Letting Go

16 Dec 2011 1 Comment

by fearlesspetula in Uncategorized

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about letting go.  Maybe it’s because it’s the end of the year.  Perhaps it’s because I know a few people who have experienced the loss of loved ones this year.  And probably because, as a coach, one of things I do is to work with people to help them let go — let go of old patterns of thinking that are no longer serving their growth, old expectations that keep them from expressing their full potential, old ways of being in the world that is more concerned with what others think of them rather than what is meaningful for them, even old dreams that may have fueled them once upon a time but which are no longer in alignment with who they have become.  By letting go of all this stuff, space is made for new thoughts, new dreams, new life to come into their minds, hearts, and beings.  I believe that we need to periodically do a metaphorical spring cleaning of the mind so that those ideas, thoughts, commitments, etc. that are dead are no longer allowed to continue taking up space and energy.

In other words, how can anything new come in if we never let go of anything?

We know this so well in terms of romance.  How will anyone new ever come in when the old one is still taking up space in the mind and heart?

While the idea letting go in the realm of romance is pretty easy to digest and then put into practice, I’ve found that it can be a little trickier to apply to some other areas of life.  Take, for example, the work front.

If you happen to have a miserable, soul-sucking job that takes all the joy and light out of you, why are you staying in it?  This is especially true if you have even the tiniest inkling of what else you’d rather be doing.  It takes a tremendous amount of courage to turn away from a sure thing (even if that sure thing is killing you) in pursuit of a longing, a desire, a dream.

But aren’t you worth it?  What is the point of a life in which you spend the majority of your hours locked away at some job for a mere paycheck?  I don’t care how big that paycheck is: if it makes you miserable, then the costs are just too high.

Yes, I know you have bills to pay.  But what if you did some planning, saved some money, and then quit without necessarily having all the answers to the question, “what’s next?”

Scary, right?  I know!  But my personal experience is that something else will present itself.  And I can say that, in almost every single instance, the unexpected things that showed up were better than anything that would have been available to me had I stayed where I was.

More than that, my experience — in my life as well as in that of my clients — is that the act of doing something a little scary and motivated by something that comes from deep within (rather than from the rational mind) tends to effect shifts in perspective that can be, ultimately, profoundly liberating.

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