Certified health coach, organic gardener, wellness guru, and Splendid Spoon Ambassador Amy Cox spends her days empowering people to feel their best. This involves both sharing nutritional advice and practical lifestyle coaching. Today, Amy is sharing the importance of letting go, through a life lesson that we can all learn from.

A Revelation About Me

I hit a major milestone a week before the New Year — I turned 50 years old.

This decade passed by much faster for me than the one before. I am reminded of the wisdom of one of my mentors, Trudi Temple — a fiery 80-year-old CEO/Founder who created an early model for a successful social justice company. While this wise womanʼs inventive concept raised close to a billion dollars for public education, her lessons are shockingly direct & simple:

“Amy, life is like a roll of toilet paper. The more you use, the faster it goes.”

My 30-something ears did not like Trudiʼs analogy of life as a roll of toilet paper. Unlike Elaine on Seinfeld, my younger self was never one to ask the person in the stall next to me if she could “spare a square.” I was that girl who always had Kleenex in her purse.

At that stage of life, I was lauded for being disciplined, organized & successful. While I was all of those things, at my root I was deeply afraid of letting go. Much of the work I did, the people I sought out, and the patterns of my life were controllable and predictable. Often relied upon by others for advice or support, I managed through situations primarily on my own.

In my early thirties things began to shift. I gave birth to two beautiful daughters, was enjoying a successful career in the cardiology medical device field, had a great husband, a comfortable new home, and amazing friends. But I also had parents battling illnesses that required my attention, stress relating to a double income family in which both of us traveled for work, and absolutely no time for rest or self-care.

“I just canʼt do it all. Why do I have to do it all?” became a steady narrative in my victimized head. Little did I know that the assailant and the victim in this situation was me.

It was the diagnosis of an autoimmune thyroid disease that made me stop in my tracks. This disease became the wake up call that I needed as it made me question everything. I started to listen to what my body, mind, and spirit were telling me. My healing journey began.

That healing journey led to me completely curing myself of a disease doctors told me would be lifelong. It brought me to a more fulfilling career as a certified health coach. It enabled me to embrace the beauty of letting go. I now lead a life where stress is minimized and quality of life is magnified.

In adopting a new way to manage my life, I am not immune to the bad things that happen to me or around me. My perspective is what has shifted, as I no longer feel the need to control the outcome. I have learned to have faith in setting pure intentions and letting go.

A Case in Point:

I discussed writing this blog post for Splendid Spoon in early January, with the intent to offer healthful tips and share details about a three day wellness-based yoga retreat I’m hosting in August, on a breathtaking organic farm in Sonoma, California. For the retreat, I set an intention to create a meaningful experience that would serve the needs of all in attendance, and I tapped a yoga teacher whom I deeply respect, to teach with me.

As much as this yoga teacher and I flow together on many levels, working on the retreat did not go smoothly. The younger version of me would have tried to take control of the situation and make it work. Instead, I wrapped this beautiful yoga teacher in loving kindness and let go of being attached to working with her on this particular endeavor. I sat quietly and re-centered myself around the original intention for the weekend.

The final details of how the weekend will come together are in a new process of unfolding. The retreatʼs centralized theme will be about letting go. In keeping with that theme, I am using this forum as well as other avenues to ask for assistance in securing a yoga instructor to lead this August weekend with me.

How This Relates to You

I hope what I’ve shared resonates with you. For those of you shaking your heads as you tightly grip your phone and read this post, I encourage you to give this method a try: on a piece of paper, write down one thing that youʼd really like to accomplish, and why it is important to you. Take that piece of paper to a quiet place and let go of the belief that it is your job to figure this one out on your own. Instead, gratefully ask the universe for help, tear up the paper, and throw it away.

Have faith in what will unfold, but be prepared: it may not be exactly as you envisioned. Personally, I am humbled by how what comes back to me is so much more beautiful than anything I could have ever created on my own.

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Stay in the know about the retreat here.

Say hello or contact me regarding the retreatʼs yoga instruction:

Learn more on my website.

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