspective or action to help her feel a little better, and she would direct the conversation back to the “Yes, but here’s why I’m so scared…” I had to stop her and ask one simple (but not) question:

“What is it that you want?”

It’s very easy and normal to get ourselves worked up over the what ifs and future things that *could* happen. But they haven’t happened yet. So why spend this precious moment right now in turmoil over them?

Our choice of thought and action RIGHT NOW is what creates our own reality. 

We bring fears, worry, guilt, resentment, anger over the past or future into this moment. Those things that we are thinking about (imagining) are not happening right now, but we are choosing to spend our precious energy and time filling ourselves with anxiety over them.

Action Step

A major step in being more carefree and happy is to begin paying attention to your thoughts. Once you are aware of your typical thought patterns (which then lead to behavior patterns) you can start making positive change.

Here’s the thing though. You can’t just stop thinking a thought or behave in a certain way. You have to replace the limiting thought or self-sabotaging behavior with a new more empowering one.

I offer a detailed step-by-step process on exactly how to do this in my ROCK Your Dream Body Feel Amazing program if you need extra support on this (since this blog is already super long!).

8. Give Yourself Permission To Be Perfectly Imperfect

You are a human being. An expanding, ever-becoming-more unique individual with your own very personal desires.

You didn’t break the mold, there is no mold! So don’t ever try to measure up to any expectations, standards, or rules because there are none.

Guide yourself by your intuition and what feels best to you above all else.

Action Step

Give yourself PERMISSION to be carefree, to let go, to live in THIS moment, to have fun, ease up, trust the flow… to trust yourself.

Do you know that there is no such thing as backward motion? You are always making progress even when it feels like you aren’t.

So give yourself some slack. You are exactly where you need to be to learn what you need to learn to achieve the happiness, peace, and freedom that you want to experience in your life.

There is no finish line because there is always a new adventure ahead. So take a deep, lean back, and enjoy the ride.