It doesn't do any good to be unhappy about something that has already happened or can't be helped. Lady Macbeth said it best when she exclaimed, "what's done is done."

There is no point in crying over spilled milk.

There will never be a time when life is just simple. There will always be time to practice accepting that. Every moment is a chance to let go and feel peaceful.

Ekhart Tolle believes we can create and maintain problems, because they give us a sense of identity. Perhaps this explains why we often hold onto our pain far beyond its ability to serve us.

We replay past mistakes over and over again in our head, allowing feelings of shame and regret to shape our actions in the present. We cling to frustration and worry about the future, as if the act of fixation somehow gives us power. We hold stress in our minds and bodies, potentially creating serious health issues, and accept that state of tension as the norm.

To accept is to let go, and to let go is to welcome peace.

The bad news is there is not a handy-dandy, easy-peasy, five-step program for letting go.

Furthermore, you can't get on a scale to find out how many things you have let go today.

Letting go is a process.

The good news, however, is that the process has everything to do with something you and I already have in spades; reality.

Letting go is all about facing and dealing with reality. Holding on is all about bargaining. Bargaining, is a magical thinking in which we tell ourselves things that are not true, in order to keep holding on. Letting go is all about reality.

Rather than deluding ourselves by making ourselves believe we have all kinds of powers we don't have, letting go is about facing the facts. We don't have the power to change other people. We don't have the power to fix other people. We can't influence them to change – we have no power to do that. We don't make others do anything. We have no power to make others do anything.

In every day life, letting go means looking realistically at whatever the situation is, taking personal responsibility for what one is going to do to protect, or take care of oneself, and then doing it.

Beyond that, it is allowing oneself to grieve, learn from what happened, and begin again.