#1264 - Letting go
Letting go.
These two words keep coming back often lately. So, this may be a good moment to take a deeper look at them. Even if, as we many concepts in my life, "letting go" has been part of more than one past apple.
Letting go of the destination.
It came up in a group conversation. A dear and wise friend who relocated abroad shared his challenge in starting his new life. He left with an ideal image of what life in the new place would be, and now he was facing the reality of it. And as it usually happens, there was a gap. He realized that he needed to let go of that image in his mind to embrace the possibilities of his new reality.
When he shared that, I realized that I often got stuck in the idea I had about how things were supposed to be, and I couldn't move forward. The primary purpose of an idea or vision is to get me to a new place in my life. Once there, I need to let go of that idea or vision if I am to move forward.
As Marshall Goldsmith famously wrote, "what got you here won't get you there." He was talking about leadership attitudes, but it also applies to visions, goals and objectives.
Letting go of the container.
How have we read that to welcome the new, we must be ready to let go of the past. That we must create new spaces for things to enter our lives.
However, when something stays in our lives long enough, it shapes its place in it. So, even if we liberate that space from what was inside, it still carries the shape of what was there. As a result, we risk forcing the new to fit into an existing form until we find ourselves in the same situation we were trying to change. To truly create space for the new that wants to emerge in our lives, we must also be willing to break old and comfortable forms, so new ones can be created.