Removing Large Attachments
The Data We Dont Need
My daughter loves horses, I mean she is obsessed, she told everyone from the age of 4 that she was “born to ride!”. I have thousands of photos and videos of her equine journey from the day I threw her a pony party for her 5th birthday, to the day I bought her first pony Fudge for her 10th birthday - to winning her first showjumping competition at age 12 and everywhere and everything in-between. If you have children and a phone you know exactly how it goes!
Here we are capturing moments in time and synchronistically filling up our storage! Can you see where I’m going with this? As I sat there, finger-scrolling through this digital déjà vu, something clicked. Not my camera - that had done quite enough clicking for one day - but rather a realisation about how we collect and carry things in our lives. While I was obsessing over these duplicates, I couldn’t help but wonder “wasn't I doing the same thing with weightier matters of the heart?”.
Imagine, we are all just like our phones, we only have so much capacity, so much storage, how many of us have said this - “I’ve had all that I can take” “I can only take so much!”. I discovered on one particular autumnal day, when two seemingly unrelated digital disasters conspired to deliver an unexpected lesson in personal transformation, that technology has a peculiar way of illuminating our deepest human truths. The first revelation arrived as I stood by the riding arena, attempting to capture my daughter's progress on her pony. My phone, overwhelmed by ten nearly identical videos of the same canter transition, finally surrendered with a decisive "Storage Full." Simultaneously, at home earlier that week, my laptop was in the midst of its own rebellion, crashed mid-upgrade, its screen as dark as my mood!
In these moments of technological failure, I recognised a pattern so profound it nearly took my breath away. Here we are, a modern race consuming and drowning in digital clutter - screenshots of inspirational quotes we never revisit, blurred recipes we never attempt, countless iterations of the same moment that we intend to edit and delete to get the perfect shot - while simultaneously drowning in internal operating systems that haven’t been assessed, cleared or updated since childhood.
The parallels were startling. My phone's settings alerted me to "Remove Large Attachments," while my mentor had been suggesting essentially the same thing for months. My laptop refused to run new software on outdated hardware, much like my consciousness struggled to embrace new patterns of thinking while clinging to obsolete beliefs. After scrolling through the plethora of digital content on my phone, I finally have enough free space to take the 3654th video of my daughter riding her horse - and she’d already finished and was off untacking in the stables.
We all have our collections, don't we? The small things we gather - our particular way of organising clothes, our driving quirks, our daily rituals. But beneath these surface patterns lie the heavyweight collections, the ones that truly shape our lives: The stories we tell ourselves about who we are. The wounds we've transformed into identities. The emptiness we try to fill with food, drink, or endless striving. The unworthiness we've accepted as truth. These aren't just random acquisitions. Like antique furniture passed down through generations, we inherit beliefs and behaviours that may have made sense in our parents' lives but perhaps don't serve us in ours. They take up space in our emotional homes, these handed-down certainties about:
What makes us loveable
How to stay safe
What we deserve
Who we're allowed to become
We're all carrying attachments, some downloaded into our internal hard drives during those crucial early years, between zero and seven, when our original operating system was being installed. These aren't mere files we can drag to the trash; they're core programs running silently in the background, influencing every new task we attempt. I began to reflect on some of these attachments, there beside the stables: Large Attachments Consuming Space:
The inherited belief systems of family trauma
Outdated software of self-doubt
Corrupted files of unworthiness
Emergency backups of fear-based reactions
The truth about upgrades, both digital and personal, is that they require more than just new information. I'd spent years reading and listening to self-help books, courses, therapy sessions, and wisdom talks, expecting each new piece of knowledge to automatically instal and integrate. But like my crashed computer demonstrated so elegantly, new software demands compatible hardware.
But here's the crucial understanding: we can't run new programs of self-love and confidence while operating on an old one of self-worth. We can't execute advanced emotional software through an outdated one of self-expression. The entire system needs attention.
The solution, unlike my pre-2015 MacBook that required complete replacement, lies in our remarkable human capacity for regeneration. Our upgrade path is paved with love, not the superficial kind that promises quick fixes, but the profound variety that acknowledges our entire need for restoration. The process begins with acceptance. Just as my phone needed me to acknowledge its storage limits and its capacity, we must recognise our own current emotional and physical capacity, just like my computer was hinting heavily at the need for retirement. The goal isn't to shame the old system but to prepare it for evolution. Every book we've read, every painful experience we've endured, every moment of growth we've attempted, they haven't been wasted. They've been preparing us.
Removing outdated, repeated and stored habits, beliefs and perceptions is like having a mental Marie Kondo who helps you sort through your emotional data, keeping what sparks joy and respectfully thanking the rest for its service before letting it go… in the eternal bin thank you very much. So here's my challenge to you: What large attachments are you ready to remove? What beliefs are taking up space that could be filled with something more wonderful? What childhood programs are you still running that deserve a major upgrade?
This is your invitation to begin your own system upgrade:
Ask yourself:
What upgrade is your system ready to receive?
What attachments will you remove first?
What downloads do you desire?
Then:
Audit Your Storage:
Identify the attachments consuming your emotional, mental and physical space - what can you grow and what can go?
Check Your Hardware:
Which parts of your internal support system need upgrading? which parts need nurturing? What need restoring?
Prepare for Installation:
Create an environment conducive to change - clear the mental emotional and physical clutter inside and out - this takes time, planning and patience.
Begin the Upgrade:
Whether through coaching, PSYCH-K®, therapy, or conscious work start taking the steps towards the version of you you deserve and desire to be.
Allow for Integration:
Give yourself time to fully implement the new operating system - create a realistic plan - change takes time, courage and commitment.
The invitation is simple, though not easy:
Notice what language you're carrying in the data you’ve stored
Question its current value
Remove what is no longer wanted or required
Create space for what could be
Decide what new language and experiences you want to download
Allow new patterns to emerge
So here we stand, at the intersection of who we've been and who we're becoming. Each moment, like those horse-riding photos, has played its part in bringing us here. They weren't redundant after all - they were practice shots, each one teaching us something about our angle, timing, light and perspective. Just as every belief we've carried, every pattern we've developed, has been preparing us for this moment of conscious choice.
The question isn't whether you're ready to accept your outdated data - but rather, whether you're ready to hit delete. To see those old beliefs not as burdens, but as stepping stones that led you here, to this moment of recognition.
Perhaps you've been feeling it lately, that gentle nudge from within, suggesting there might be more space available in your emotional landscape than you've allowed yourself to imagine. That whisper asking what might be possible if you began to sort through those inherited beliefs with the same care and intention you'd give to your to do lists. The journey of decluttering your data awaits, and you don't have to walk it alone. When you're ready to hit that "Remove Large Attachments" button on your physical, emotional and mental operating system, you don't have to do it alone. Sometimes the best upgrades happen in community, with a little help from therapy, coaching, or friends who aren't afraid to hold your hand while you press "delete."
This is part of The Repairenting Project's exploration of how we carry and release physical, emotional and mental patterns. Join me for deeper work in this space through my workshops and individual sessions. Contact me here for more information.
Heres to your upgrade!