About this quote

Rilke asks you to stop pushing away what you feel and to make room for the full range of experience. Let emotions arrive and pass so you can respond from clarity instead of panic. That doesn't mean giving up or ignoring problems; it means staying with a feeling long enough to see what needs attention. Can you hold discomfort for a moment and wait before you act?

When to use it

• At work, after the client screamed at me on the call, I said to myself, 'Let everything happen to you,' sat down, breathed for five minutes, and then wrote a composed reply.
• When my exam results were worse than expected, I remembered 'Let everything happen to you' and let the disappointment run its course before I planned how to study differently.
• During my physical therapy session, I felt the old injury flare up and thought, 'Let everything happen to you,' so I focused on steady breathing instead of tensing and stopping.
• When my partner started crying about their day, I held space and kept the line in mind: I let the moment be hard without trying to fix it immediately.