Editors Reads Verdict
Letting Go is one of the most practically effective books in the self-help genre — Hawkins's surrender technique for releasing negative emotions has helped millions move through fear, grief, and anger more quickly than traditional approaches.
What We Loved
- The surrender technique is genuinely effective and immediately applicable
- Hawkins applies the method systematically to every major life area
- More psychologically sophisticated than most books on emotional regulation
- The calibration scale provides a useful map of emotional development
Minor Drawbacks
- Hawkins's claims about consciousness calibration lack scientific validation
- The later chapters on mystical states are less practically grounded
- Some readers find the repetition across chapters frustrating
Key Takeaways
- → Suppression and expression are both less effective than surrender for processing negative emotions
- → Resistance to an emotion is what maintains it — allowing a feeling to be present without resistance dissolves it
- → The technique: notice the feeling, allow it fully, stay with it without trying to change it
- → Every negative emotion has a counterpart positive emotion that becomes available when the negative releases
- → Consistent practice of the surrender technique produces cumulative increases in baseline wellbeing
| Author | David R. Hawkins |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Hay House |
| Pages | 312 |
| Published | September 18, 2012 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Self-Help, Spirituality |
| Difficulty | Intermediate |
| Best For | Readers seeking practical tools for emotional regulation and healing — particularly those who have found that suppressing or analysing emotions provides limited relief. |
The Core Technique
David Hawkins spent decades as a psychiatrist before developing the framework he presents in Letting Go. The central technique is simple enough to describe in a few sentences: when a negative emotion arises, allow it to be fully present without trying to suppress it, escape from it, or express it externally. Stay with the feeling itself rather than the thoughts about the feeling. Allow it fully, and it will release on its own.
This is the surrender technique, and it runs counter to much conventional emotional wisdom. We are generally taught either to suppress negative feelings (don’t show that, don’t feel that) or to express them (get it out, talk about it). Hawkins argues that both approaches maintain the emotional energy in the system — suppression drives it underground, expression reinforces it. Surrender allows it to complete and dissolve.
The Psychological Basis
Hawkins’s framework has roots in his clinical experience. He observed that patients who learned to allow rather than fight their emotional states improved more rapidly than those who struggled against them. The technique is consistent with contemporary acceptance-based therapies — Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), in particular — though Hawkins developed it within a spiritual rather than a cognitive-behavioural framework.
The Map of Consciousness
The book is structured around Hawkins’s Map of Consciousness — a hierarchy of emotional and spiritual states from shame and guilt at the bottom, through fear, anger, and pride, into courage, neutrality, willingness, and acceptance, up to reason, love, joy, and peace. The map is a useful conceptual tool for understanding emotional development, though Hawkins’s specific calibration claims should be treated as a framework rather than empirical fact.
The Application
Hawkins applies the surrender technique to every major life domain: relationships, health, finances, career, grief, fear. The systematism is one of the book’s strengths — it demonstrates that the same basic approach applies across all forms of suffering.
Our rating: 4.5/5 — One of the most practically effective books on emotional healing: the surrender technique alone justifies the read.
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