The experience of love is an inner state. When this is present, you are happy, alive and free. You feel good about yourself and good about life. As you bring the experience of love into your life, life works effortlessly and great things happen.

The opposite of love is fear and upset. When this is present, you close down inside. you lose your creativity and your ability to see clearly. You get tunnel vision and you interact in a way that almost always makes your situation worse.

Whether you live in a state of love or a state of upset depends, not on your circumstances, but on how your relate to your circumstances. A good way to see this is to look at upsets.

Upsets seem to be caused by what happens but they're not. Upsets are caused by your fighting and resisting what happens. To see this in your life, select a recent upset. Now notice what would happen if somehow you were at peace with what happened. There would be no upset.

There would be no upset because upsets aren't caused by what happened. Upsets are caused by fighting and resisting what happened. The moment you take away the fighting and resisting, the upset disappears.

To live in the experience of love, and to create a life that works, you need to stop the fighting and resisting. You do this through a process called "letting go."

Letting go is the inner action that releases the fear and upset. The moment you let go, everything seems to change. With the fear and upset gone, you see your situation very differently. You become creative and discover solutions that you could never have seen before.

To let go, you need to do the opposite of fighting and resisting. You need to let go of your demands and expectations for how life should be and make peace with the way life is.

Find what you are resisting. Then give it full permission to be there. If you have a fear of losing a relationship, be willing to lose it. If you are resisting the way someone is, give the person full permission to be that way.

Be willing for anything. Set yourself free inside. Then take whatever action you need to have your life be great.

Keep in mind that letting go is a state of mind and has nothing to do with your actions. Letting go is the process that removes the fear and upset so you can see what action you need to take.

In your heart, you can be willing to lose someone, but in your actions, do everything you can to make sure the person feels so loved that he or she would never want to leave.

To make letting go a little easier, there are several steps you can take. The first is trusting. Trust that no matter what happens, you will be okay. When you know that you will be okay, letting go becomes relatively easy.

Trusting is also telling the truth. You really will be okay no matter what happens. Life is only threatening when you resist. So stop resisting and trust. Trust that no matter what happens, you will be okay.

The second step in the process of letting go is to be willing to feel your hurt. Be willing to feel all the hurt and the feelings of being not okay that your circumstances reactivate. Be willing to feel the hurt of being worthless or not good enough.

The avoidance of this hurt is what makes you resist. Once you are willing to feel this hurt, the need to resist disappears. You can then let go.

For example, Robert had a fear of losing his wife Jan. To make sure she didn't leave, he hung on to her. His hanging on then pushed her further and further away. Robert was afraid of losing Jan because if she left him, this would reactivate all his hurt of feeling not worth loving. To avoid this hurt. He hung on.

Once he was willing to feel his hurt, the loss of Jan ceased to be a treat. He no longer needed to hang on and became willing for her to leave. The moment this happened he changed the way he related to her. Instead of needing Jan, he started treasuring her. Jan then felt so loved and able to be herself, she didn't want to leave.

This is what happens in life. The more you are able to let go and flow with life, the more life takes care of itself. You may not always get what you want, but you can always be free inside. You can restore both your peace of mind and your effectiveness. You can create a life that works.