Cécile Neuville is a psychologist specializing in positive psychology and personal development. In her book, she explains to us in a simple and effective way how to let go in our daily life – how to be able to flourish and enjoy life better. Who has not dreamed of one day being able to find inner peace? C. Neuville gives us in this book keys and simple practical exercises to work to achieve this. She explains how to achieve this famous balance between “letting go” and “holding on”, because as we know, it’s all about balance, or homeostasis!
Part 1
The first part of the book allows us to make a personal assessment thanks to small tests of our capacity to let go, to define what this means concretely for us, of our capacity to accept change and to have confidence in ourselves. Letting go is first of all knowing how to stop, to settle down to make a point, to analyze our emotions, our thoughts in order to better understand and accept them. Many quotes allow each of us to be able to recognize ourselves in the different subjects discussed (Example: quote from Mark Twain “They didn’t know it was impossible, so they did it”).
The book enumerates many obstacles to letting go such as pessimism, conditioning during childhood, during our own experiences, education … It also gives us positive psychology tools to counter these obstacles: optimism, mindfulness , resilience, expressing gratitude, benevolence ….
We learn such things as:
“a negative experience must be written down to be evacuated, and that a positive experience must be told orally to gain momentum.”
In addition, a scientific experiment has shown that the more we train to be happy, the more we like it! Here is a beautiful vicious circle! Cécile Neuville then leads us to think about simple goals we’d like to achieve in 7 days, in different aspects of our lives (relationships, work, etc.)
Part 2
In the second part of the book, she explains how to practice these concepts on a daily basis. Thanks to small tests, we assess our ability to let go:
- at the mental level (parasitic thoughts, limiting, complex beliefs, etc.),
- of negative emotions (childhood anchors, anger, guilt, stress , shame, fear ….),
- in the face of the outside world (emotional dependence, judgment, view of others, food addiction …)
- facing the future (need to control, perfectionism, freeing yourself from the weight of the past, of our expectations, desires)
She also gives us keys and easy exercises to free ourselves from all these obstacles to our serenity. For example, here is a key to freeing oneself from negative anchors:
1) think of a goal that you have in mind by starting your sentence with “I want to achieve this goal but …” eg: “I want to change jobs, but … I’m scared! ”
2) find a positive emotion that is more powerful than the negative emotion. Ex: “I want to change jobs. Even if until now I was afraid, I am already enthusiastic about the idea of finding a new job in which I can develop myself”.
The book also has a small chapter to teach our children to let go.
In conclusion, here is a book on positive psychology simple and concrete, with a lot of practical ideas and easily understandable without having to read a sentence five times to be able to grasp its meaning! The images and situations used will resonate with everyone I’m sure. The methods are simple and effective and do not require encroaching on our schedule which is sometimes busy. It just goes to show that it can be simple to work on letting go and finally enjoying every moment of life with complete peace of mind!
- Céline Cabral, naturopathy student at the AMCC.
If you enjoyed this article, maybe you’ll also like:
Melaleuca: Tea Tree Essential Oil
Leave a Reply