Let Go!

Length: 5 minutes

Goal: To let go of daily stressful experiences

Source: Bilateral Sensory Input (exercise recommended by my father) and Neuro-Language Programming (NLP) 

Exercise: 

Step 1

Find yourself a comfortable position and close your eyes.

Focus on the situation visually: 

Where were you? How did the place look? What were you doing? Were you alone? If not, who was with you? What happened that upset you? How did you react to the situation?

Step 2

Focus on the situation emotionally: 

What was the emotion associated with your reaction?

On a scale 1-10, how did you feel?

Step 3

Take a mental picture of that situation and frame it.

Reduce the size of the picture and project it onto a mental screen/white wall.

Watch yourself from a distance of a couple of meters (as if you were sitting/standing watching it unfold on a tv screen).

Step 4

Apply Rapid Eye Movement:

Alternately look to your left and right sides, 12 times each, for 12 seconds.

Take a deep breath.

Step 5

Open your eyes for a couple of seconds.

Count backwards slowly from 5 to 1.

Step 6

Recall the picture of the past experience that you projected onto the screen/white wall in your mind.

Recall the visual details of the framed picture and yourself at a distance.

Place the picture on a mental train and imagine the train traveling to your right in the distance, getting smaller until it becomes a dot, and vanishes.

Take a deep breath.

Step 6

Check-in:

On a scale 1-10, how do you feel? 

Repeat the steps in 3 days until you are satisfied with where you are on the scale. 

My Explanation

What Is “Let It Go”? It Go

Source: Neuro-Language Programming (NLP) and Rapid Eyes Movement (REM) 

When we go through trauma—whether a small “t” trauma or a big “T” trauma—the real challenge is not just surviving it, but making sure our minds don’t stay stuck in the moment it happened.

Why? Because the brain doesn’t distinguish between: Real vs. Imagined, Past/Future vs. Present.

If we keep replaying the experience, our mind thinks it’s happening right now—so it sends the body into stress mode again and again.

“The moment we react to any condition in our outer world that tends to be threatening, whether the threat is real or imagined, our body releases stress hormones in order to mobilize enormous amounts of energy in response to that threat.” — Dr. Joe Dispenza, Becoming Supernatural (2017)

Ever had a random memory of someone or something from your past pop up, out of nowhere? You think, “Why am I even thinking about this person right now?” Odds are… you’re not actually over it.

How I Use It

Here’s a quick test to check if you’re truly over a situation:

1. Close your eyes and recall the memory.
2. Ask yourself: are you watching the situation like a movie, or are you seeing it through your own eyes?

If it’s the second—seeing it through your eyes—you’re still in it. Your brain is treating it like it’s happening now. That memory is stuck in your system like a software loop, waiting for your conscious mind to finally close the tab.

Luckily, there are techniques that can help. One of my favorites? “Let It Go!”—a tool based in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and how we form emotional memories.

As an engineer, I love simple formulas. Here’s one that helped me understand how to “hack” my mind when dealing with lingering emotional triggers.

When It Helped Me

Understanding the Formula of a Memory

We perceive the world through five senses: Sight, Sound, Touch, Smell, Taste.

During an emotional event—good or bad—your brain captures all this sensory data together. It stores them as a “package” and labels it with the emotion you felt at the time. That’s how memories are formed.

Let’s take a difficult work meeting as an example.
The memory might include: The faces in the room (image), The tone of voices (sound), The temperature or a perfume (touch/smell), The feeling of stress (emotion).

This combination of sensory input + emotion = your memory.

Why This Matters

Here’s the powerful part: The brain can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined. It also doesn’t know if something happened in the past or is happening now.

Some may call this a limitation—but I see it as a superpower. Why? Because it means we can intentionally change how a memory is stored. That’s what tools like “Let It Go!” aim to do.

Just like software, we can update the code. Next time your brain looks for “lessons learned” from the past, it won’t pull up the same painful file—it’ll pull the new version you’ve rewritten.

The Connection to NLP and Healing

This is exactly what Richard Bandler and John Grinder achieved with NLP, a methodology developed in the 1970s:

“NLP is an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy… based on the connection between neurological processes (neuro-), language (linguistic), and behavioral patterns learned through experience (programming).” — ScienceDaily

NLP helps us reprogram the sensory and emotional “inputs” that make up a memory. That’s what the “Let It Go!” exercise does—it swaps out the old version of the event for a new one that is neutral, or even empowering. And the result? When your brain goes to access that memory, the emotional charge is gone. The loop ends. You stop obsessing over it. You stop caring. You feel free.

Final Thought

The real healing begins when you can look back at a once-painful memory and feel… nothing. No anger. No sadness. No attachment. Just peace. That’s when you know: You’ve let it go. And if that happens—congratulations. You just gave yourself a gift: the freedom to move forward.