Things I’ve Quietly Let Go Of This Year For a Calmer Life

Saying “I” let go would be slightly inaccurate because honestly, situations unfolded in my life where a lot of my beliefs and everything was just wiped away. Like, my life took it upon itself to do the “let go” thing on a serious level.

The universe had other plans.

Looking back at the past year, I can only describe it as being gently and sometimes not so gently shaken awake. Like something bigger than me decided it was time. Time to see things clearly. Time to stop holding on to what was never really mine to hold. Time to let go.

Situations, friendships, everyday choices, I don’t know when exactly everything became a part of past.

And surprisingly, most of it just… happened. I didn’t force it. I am calling it divine intervention for sure because looking back at it now, I feel like this is my version 2.0 and I genuinely feel happy about it.

Things simply started to fall away. And in their place came this quiet, almost embarrassing sense of peace.

So I wanted to share it. All of it. The material things, the mindset shifts, the habits, the anger I was carrying without even realising it. Because maybe you’re in the middle of your own shaking-awake season, and maybe this helps.

The Stuff I Was Convinced I Needed But Really Didn’t

Let’s start with the physical, because honestly it surprised me the most.

I used to have this running list in my head. Things I wanted, things I was saving towards, things I told myself would make life easier or better or more complete. A Kindle. A Dyson. Little luxury upgrades that felt like milestones.

And then something shifted.

I can’t even explain it fully. But I started to look at these desires and think… do I actually want this, or have I just convinced myself I do? There’s a difference, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to see it.

And to put it in a better way, situations came in a way that made me these materialistic things go. Without me feeling attached to them!!

The wanting itself was the illusion. The thing I was chasing wasn’t the product, it was a feeling. A sense of having arrived somewhere. And once I understood that, the desire just… dissolved. Quietly. Without drama.

Decluttering your desires is one of the most underrated forms of personal growth, and nobody really talks about it enough. And this can only comes through spirituality as it is the real force, the Shakti, that gives you the power to go through this.

My Eating Habits

This one is still wild to me when I say it out loud.

I am now vegetarian. No meat, no fish. And also — no onion, no garlic.

If you told me this a couple of years ago I would have genuinely laughed. I wasn’t someone who was even thinking about changing the way I ate. And yet here we are.

It wasn’t a decision I made because of a documentary or a health scare or someone pressuring me. Something just… clicked. From the inside. My body and my mind arrived at this place together, almost without my permission, and I followed.

The letting go of old eating habits, especially ones tied to comfort and identity is no small thing. It’s deeply personal. But releasing them has felt like a kind of lightness I didn’t know I was missing.

The Anger and Frustration I Didn’t Know I Was Still Carrying

Oh, this one.

I genuinely thought I was a fairly patient person.

And maybe I was, on the surface. But underneath? There was this quiet hum of frustration. With people, with situations, with the way things hadn’t gone the way I’d hoped.

I wasn’t walking around furious. But the residue of old irritations was sitting there, taking up space.

The Bhagavad Gita found its way to me this year — and I say found because it really did feel that way. I wasn’t searching for it in the way you might search for answers. It simply came. And the wisdom in it dismantled something in me that I didn’t even know needed dismantling.

The anger started to loosen. The frustration started to make less sense. There was this gradual, almost cellular shift in how I responded to things. And honestly? Letting go of that anger has been one of the most quietly radical things I’ve ever done.

You carry so much less when you’re not hauling resentment around with you everywhere.

The Opinions I Was Holding Onto

This is a subtle one but it matters.

I used to feel this low-level need to be right. Not in an aggressive way. I wasn’t arguing with strangers online or anything. But I held my opinions tightly. My views on people, on situations, on how things should be done.

This year I started to loosen my grip on all of that.

Not because I stopped having opinions. But because I started to see how heavy they were. How much energy it takes to protect a fixed view of the world. How much you miss when you’re too busy being certain.

Letting go of the need to have the right opinion on everything, all the time is its own kind of freedom. A quiet one. But real.

The Belief That I Built Any of This Myself

This might be the deepest one.

There’s this story we tell ourselves. Especially when things are going reasonably well — that we did it. That our effort, our talent, our decisions are what created the life we have.

And yes, effort matters. Showing up matters.

But this year I was confronted, again and again, with the humbling truth that so much of what I have, the opportunities, the timing, the people who arrived at exactly the right moment, was never really mine to take credit for.

Surrendering that ego. That false sense of authorship. It’s not a comfortable thing to do. But it’s the most freeing.

There is something that holds all of this together, call it what feels right to you. The divine. The universe. Grace. Something bigger than any of us. And when you soften towards it, when you stop gripping so tightly to the idea that you’re in full control… something exhales.

That surrender is where the real letting go begins.

The Social Media Chaos I Finally Walked Away From

It started with Snapchat.

I was so done. Done with the pings, done with the streak pressure, done with the whole performance of it. There was a moment where I just deleted my account and uninstalled the app for good… and that was that. No announcement. No goodbye. Just… gone.

Then came Instagram.

My original account. The OG one. Friends, family, relatives — you know the ones. 🙄

Followers somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand, maybe more. It was everything, on paper. And yet somewhere along the way it started to suffocate me.

I tried cleaning up my followers list thinking it would help. It didn’t. If anything it made the feeling worse.

Because no matter how many people you remove, you can still feel the eyes. Relatives peeking at your posts, forming opinions, making something out of nothing. That particular kind of watching… it has a weight to it.

So I deleted it. The whole thing. Gone forever.

And I loved my Instagram-free life, genuinely. But eventually, because my brother made a very fair point about digital careers in the world we live in, I started fresh. Clean slate, new account, on my own terms. Same with Facebook. The old one went, a new one came purely for my hosting group.

None of it was dramatic. The universe just kept making the next right thing obvious.

Seriously, getting rid of social media life is freeing in a way that only one can experience. I have no words to express it.

Letting Go of Having to Correct Everyone

This one is quieter but it matters to me deeply.

I’ll be scrolling and I’ll see something, a post, a comment, a claim, and I’ll know it’s not right. Old me would have felt this pull to say something. To step in. To correct.

Now I just… keep scrolling.

Not because I’ve stopped caring about the truth. But.. because I’ve learned that not everything needs my energy.

Some battles aren’t mine. Some conversations will drain you of the very peace you’ve been working so hard to find. And choosing not to engage? That’s not weakness. That’s wisdom.

My silence on social media is one of the most intentional things I do now.

The Mindset That I Need More

This one loops back to the desires I mentioned earlier but it goes deeper.

I needed this. I needed that. The mind is so good at building these little cages out of want. Making you believe that the next thing, the next purchase, the next upgrade, the next version of your life is what will finally make you feel okay.

I started to see it for what it was. A trap. A very convincing, very persistent trap.

Half the things I thought I needed… I never needed them at all. Not even close.

The Day I Lost My 20 Year Old Google Account

And then there was this.

I am — was — someone who always checked. Always scanned an email before clicking anything. Always. It was almost a reflex, something I’d done for fifteen, maybe twenty years without fail.

And then one day, I don’t even know how, I just… didn’t. I went ahead. Clicked a fake login. Phishing. And just like that, my entire Google account. Twenty years of it — gone.

After weeks of fixing accounts & stuff, I sat with that for a moment.

And then I took it as a clear lesson to never use Sign in with Google. 🙉 I’ve since de-Googled as much of my life as I reasonably can. Lesson learned, and then some.

The divine has a sense of humour, I think. Sometimes the lesson arrives in the gentlest way. And sometimes it just takes your Google account. 😹

Letting Go of Outside Food

This one came from a realisation that changed something deep in me.

Energy doesn’t just live in your environment. It lives in your food. In the utensils it’s cooked in. In the hands that made it. In the intention, or lack of it, behind every meal.

Once I understood that, eating outside food just stopped making sense to me.

I know how that sounds. But I’d learned the hard way. And once you feel the difference… you can’t unfeel it.

I am so genuinely blessed to have a loving family and a warm home. A kitchen that holds goodness in it. And I’ve started to appreciate that in a way I never did before. The simple act of a home cooked meal made with care, made with love does something to your mind that no restaurant ever could.

It adds calm. Quietly, consistently, every single day.

Letting Go of Everything That Was Disturbing My Peace

And it didn’t stop at food.

I stopped watching certain shows. The ones with dark energy, with content that sits in your mind long after the screen goes off (you know the ones). One where you’ll definitely need your headphones. I’m not going to name them. But if you know, you know.

I was tired of watching something with a constant fear that a scene will come up and I’ll have to turn down the volume.

I stopped listening to random music just for the sake of background noise. Started being more intentional about what I let into my ears, my eyes, my mind.

Eating clean. Watching clean. Talking clean.

That’s the goal. That’s the life now.

And here’s what still amazes me about all of this, I never felt like I was forcing any of it. Not once. There was no gritting of teeth, no white-knuckling through a habit change. All of it just… happened. Naturally. Effortlessly.

That’s what happens when you’re held by something greater than yourself.

When Shiva holds your hand, you don’t have to figure out the path. You just find yourself walking it. 🥹

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The Peace on the Other Side

I want to leave you with this.

Every person on this planet is searching for calm. In different ways, through different doors.

I found mine this year. Not by adding more. But by letting go.

And I am so, so grateful.

If even one part of this resonated with you. If your own year has felt like a gentle shaking-awake,I hope you let it. Don’t resist the things that are falling away. Sometimes what you’re losing is exactly what needed to go.

Trust it. 😌

What All of This Has Actually Done to Me

Every single one of these letting-go moments, whether I chose them or they were chosen for me has taught me something.

It feels like something performed an operation on me this past year. Quietly, methodically removing the beliefs and habits and attachments that were never really serving me. The false versions of myself I’d been carrying around without questioning.

And what’s left is… calmer. Stiller. More me than I’ve felt in years.

I find myself moved when I see people from across the world being drawn towards Bhakti, towards devotion, towards surrender. Because that path, it’s beyond what words can do justice to.

I actually follow a few accounts and I find their routines involving spirituality so calming. One is @kunticamille108 and the other is @bhaktinamanda.

Once you step into it, even just a little, it feels like you’ve walked through a door into something that was always real… and you were just too distracted to see it before.

That’s the only way I know how to describe it.

A different realm. And a better one. 🥹

What I Want You to Take From This

I’m not here to tell you what to believe or how to live.

But I will say this when I stopped resisting, when I surrendered my life to Krishna and allowed things to fall away that were never truly mine to hold, something opened up.

A quietness. A lightness. A version of contentment I hadn’t expected to find this year.

The past few years didn’t go the way I planned. It went better. Not in the shiny, exciting way. In the still, settled, genuinely-at-peace way.

And honestly… I think that might be the better kind.

All I want to say is.. thank you Krishna for choosing me.

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Have you had a year that shook you awake? I’d love to know what you’ve been quietly letting go of. Leave a comment below. I always love hearing from you. 🥹