Everybody has probably heard about this concept at one point in time or another in their lives. If you have a goal, let it go, release it and it will somehow get fulfilled one way or another.
I cringed when I first heard that because I knew most people would eat it up as it does seem like the quick and easy out, only to get disillusioned when it didn’t work out for them.
If you weigh half a ton and want to lose 350 pounds, letting go of that goal is not going to work.
If you’re a mailroom clerk of a global Fortune 500 company and want to become CEO of it, letting go of that goal isn’t going to get you there.
It’s not going to work.
But it does work.
The catch is you need to view it in the proper perspective. You need to put it in the big picture. That’s key. It’s NOT the picture itself. It’s just a small portion of it.
What are we really talking about when we’re letting go? In a nutshell, we’re saying when we “let go”, we trust it will all work out in our favor. What we want to happen will happen. In other words, we believe. We have faith. We let go of outcome and that begins to drive our behavior. Why?
Because your mind is no longer clouded with fear, doubt, anxiety of whether or not it will work out. You let all that go and by doing so, believe it will all work out and get peace of mind in the process. With that peace of mind, you begin to focus on the present and by doing so, you focus on what you DO NOW and that’s key. What you DO NOW matters.
You worry less and you’re more confident and you take more action. You start planting seeds with every action you take and those seeds will start to bear fruit later on and when they do, when you reap what you sowed, you attribute that to letting go to whatever force you believe in, but when you trace back your steps, it was because of those seeds you planted that led to getting whatever you wanted.
The concept of letting go is often painted as some mystical and magical thing, but it’s just another form of believing – of having faith.
If you knew you couldn’t fail at some endeavor, you would do it. Letting go of the goal is another way of telling yourself that you know you wouldn’t fail. But it’s not just about letting go and sitting on your butt doing nothing at all and expecting everything you want to achieve to fall right into your lap. Your BS meter should be off the charts if anybody tells you that’s all you need to do. It’s not true at all and I think that’s the problem with regards to this particular piece of advice of letting go. It’s painted as the solution to ALL things and everything else is swept under the rug or pushed aside. It doesn’t work that way. Remember, it’s not the picture itself; it’s just a small portion of it.
Letting go also helps to clear our mind and gives us space – space to make errors, to be flexible, to follow our instincts, and to not get so down when the new things we try don’t go the way we plan. We let go of outcome of the small things and by doing so, get curious. It doesn’t matter what the results are. Just that we get curious and do things. And we’re able to do those things because we’re more open to trying new things that will help get us what we want, because we know anyway that it’s going to happen one way or another.
Here’s the thing though.
Very few people will be able to genuinely let go in the beginning. It sounds great in theory, but most people will not be able to practice this particular concept in the beginning.
It’s like driving. At first, you’re so tense and you want to make sure everything is right that you press the accelerator and brake awkwardly repeatedly, and as a result, you stop and go, stop and go, stop and go, turn awkwardly, weave in and out of the lanes, hit garbage cans, etc., but with practice, everything becomes second nature. You let go of your need to triple check and control everything and you just let go and go with the flow.
So it’s only after you’ve had experience, have seen evidence that you can indeed get things done, that you can accomplish your goals, that you can start to let go little by little and essentially let go of most, if not all of your fear and doubt and start to believe – to really believe.
Letting go is just another way of having strong belief and faith that we can accomplish what we set out to do. It also makes us curious and gives us “space” to try new things and not worry so much about the outcome of those things, since we know that one way or another, we WILL accomplish what we set out to do in the first place.
And letting go doesn’t happen overnight. The courage to really let go will be built little by little until you’ll genuinely be able to let go.
It’s not the answer to all things. It’s just a small portion of it.
