Post by Nate Stein for the Kind Kindred series.

image by EffeX2 (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

The mind is a tricky instrument. It’s obviously meant to help, but often times it ends up hurting us. It’s difficult to control your thoughts and in my experience, it seems like I’m not necessarily in control of what my mind thinks. Letting thoughts go and controlling the mind takes practice.

What’s my mind saying now? It’s saying that I must inform the readers of this article that I am not a writer. You are now informed. The last thing I wrote, longer than an email, was back in college and it probably came with a B- at best. Ironically, I ended up dating a writer, which eventually led to a break up, and some great practice at letting thoughts go.

I had been familiar with the following technique, which seemed to work for me through the tough times in my life….

1.) You get an unwanted thought.
2.) It keeps coming back and won’t leave you alone.
3.) Instead of trying to push it away you simply watch the thought. A great thing to tell yourself is, “Oh, that thought is back. Hi thought! :)”
4.) You’ll notice after a while the negative thought will no longer be present.
5.) Just when you thought everything was okay, the thought will come back and bother you!
6.) Not to worry. Repeat the same process and welcome in the thought, similar to a guest at your house. Give it love. Love will overwhelm fear until it is love.
7.) This same thing may happen again and again, but you’ll notice that the thought will come back less and less. Maybe the first time it’s every hour, then every few hours, then once a day, then once a week, and then you’ll be reminded of it sometime in the distant future thinking, “I remember when that used to bother me and now it doesn’t!”
8.) Overcoming this and seeing yourself go through this process makes it easier to let thoughts go in the future, because you’ll have had practice with it. Having a resume of letting thoughts go will give you the confidence you need in times of mental suffering.

(As a side note, this seems to work for letting emotions go as well; however, there are many other strategies for that including exercising, crying, AEDP, emotion code, and other techniques that I don’t know about.)

As I mentioned before, this strategy USUALLY works for me. However, after the break up I had gone through, I was so overwhelmed with negative thoughts that I felt closer to being those thoughts, and further from being myself. I needed something more. I woke up one morning, not looking forward to having to deal with my mind all day, and being an idea man immersed in the technological world, thought, “There should be an app for this.”

At that moment, Let It Go was born. I did my research, got some help from a friend, paid a developer, consulted with business folk, worked with my designer, and months later had an app that really works. The idea came from when I would write my thoughts down in my phone for the purpose of venting and releasing. The problem I had was that when I would go back to delete my notes, I would be reminded of what I had been thinking. Let It Go solves that problem. This is how I describe the self-help app…

Let It Go allows you to deal with your problems in a unique way. Write down anything that’s bothering you and Let It Go will release the negative thought for you! The releasing process is completely random for each thought and takes between 1 and 72 hours. Live freely and Let It Go!

Let It Go is available for Free on the iPhone, iPad, Android, and Tablet.

I hope my app helps people with the art of letting go so that they can spend their mental energy on positive thoughts instead of negative ones. Ideally, it’ll even help open up some space for people to be not thinking at all, and simply just, watching 😉

Nate Stein is an independent musician and entrepreneur originally from Newton, MA. After graduating from Syracuse University, Nate moved to Santa Cruz, CA to live by the beach and redwoods. Musically, he’s currently working with atmospheric band Neon Satori and his solo electronic project N8 ST9. Nate also enjoys playing basketball and using unique strategies to wake the world up.