Hanging on to old hurts, slights, pain, guilt, regret or remorse will prevent you from enjoying your present moments. Learn how to let go of old emotional baggage.

Was it something your parents did 20 years ago? Something a customer said last week? Or something a spouse or friend said yesterday?

Old baggage is emotional stuff we carry around with us for days, months or years. It is usually negative stuff like old hurts, resentments, anger or some kind of pain inflicted by another person. It can also be just carrying around some old guilt, failure or fear that impacts our current relationships and life in general.

Why do people hold on to all of these old feelings? Everyone moves through life with their own very personal agendas, needs and life issues. Old baggage starts to feel very comfortable after a while, so comfortable as a matter of fact many people die never able to let go of these hurts, slights and pain.

There is one very good reason to let go of all of this stuff. One of the major causes of stress today is suppressed emotions that fester in the body taking their eventual toll on some aspect of our physiology. One of the biggest causes of stress today is all of this old baggage. So why let it go? It may kill you if you don’t.

The way they catch monkeys in Africa is to spread large glass jugs with long narrow necks on the ground and then put bunches of bananas in them. The monkeys show up, put their arm in the jug grab the bananas and then won’t let go. They would rather end up in the Bronx Zoo than let go of their bananas. Thousands of psychologists and counselors around the country are getting any where from $100 to 300 an hour and what are they trying to do? You guessed it, help people let go of their bananas.

What do you need to let go of today? What is preventing you from letting it go? What harm is not letting it go have on a current relationship or your career or business?