056 – Knowing When to Let Go

[00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of the podcast. In this episode, I want to talk about knowing when to let go. This is something that I've been seeing frequently in sessions quite recently. And it had me reflecting on my own life and different stages of my life where I've had to come to terms with letting go of people, of opportunities, of resources sometimes.

And so I thought I might come in and give you some insight and some points of reflection to consider when You face, inevitably, you will face this. You will face moments in your life where you will come to a decision where you've got a desire to let go or hold on. Do you continue to hold on? And this is a stumbling block for a lot of us, because rationally, we [00:01:00] may see that It makes sense for us to let go, but emotionally we have a stronger desire to hold on.

And so when it comes to moments of actually having to let go, the fear of letting go can be so scary that It has us holding on to something for much longer than is wise for us to hold on to it and can drag out all kinds of difficulties and pains and make things unnecessarily overwhelming. So, as I've reflected on this in my own life, it's been really fascinating because there have been times in my life where I've been aware that it's time to let go and I've had to make that decision, but what I've done is I've Avoided making the decision, which ironically, as William James says, [00:02:00] is making a decision.

When you have a choice to make and you choose to not decide, that is in and of itself making a decision. And so I've decided to avoid making that decision because the idea of making that decision and potentially letting go or holding on for longer felt so overwhelming and so difficult to manage that I chose to just sort of stick my head in And inevitably what that would do is just drag out the pain of indecision for a really long period of time unnecessarily.

And so when I realized that with this particular choice many, many years ago, well over a decade ago, I made the intentional choice to make a decision as quickly as I could. Whenever I was faced with big choices, so I didn't unnecessarily drag out the pain of indecision and I've got a whole podcast episode on dealing with indecision, but what that forced me to do is reflect on why we might hold on to something [00:03:00] when we are dealing with something that we know is no longer serving us consciously.

Now, what I have found is the reason we resist letting go of something is because we perceive that the pain of letting go is greater than the pain of holding on, which is why we will hold on. Now, the subtlety here, the nuance is that this perception is unconscious. So consciously we can see, rationally it makes sense, it's time for me to let this go, walk away.

Whether it's a job, whether it's shutting a business down, whether it's ending a relationship or a marriage, whatever it may be. We can see consciously, it makes total sense for us, like we're asking ourselves, like what the hell am I doing here? Why am I still involved in this? It's time for me to step away from it.

But unconsciously, the perception is that there are There's more pain associated with letting go than with staying, so the story is let's stay, because while they're both painful, [00:04:00] the pain of letting go is higher, so, you know, we'll stick with the devil that we know, rather than the devil that we don't, which is how, how painful is it going to be if we actually let go.

In our minds, it's so big that it's not even worth putting ourselves through it, which is fascinating because whenever something is a perception, I know immediately that it can be changed. Because if you think about it, through different points in your life, there have been things that you perceive to be negative.

At some point, you went through some challenge or some difficulty, some kind of hurdle you had to face or an obstacle. And at the time, you resented it. You hated it. You were probably frustrated with it. But then as time went on, given enough time for some people, you eventually look back on it with fondness going, that actually was a stepping stone towards Opportunity H, Opportunity M, Opportunity T.

Like it just took you through all these different opportunities. [00:05:00] That wouldn't have happened if that obstacle or difficulty hadn't occurred. For example, I've recently been consulting with a client who was telling me, who has recently ended a relationship, and was telling me that they were facing a lot of difficulties trying to buy a home with their partner, and was experiencing frustration, and the frustration was growing, because it felt like every attempt they made to try and purchase this place, a place, excuse me, a home, It was almost like life was closing the door on those opportunities and making it really difficult for them.

Now in hindsight, now that they've decided to end this relationship, they're actually seeing that those obstacles were actually a gift, they were helping them. Because had they actually bought a place with their partner, ending the relationship would have been much messier. Much more messier, I think, is how you say it.

But so, they're seeing that what was once a lot of, a series of hurdles and obstacles was actually turned out to be a gift. And it was just a matter of [00:06:00] time passing for them to be able to extract the gift from the obstacle or the difficulty, which you find me talking about a lot. So whenever things are perception based, we know that we can change them because you will have a perception of one event at some point, and then your perception will change.

Either through your own effort of changing your perception of it, or time passing long enough for you to develop a different perception of it through time. So then, if the struggle with letting go of something is a perception issue, and we know we can change our perception of it, then maybe the struggle of letting go, and knowing when to let go, doesn't have to be so hard.

Now, before I get into, exactly how to start getting a clearer understanding as to how to do that. I want to talk about the power distribution of the mind, which you may have heard me speak about before, but I'll share it again. [00:07:00] When we look at the mind, we can kind of divide it into two main sections.

We've got the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. Some people refer to the unconscious as the subconscious, semantics at this point. But when we look at the power that the two parts of the mind yield, the conscious mind yields, depending on your source, Anywhere between 10 and 30 percent of the power, which leaves the unconscious mind to have anywhere between 70 and 90 percent of the power, which is interesting, because going back to what I was saying earlier about knowing when to let go, you might perceive consciously and rationally, it makes no sense to stay, but you have this unconscious perception that believes it's better to hold on than to let go, and we take that understanding and look at it through the lens of the power distribution of the mind, If the unconscious mind yields more power, and the unconscious mind [00:08:00] perceives that holding on is better for you than letting go, then you can bet, at least 7 times out of 10, you will hold on.

And the reason for that is purely because the belief that has a stronger hold is the unconscious one. And this is what comes back to perception. So it's a question of finding out what the belief is, or what the unconscious perception is, and then changing that unconscious perception. So, the unconscious perception, or belief, or framework, or view, is that you can change your mind, you can actually see that there are just as many upsides in letting go as there are holding on.

And then suddenly it becomes much easier for you to actually make that move, to progress forward, and let go, and take action on that. The simplest way to do this. And this is something that I've learned from one of my teachers, John Demartini, is bringing out the unconscious motives [00:09:00] and the best way to do that is to sit down and write, what are all the, what are all the downsides of letting go?

Which doesn't make sense, right? Because you're facing a decision, you think that it might make sense for you to actually Look at all the upsides of letting go. But that's obvious and you can actually see them consciously. What you can't see is what the unconscious motive is for holding on. So if you just sit down and write down 20 or 30 different benefits to holding on.

Upsides. What are the upsides to you? How's it helping you? What are you getting from holding on? And list them out to the best of your ability and be brutally honest with yourself. If it's superficial, be superficial. If it's vain, be vain. But it means being honest with yourself. And you don't need to share this with anyone.

This is for you. But go through and list out all these different benefits of you holding on. And what you'll find really quickly [00:10:00] is you'll start to unearth these unconscious desires for why you want to hold on. So for example, having helped clients deal with business challenges to the point where they've had to shut down businesses.

And it's being part of my career something that entrepreneurs have faced when it comes to winding down their business is they hold on longer than they need to they drag the business out longer than they need to because they're worried about feeling like they failed for themselves. And so that's an unconscious motive that's keeping them running the business longer than they should be, even if on paper it, it makes sense for them to have ended the business 6 months or 12 or 18 months earlier than when they did, or they're worried about the criticism of other people and that their family and their close friends are just going to come down on them and criticize them and judge them for Having failed in their business and not being a success, or maybe there's [00:11:00] just one specific person that they've been trying to prove to their entire lives that they can do this and they've failed at it and so they beat themselves up.

And so by sitting down and doing the exercise of how will it, how is it benefiting me from holding on, you start to realize, well, I don't have to deal with these people's judgments, I'm not going to feel like a failure, I don't have to worry about people criticizing me or rejecting me. I don't have to worry about that potentially turning into people abandoning me.

And suddenly you start to see all these different motives of what's fueling your decision. The same is true if you're ending a relationship or a marriage. You're asking yourself why you're holding on. Well, I don't have to deal with the judgment of people in my local church, if you're part of a church community, or your family, if they've got strong values around marriage and family.

Or maybe there's your in laws that you're worried about, and their family judging you and criticizing you, if you've had a tense relationship with them. Whatever it may be, [00:12:00] Reflecting on what these unconscious motives are and bringing them out to the surface and seeing them consciously starts to really make you feel like you've got a deeper understanding of what's fueling your behavior and what's motivating you.

Because with your mind you're telling your hand to let go, but no matter how much you, with your mind you tell your hand to let go it's still got a really tight grip and you can't work out why, like what is this, I thought I was in control of my hand, I thought I could do this. But the more I think about it, the more I'm realizing my hand's not actually opening up.

So why am I struggling to let go? And then you realize what's fueling it is your unconscious mind. And the moment you become aware of it, you're like, Oh, I see, it's these emotions that are having me hold such a tight grip. And the moment you become aware of those, suddenly your grip loosens, and it makes it easier to let go.

The same is true for money. When you're focusing on money, and a fear of losing money, or you're [00:13:00] scared to make the wrong move when it comes to money, or you're scared to leave your job because of money, which I've seen before. People have, I've consulted people who have stayed in a job for two years longer than they wanted to, and what was fueling them was a fear around not having enough money.

And so when they started to pull those unconscious motives out of staying in a job that they resented, doing work they didn't love for people they didn't love doing the work for, when really their heart was in a completely different industry, we found that money was motivating them. And so they were holding unconsciously, holding onto the sense of security that money was giving them to fuel their lifestyle, but experiencing an incredible amount of pain in the process.

And they were using their lifestyle and spending money on their lifestyle to offset the pain of the work that we're doing. Yeah. But when they let go of the job, and they let go of their attachment to the money, they didn't need to spend so much on their lifestyle to compensate for the pain, and fulfillment came, and they felt lighter as a result.[00:14:00]

So you'd be surprised how much you're unconsciously holding onto because of some past belief that you've developed, and some past perception that's fueling you, that's influencing you. And it's keeping you stuck. And part of those things can be things like a fear of having to face the concept that you failed, which is also just a perception.

You can reframe failure. It's also a fear of being criticized by other people. This is a big concern for people because we tend to be more concerned about what other people think of us rather than being concerned with what we think of ourselves. But I'm more interested in helping you sleep at night, long term, rather than you being concerned about what other people think about you.

Because other people are going to have an opinion of you no matter what you do. Whether you do the thing that you're most aligned with, or you do the thing that they're most aligned with. They're still going to criticise you. They're still going to find something to talk about you on. So, you may as well go and do the thing you're aligned with, if they're going to criticise you about something.

Make it worthwhile. [00:15:00] You may also be worried about rejection, which is a big concern, and maybe even abandonment. That people are going to turn their back on you, and they're going to leave you high and dry. And then you're going to have to face life on your own. And I can get that that's concerning, I get that's a worry.

But I would rather that you focus on the things that you're inspired by, and by you doing so, that requires you having to let go of things, that you're holding on to, that Aren't serving you the way they were when you first attached yourself to them because at the time they introduced these People or these opportunities or these jobs or this money or whatever it is into your life It was serving you it was bringing value to you and you had associated value with having those things in your life Which is why you attached to them.

You saw more benefits than drawbacks. You saw more positives than negatives. So you went click I'll take that. But then over time, you've evolved, the context of your life has evolved and changed. And so [00:16:00] you've been able to experience a completely different reality as time has gone on, but you still got this old belief that holding onto this is still serving me, even though it's not.

And so it's important to update the belief and update the perception to help you realize that it's time to let go. It could be something as simple as a product line within a business that you've been holding onto for too long. Or a role within a business. That you know you want to step into a different position within a company, but you're scared to let go of the security of the current job.

Or it's going and starting a business. Or going and starting a relationship. You might have more benefits associated with staying single, because at some point you felt like it was safer to be single than it was to be vulnerable and hurt in a relationship, because of some past relationship that caused you pain.

These are the different things that we tend to hold onto that we don't realize. So reflect on what that is. See if you can do this exercise where you start to draw out and tease out these [00:17:00] unconscious motives that are influencing your behavior. And by doing so, it's like turning the light on in a dark room.

Suddenly you can see what's going on, you can see what's influencing your behavior, which gives you a greater sense of empowerment. And that's when you can start to do some really cool things in your life. All aspects of your life. It's not limited to any one area. So be honest with yourself. And then start working on changing your perception.

And seeing that. Well, it's actually causing me more pain to hold on than it is to let go. There's this beautiful depiction of, um, what I'm trying to share here in a book called, uh, Big Panda, Tiny Dragon. It's a beautiful illustrated book. And there's one page in this illustration of this tiny little dragon, they're like two friends, and they're sort of contrasted against each other really beautifully.

And this tiny little dragon, there's [00:18:00] a depiction of this tiny dragon holding on to a, an autumn leaf, so a leaf that's dried out, fallen off a tree. And it's blowing through the wind and this tiny little dragon is holding on to this leaf. And whilst holding on to it, it's showing that there's wind blowing in this, um, beautiful picture.

And it says under that, let go or be dragged, which I think is beautiful. Too often we hold on to the cart that is dragging us through town. Dragging us through the mud, and we don't realize that no one's forcing us to hold on to that. It's our own grip, but we hold on. It's a choice we're making, conscious choice, to hold on.

So, the moment you let go of the cart, you stop being dragged through the mud. And you can stand up, dust yourself off, and get back to what it is that you actually want to be doing, rather than being at the [00:19:00] whim of the cart, and whoever's driving the cart. Let go. Start directing your life in the direction you want to take it.

rather than being at the whim of everybody else's decisions and society's expectations. Go and do your life. Go be you. I know that's a cliche and you've probably heard that a million times and it's hard to know what to actually do with that from an execution standard point, like how do I actually go and execute on being me?

But the more you're honest and the more you reflect on who you are and what you're aligned with and you start taking small steps towards Living in alignment with that, the more you'll find that your general sense of contentment and fulfillment will expand, it'll just grow, and as a natural consequence, you'll find it harder and harder to hold on to things for longer than necessary, because you'll find that [00:20:00] you won't want to hold on to things that conflict with you wanting to be you, and you wanting to live life according to your terms.

So, my hope is, that what you take away from this, you'll It's that you can let go. It's a choice. It's a conscious and unconscious choice that's wrestling with one another. And so by working out what the unconscious motives are that are fueling you, that will help you let go of the grip on whatever it is that you're grasping so tightly and stop suffocating opportunities in your life.

And it might actually open you up to opportunities you never thought were possible.

Go and do that exercise. You'll be surprised at how well it works. My hope is that you got some value from this episode, and I'm looking forward to seeing you in the next one. I'm Georgio Genis. Thanks so much for [00:21:00] listening.