The Art of Letting Go…
I've always found the phrase “just let it go” a little too simple. It assumes we can decide something no longer matters and simply move on.
In my experience, that's not really how life works. The things that happen to us become part of our story. Some have a bigger impact than others, and some stay with us much longer than we expected.
Peter Crone talks about the idea of “letting be” rather than letting go, and I like that way of thinking about it. Instead of trying to get rid of something or forcing ourselves to move past it, what if we let it be what it is? We can acknowledge that it happened and that it mattered without continuing to give it the same influence over our lives.
We all have things from our past that show up in how we live today. Sometimes we're very aware of them. Other times, we don't realize they're still there until we start paying attention to the choices we're making.
It could be something that didn't work out and now you're hesitant to try again. Someone may have said something critical years ago and their words still affect how you see yourself. Or you may be holding onto an idea of how you thought your life was supposed to look by now.
Some experiences truly change us, so this isn't about “getting over it.” There are circumstances and parts of our lives that may always bring up certain feelings when we think about them. Letting go doesn't have to mean we erase any of that.
After spending more than 20 years with the same company, I realized there were things I carried with me even after that chapter ended. Ideas about who I was, what success was supposed to look like and what I thought I should do next. The circumstances had changed, but some of my thinking hadn't. I had to start separating what was still true for me from what simply belonged to that chapter of my life.
So, recently I've been thinking about a different question:
Is this still true for me, or am I continuing to make choices based on an old experience?
Maybe that's the art of letting go. Being able to say, this happened. It mattered. It affected me. But it doesn't get to make every decision for me anymore.
Then, it becomes less about getting rid of the past and more about making room for what's next—or even just making room for what's possible.
When something has a little less hold on us, we have more space to make a different choice, see something from a new perspective or consider something we weren't quite ready for before. We may even create space for something we can't see yet.
That's what we'll be exploring at our next Clarity Conversation on October 1: The Art of Letting Go. We'll spend some time reflecting on what we're still carrying and what we might be ready to carry a little differently.
If this resonates with you, I'd love to have you join us.