There are many things in life that genuinely need our attention. But there are also things that consume a great deal of our emotional energy without actually helping us. Perhaps one way of making life a little easier is to identify those unnecessary burdens and gradually set ourselves free from them.

Think about annoyance, anger, frustration, or resentment over something another person has done. Sometimes these feelings are completely understandable. Someone may behave badly towards us. They may say something hurtful, act unfairly, or do something we strongly disagree with. Naturally, we feel something in response. Setting ourselves free does not mean pretending that nothing happened or forcing ourselves not to feel.

The question comes afterwards: how much of this do I really need to carry?

If another person is behaving badly, I can tell them what I need to tell them. I can explain how their behaviour is affecting me. I can set a boundary. I can take whatever practical action is reasonably within my control.

But after that, something important changes.

Their character is not my responsibility. Their future behaviour is not entirely under my control. Changing another human being may not even be within my capacity.

Once I have done what reasonably belongs to me, continuing to fight the situation inside my own mind may achieve very little.

And this is where another problem often begins.

Something unpleasant happens, and almost immediately our mind starts constructing an imaginary web around it.

He said this, so perhaps he thinks that.

If he thinks that, perhaps he will do something else.

And if that happens, maybe something much worse will follow.

Within minutes, we may be emotionally responding not only to what actually happened, but to ten other things that have not happened at all.

That imaginary web can be exhausting.

Perhaps we can learn to recognise it and say:

This part is real. I will deal with it. The rest does not need to become my burden.

In that sense, setting ourselves free is not about becoming indifferent. It is about reducing unnecessary emotional exercise.

If something will not solve the problem, will not change the other person, and will only continue to exhaust me, perhaps I do not need to keep doing it inside myself.

Of course, this is difficult to learn when we are already angry. The moment somebody has offended us is probably not the best time to teach ourselves a new philosophy of life. At that moment, the emotional system is already active.

The better time may be when life is reasonably quiet.

Sometimes we can simply sit with ourselves and ask:

What are the unnecessarily painful parts of my life?

What repeatedly makes me angry?

What behaviour of other people do I keep carrying long after the event?

What possibilities do I repeatedly imagine and suffer from before they even happen?

What am I trying to control that actually belongs to someone else?

And, perhaps most importantly:

Which of these things can I gradually stop doing?

We may not be able to remove every difficulty from life. We may not be able to prevent people from disappointing us, misunderstanding us, or behaving in ways we dislike.

But we may be able to remove some of the unnecessary work we perform afterwards.

And when even a few of those large, repetitive emotional burdens begin to disappear, being a calmer and happier human being may become considerably easier.

Sometimes freedom does not require changing the world around us.

Sometimes it begins by recognising: I don’t need to carry this.