When was the last time you finished something important and allowed yourself to enjoy it?
Not just for a minute, while you are already thinking about what is next, but really enjoy it.
If you had to remember, this article is for you. I want to tell you about something I know very well: The Demands. That voice that asks you for more, that reviews everything you do, and always finds something that was missing. And I want to show you how Ho’oponopono, this very simple Hawaiian art, helped me let go of it after years of carrying it around without realizing it.
No one demanded as much of me as I did of myself
For many years, I was an accountant. Numbers, deadlines, balance sheets. Everything had to be perfect, and I felt comfortable there, because doing everything right was my way of feeling safe.
The problem was that I could never stop. If something went right, I was already thinking about what was next. If something went wrong, I repeated it in my head a thousand times. I complied with everyone. But with me, I never complied.
And the funniest thing is that no one asked me for it. My family didn’t ask me. My clients didn’t ask me for it. The one who wouldn’t let go was me. Sound familiar?
What I learned over the years, and through a lot of cleaning, is that demands are not our way of behaving. It’s a memory. A program we learned, often from a young age, that taught us that by behaving well and complying, we could win the affection of others. We grew, and the list only got longer.
The good news is this: whatever is a memory can be let go.
The first price: your peace
The demands take place in silence, and the first thing that is taken away is peace.
Think about it for a moment. What good is it for you to achieve everything if you can’t enjoy it? You reach the finish line, and your mind is already racing to the next one. You rest, and guilt appears, as if stopping is a waste of time. Even on vacation, you are solving pending tasks in your head.
That is not a responsibility. It is a memory repeating itself. And as long as no one is watching, it continues to charge you every day.
The second price: your relationships
This is the price we see least often, and the one that hurts the most when we do.
Demands never stay with us alone. What we demand of ourselves inside, sooner or later, we demand from others: from our children, from our partner, from the people we work with. We correct, we judge, we expect things to be done as they should be, and the people we love feel like it’s never enough, even if we never tell them in words.
In Ho’oponopono, I learned something that changed the way I see all this: the people in front of me are mirrors. They show me what I carry inside. If the demand shows up in how I look at my child or my team, it’s not something I have to correct in them. It’s a memory of mine, and it’s up to me to clean it up. When you change, everything changes.
The third price: your inspiration
This is the most counterintuitive of the three, and I say this from my own experience: demanding more of yourself doesn’t take you any further. It makes everything heavier, because what you lose along the way is inspiration.
When the intellect is busy controlling every detail, pushing, correcting, there is no room left for anything new to arrive. The best ideas of my life didn’t come from trying harder.
They arrived when I let go. Inspiration needs space, and demands take up everything.
That’s why I called my first book The Easiest Way. Because I discovered, after years of doing everything by dint of push, that life didn’t have to be so difficult. There was another way: let go and trust.
How the demands are released with Ho'oponopono
Here’s what I like to share the most because it’s so simple. You don’t need to analyze where your demand comes from. You don’t need to relive your childhood or understand every memory. That is wanting to solve it from the intellect, and the intellect is precisely the one that is exhausted from so much control.
Ho’oponopono proposes something else: cleaning. Giving permission to erase what you don’t know how to erase.
The next time you notice that voice that says, “something is missing”, “you could have done more”, don’t fight with it.
Recognize it: it’s a memory, it’s not you. And in silence, say thanks. Or I love you. I have a tool that was born from my own story and that I use to this day: I tell myself, “I’m not going to worry”. I let go and trust.
You don’t need to feel it. You don’t have to make it perfect, and this is important, because I know people who even clean with a demand. You say thank you, you let go, and you go on living. Cleaning does its job even if your mind doesn’t understand it.
Would you like to work on this topic in depth?
Every month, I open a live space where we work together on a specific Ho’oponopono topic with exercises, cleaning, and real practice.
If this article reached you, chances are the monthly class is exactly what you need now.
In each meeting, we explore the root of the topic, do cleaning moments, practice exercises, and provide a space for questions and answers where you can share your situation and receive direct guidance.
It’s not a class where you get all the answers. It’s a space to reconnect with the part of you that tastes best.
And in the meantime, I’ll leave you with a question to take away: what would you do differently today if you didn’t have to prove anything to anyone, not even yourself?
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
With love,
Mabel Katz
