Perhaps the greatest lessons of my life have revolved around the slogan of the recovery moment: “Let go and let God”—a notion that involves relinquishing ego’s attachment to, or fear of, something. The single most pronounced attachment for most of us during the morning of our lives is the attachment to being right! There’s nothing ego loves more than to be right, which makes it an important and satisfying attachment to practice letting go of.

I seriously doubt that there’s anyone reading this who hasn’t engaged in arguing about trivial matters that turned into disagreements, which had a net effect of following a road of self-righteous anger. And all of it probably seemed to be for no reason other than the need, the desire, to be right! Eventually we may look back with wistful amusement, realizing now that our fear of actually being wrong was so strong then that another person’s opinion could energize this unwanted feeling. Ego’s strategy was to be right no matter what, a highly successful maneuver that effectively distracted us from genuine purpose. Letting go of an attachment to being right is a fairly simple exercise.

The choice to let go and let God, in a quest to eliminate our attachment to being right, is simplified with these few words: You’re right about that. But keep in mind that kindness and sincerity are necessary here, as opposed to sarcasm or insincerity. Those four words will gradually open the entry point to a road that leads through letting go and letting God, to experiencing more significance in life.

Another way to easily practice breaking ego’s attachments is to clear out the garage, cupboards, and closets. Let go of material possessions, and practice not being attached to them. If they haven’t been used in the past 12 months, they belong elsewhere. We can train ourselves to be one of “those” that Joel Goldsmith describes in his book A Parenthesis in Eternity: Living the Mystical Life:

Then there are those who reach a stage in which they realize the futility of this constant striving and struggling for the things that perish, things which after they are obtained prove to be shadows. It is at this stage that some persons turn from this seeking for things in the outer realm to a seeking for them from God.

Most stress results from hanging on to beliefs that keep us striving for more, because ego stubbornly refuses to believe we don’t need something. When we make the shift, the influence of our ego fades. We replace attachment with contentment. Chasing and striving—and then becoming attached to what we chased after—is a source of anxiety that invigorates Ambition, but it won’t satisfy the need for Meaning at our soul level. Everything that we pursue ultimately distances us from our original nature. All of our attachments are destined to perish. They are all shadows, as Goldsmith points out.