Letting go of thoughts to me has always felt like a task to do while meditating, and that is not the point of the meditation or of letting go of thoughts.
Rather than it being a task and something you are actively doing, I think of it more as allowing the thoughts to pass. To not try to force them out, but to just let them be. In my mind, and it may just be me, but thinking "letting them go" always felt like its something I need to do, and that is adding another thought to your mind, the thought of needing to let the thoughts go. So instead, I see it as allowing them to go, letting them be what they are - passing thoughts.
I like the analogy of a flow of water in a river. Nothing is pulling and nothing is pushing. There is no force applied, and yet there is flow. This is how I try to see my thoughts while meditating, and in general in life. Just as they came with nothing pulling them in, that's how I should let them go, without anything pushing them out.
Recently though, it feels like I have been experiencing a setback. I am finding it harder and harder to actually sit and meditate. I know that even getting lost in your thoughts while meditating is still meditating and that is still part of the practice, but I have been consciously allowing myself to get lost in thoughts, I follow them and play them out. I am no longer actually sitting and allowing the thoughts to exist, I am actively participating in them and telling the story myself.
I think this has to do a lot with my mindset lately, as it has been not as good as it has been in the past while meditating. Getting lost in good thoughts is a sort of escape which is very hard to fight for me.
