Book Review: The Secret Of Letting Go – Guy Finley

Guy Finley is a spiritual teacher, author, and speaker known for his self-realization and inner transformation teachings.

He founded the Life of Learning Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to spiritual development.

Finley’s work often explores themes related to self-discovery, personal growth, and the pursuit of a more meaningful and fulfilling life.

No one can deny that letting go of what doesn’t serve our best interests is a good idea.

Take fear, for example. In this book, you’ll discover that the situation or person doesn’t cause you to fear.

In reality, they are neutral props. Your thoughts and subsequent reactions about the person or situation cause your fear response.

You’ll learn to become conscious of your condition instead of being afraid of it.

I discovered Guy Finley’s Book The Secret of Letting Go several years ago.

The perspectives and insights were so impactful that I wanted to share some of my favorite parts with you.

I bought this timeless book at a sale in my community, and I often re-read it to get myself back on my spiritual growth journey.

Letting go of yourself is letting go of your problems, for they are the same. This book can teach you how to let go, liberate yourself from your false self, and live a truly authentic life.

The book describes techniques and ideas for achieving more peace, joy, and happiness than you’ve ever known.

The Secret Of Letting Go Book - Guy Finley Review

The Secret Of Letting Go Book – Guy Finley

The Secret of Letting Go by Guy Finley is a 218-page book with nine chapters. Its primary purpose is to teach readers how to release what is not their true self.

What could be more important to anyone’s life than the search for their true self?

With more than two million copies of all his books in print, Guy Finley’s message of self-liberation has touched people worldwide.

Discover how to extinguish self-defeating thoughts and habits that undermine true happiness.

Exploring relationships, depression, and stress, his inspiring words can help you release debilitating anxiety, unnecessary anger, paralyzing guilt, and painful heartache.

True stories, revealing dialogues, and thought-provoking questions will guide you toward the endless source of inner strength and emotional freedom within us all.

There is nothing wrong with being successful.

The purpose of your life is to win. But what if, in your quest for victory, you were accidentally drawn into a compelling game in which, unknown to you, it was impossible to win, no matter your performance or how well you followed the rules?

Instead of finding the freedom to run as you wish, you moved more and more robotically through your days. Each day leaves you feeling more frustrated than fulfilled because you were playing under ever-increasing pressure to succeed.

About Guy Finley

Guy Finley is the Founder and Director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit Center for Spiritual Discovery.

He is a highly regarded spiritual teacher renowned for his profound insights into the human psyche and the pursuit of inner freedom.

Finley guides individuals on self-realization and personal transformation through his teachings, writings, and lectures.

He offers practical wisdom and timeless principles aimed at helping people break free from limiting beliefs, fears, and negative patterns, ultimately leading to a more fulfilling and authentic life.

Focusing on inner peace, emotional resilience, and spiritual awakening, Guy Finley’s work resonates with seekers from all walks of life.

His books, including bestsellers like “The Secret of Letting Go” and “The Essential Laws of Fearless Living,” have inspired countless individuals to embark on self-discovery and profound inner change.

Through his lectures and workshops, Finley continues to empower people to tap into their inherent potential and live with greater joy, purpose, and spiritual awareness.

What Is The Secret of Letting Go Book?

The Secret of Letting Go is a book by Guy Finley that delves into releasing emotional burdens, negative thoughts, and destructive patterns to achieve greater peace and fulfillment.

The central theme revolves around true freedom and happiness from understanding and transcending the inner obstacles that hinder personal growth.

Key concepts explored in the book include:

  1. Understanding Attachments: Finley discusses the nature of attachments and how clinging to certain beliefs, emotions, or situations can create suffering and limitation.

  2. Freedom Through Awareness: The book emphasizes the power of self-awareness and how it can lead to a profound transformation by breaking the chains of unconscious conditioning.

  3. Embracing Change: Letting go involves accepting the inevitability of change and learning to flow with life rather than resisting it. Finley encourages readers to embrace change as a natural part of the human experience.

  4. Overcoming Fear: Finley addresses the role of fear in holding people back and provides insights into how one can overcome fear and live a more fearless life.

  5. Finding Inner Peace: The goal is ultimately to attain inner peace and a deeper understanding of oneself. The book offers practical guidance on achieving this by releasing limiting beliefs and cultivating a more positive and harmonious inner state.

The book may be a valuable resource for anyone interested in letting go and achieving a more liberated and fulfilling life.

The Secret Of Letting Go Book Review

Chapters in The Secret Of Letting Go Book

  1. Let Go And Grow Happy
  2. Your True Nature Is High
  3. How To Defeat What Is Defeating You
  4. Lift Yourself Into A Brand New World
  5. Letting Go Into The Power Flow
  6. Break Through to a Totally New You
  7. Let Go and Let Higher Life Forces Succeed For You
  8. Dare To Let Go and Live As You Please
  9. Contact With The Secret Self

The Secret Of Letting Go

The Secret of Letting Go Book not only holds the keys for ending what is unwanted, but locked within the same supreme secret is the beginning of your new life – the birth of a new nature that never has to hold onto anything because it is already everything.

Guy shares a great story of why you need to let go.

I remember watching a young boy about to take his first lesson in water skiing. He was bobbing up and down in the water, ski tops pointed up and ahead.

His father was in the speedboat, calling out some last-minute instructions. Then, with a roar, the boat took off. The tow rope went taut.

At first, it didn’t look like the young boy would make it up. But slowly, he emerged from the water. He was up; I could see him smiling. Then, in almost the reverse motion of how the boy had risen above the water, he disappeared back into it.

It didn’t look like a nasty spill.

The speedboat raced back around to pick him up. I waited and watched his small head pop up above the waves set off by his first nose dive – but none appeared.

The boy was still holding onto the tow rope. He was dragged behind the same boat, trying to speed to his rescue.

Assessing the situation at a glance, his father immediately cut the engines.

A second later, the young boy’s soaked but smiling face raised itself out of the water and looked up to his father for instructions.

His father smiled back and said, “Son, I forgot to tell you one critical point about water skiing. When you fall, you must remember to let go of the rope.

This young boy didn’t want to hold onto the tow rope. He held onto it because he didn’t know what else to do during those frightening moments when he was dragged through the water. For him, letting go wasn’t an option.

Instead, his mind was crowded with other competing thoughts and feelings. The intuitive thought to let go couldn’t’ get through his inner clamor. The boy in the story was Guy Finley.

The Secret of letting go

What Does Letting Go Mean?

It generally refers to releasing or relinquishing attachments, emotions, beliefs, or situations that may be causing distress or hindering personal growth.

It involves freeing oneself from negative thoughts, past experiences, or expectations, allowing for greater peace, acceptance, and well-being.

Here are a few aspects:

Releasing Attachments: Letting go often involves detaching oneself from solid emotional ties or dependencies on specific outcomes, people, or possessions. It means recognizing that holding on too tightly can lead to suffering.

Forgiveness: Letting go may also include forgiving oneself or others for past mistakes or grievances. Forgiveness is a way of releasing the emotional burden of resentment or guilt.

Acceptance of Change: It involves accepting that change is a natural part of life. It means being adaptable and not resisting the inevitable shifts and transitions that occur over time.

Surrendering Control: Sometimes, surrendering the need for absolute control requires acknowledging that not everything can be controlled or manipulated and that there is wisdom in allowing things to unfold organically.

Living in the Present: It often involves focusing on the present moment rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. It is about experiencing life fully in the here and now.

Release of Fear: Many aspects are connected to overcoming fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of change, or fear of losing control can be barriers. Confronting and transcending these fears is part of the process.

What Letting Go Isn’t

  • Letting go isn’t living with the heartache-filled dreams of what might have been.

  • It isn’t the certainty that somebody else was wrong.

  • It isn’t moving from one disappointment to hoping for a new victory.

  • It isn’t the anxious search for a new solution to an old problem.

  • It isn’t learning to live with lowered expectations.

  • It isn’t avoiding people or places that painfully remind you of past attachments.

  • It doesn’t have to convince yourself how right you were to let go of something.

  • It isn’t the desperate search for someone who will agree with you about your side of the argument.

  • You don’t need to rehearse conversations in your mind to feel confident.

  • It isn’t the insistence you can let go of (fill in the blank) anytime you want.

We all know precisely what it is like to be sure we have let go of something sorrowful or worrisome, only to find ourselves in a similar situation moments later.

Dropping this person and picking up that person doesn’t end the loneliness that drives us into dead-end relationships. This isn’t letting go. We have only managed to put emptiness on hold.

Changing jobs to escape from someone or something that sets us off doesn’t cancel our conflict. This delays the inevitable angry feelings that always surface whenever we feel threatened.

Our anger cannot keep us safe from a cruel world – this anger is cruelty itself.

Letting go is the natural release that always follows the realization that holding on hurts.

Spiritual Independence: The Secret of Letting Go

Here are three facts about letting go and growing more spiritually independent.

  1. You can only depend on others for as long as it pays them to tolerate your dependence.

  2. No matter how it may appear on the surface of human events, self-interest governs individuals.

  3. Even the typical display of human kindness or benevolence does not come from a person’s compassionate nature but from his unconscious desire to enrich himself with the intoxicating feelings of being a good person.

These higher facts are not harmful. What is damaging is to hide from ourselves that others have betrayed us.

Living under the defeatist directions of the false self, we wrongly assume that the only way to reach absolute independence and safety is to look to someone else to take us there.

It isn’t in another’s power to do what you must do for yourself. Stop looking for what you hope to see in others and start seeing what you need to see.

Letting go happens effortlessly when there is no other choice.

  1. You can let go of those resentful feelings toward your job because the treadmill isn’t what you are doing but how you think.

  2. You can stop trying to change other people because you are what is bothering you about them.

  3. You can let go of the fear of unforeseen changes or challenges because you only have to face yourself.

Let Go – Guy Finley

Let go of the task of thinking you are responsible for how the world turns. The only world you are responsible for is your inner world—the world of your thoughts, feelings, impulses, and desires.

Your life level is determined by how you see your inner world.

You wouldn’t go to your neighbor’s kitchen to fix your broken sink. Why try to change your outer world when it only reflects your inner world?

Do not try to change the external world. Change your viewpoints and attitudes instead. When you change yourself, you change the world as far as you are concerned, for you are your world.

Here is an example: If a person writing a letter misspells a word, the error starts in his mind, after which it appears on the paper. He cannot correct the paper until he corrects his mind.

If he does not clarify his mind, the error repeats on paper endlessly.

People try to correct external mistakes instead of correcting how they think, which leaves them lost because they are unknowingly chained to a mistake-making machine.

Your discontentment with life is with your understanding – your life level – not with what your experience has brought to you.

Trying to change your life without changing your life level is like convincing yourself that a merry-go-round has a destination.

Self-Control = Falling Apart – Guy Finley

Anybody that has to hold themself together is ready to fall apart. Trying to hold yourself together is the wrong way to go through life. The fears of falling apart can never be quieted by adding more pieces to yourself, like success or the hopes of success.

Life will wear you out faster with this approach because you created more conditions you believe you must control to keep your life together.

Anything you have to control controls you.

Self-control is like a war inside of you that you can’t win. Notice whenever a specific situation arises inside of you, the mind works feverishly to resolve it to regain a sense of being in control.

Regardless, the more feverishly the mind works, the more out of control you become. Anything afraid of losing control is already out of control.

Few see themselves in a self-compromising light as someone ready to fall apart.

We feel safe within the dimly lit theater of our circle of self-pictures and return to it often, especially when the harsh light of reality starts to break and show us that we may not be as together as we think.

This is why we need the truth in our lives.

The truth allows us to see reality without being frightened about what we see. Part of the truth’s rescuing action is revealing that we are not apart from what we see.

From this vantage point, the reality isn’t harsh; it’s home because we aren’t losing anything except what has kept us in darkness.

Conclusion – The Secret Of Letting Go – Guy Finley Book

The Secret of Letting Go book offers real solutions to real problems. The false self must be identified and transcended to higher awareness; this book will show you how.

People feel their lives are out of control, from environmental concerns to arguments with their loved ones. However, there is only one thing we can or need to control—our own reactions. The way to manage our responses is to let go.

You’ll discover that you need not depend on anyone or anything for happiness.

All psychological stress – anger, depression, and anxiety is born out of a lack of understanding. Guy Finley’s The Secret Of Letting Go book is compelling yet cheerful and lighthearted about lessons in letting go of who you think you are.

Get your copy on Amazon.

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