Note: From Life in Flux (Baker 2024). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
NAVIGATIONAL SKILL #3: Let Go
I release that which keeps me from moving forward.
If you’ve ever seen a trapeze artist flying through the air, then you’ve witnessed the breathtaking moment of suspense when they release one swing before grabbing onto another.
In that moment, they are suspended.
While they are seemingly weightless high above the ground, as an audience, we’re suspended with them. We’re subject to any number of our own emotions, perhaps even simultaneously. We might cover our eyes, unable to bear the tension and terrified they will fall. We might lean forward on the edge of our seats, holding our breath with anticipation and hope. We might cry out or laugh, overcome with the suspense of it all.
For many of us, letting go feels absolutely terrifying.
COMMON POSTURE: I keep white-knuckling, even after I sense that my way is not working.
UNCOMMON POSTURE: I let go, trusting God and embracing whatever comes next.
Letting go isn’t something we can first decide to do in a moment of crisis. The trapeze artist cannot do a trick for the very first time at a sold-out show. I couldn’t learn to let go in the face of an oncoming collision. We can’t learn to fall as we’re falling. If we have not trained and practiced those instincts over time, they won’t be there in the heat of the moment. They won’t help us when life is in flux.
Here’s the thing: without the ability to let go, we’ll inevitably revert back to our old ways – even if we’ve just woken up to the fact that they won’t get us where we want to go. In his book Necessary Endings, psychologist and author Henry Cloud writes, “For us to ever get to a new level, a new tomorrow, or the next step, something has to end. Life has seasons, stages, and phases. For there to be anything new, old things always have to end, and we have to let go of them.”
In order to make our way through flux, we must be willing to change. And in order to change, we must learn to let go. We see this developmentally with babies who become toddlers who grow into children who eventually become adults. We see it in the rhythms of the seasons as the autumn gives way to a winter that spring promises to follow. And we see it when we learn to let go of that which traps us in reactivity loops or leaves us feeling stuck for the long term.
Learning to Let Go
During a challenging financial season at the organization where Lisa had worked for many years, the board of directors decided to make a leadership change and asked her to step in as the interim president. A self-described rescuer driven by a sense of outsized responsibility, she agreed. Lisa spent the first sixty days on a listening tour – asking people about the work of the organization and what they thought needed to happen next. As she did, she immediately found herself with much more than a financial issue on her hands. By listening to people’s stories, she discovered there were really tough and destructive relational dynamics at play among key stakeholders in the organization. Because of this, the organization’s reputation had taken a hit among both stakeholders and folks in the larger community.
A few months into this interim role, Lisa was completely overwhelmed. Her proverbial boat was taking on too much water, and she had no good way to bail it out. She was deep in the fog – with no clear picture of what to do next.
Not really knowing what to do, she called her close friend, who also happened to be involved with the organization. Let’s call him Sam. She relayed the results of her listening tour, breaking the news that the current way she, the staff, and the board were functioning wasn’t working. Not only was it unsustainable financially but people were siloed, and there weren’t effective communication channels.
Sam’s response surprised her. In short, he told Lisa he didn’t see a problem at all. She was simply blowing things out of proportion. Lisa was heartbroken, not to mention exhausted, frustrated, and now confused. While she didn’t quite have the words for it at the time, she could sense that the skills that had gotten her to where she was weren’t going to get her out of the fog. Her internal narrative of self-reliance, which worked so well elsewhere, was simply not working now. In order to navigate forward, she needed to do something different.
But she didn’t, at least not at first. Instead, Lisa thought she could convince people to change, and that’s what she kept trying to do. It was only after several difficult conversations with stakeholders, in which the needle didn’t budge, that one of the other members, Dave, told Lisa a hard truth.
He said, “You’re allowing this system to define you.”
What followed those words was a monthslong journey of letting go.
At first, Lisa wasn’t quite sure what Dave’s comment meant, but she could feel it was true. She was starting to sense that her own rescuing tendencies caused her to over-function in an effort to please everyone, even as she felt like she was drowning. She was trying to white-knuckle the way forward at all costs.
As it turned out, there was a lot she needed to let go of:
- unhealthy relationships
- a limited internal narrative about who she was
- her own coping behaviors
- the need to be in control
Her ability to navigate a very disruptive season rested on her willingness to grow. As the person in charge, she felt it was counterintuitive to let go. But because nothing else was working, what other choice did she have?
So, she started unclenching her fists.
As she slowly released her grip on relationships and the need to be in control, she felt a lot like that trapeze artist, suspended in the in-between and, at the same time, still very much subject to the rhythms of normal life.
She became awake to more. She started cutting the engine and taking incremental steps forward. Slowly, she began to make her way in the fog.
Though the details are her own, Lisa’s story is not uncommon. In our work, she and I see five recurring themes when it comes to what many of us need to let go of.
1. The stories and habits that got us here.
What got us here isn’t necessarily bad; it just might not serve us as life is in flux. Sure, some of our habits are unhealthy and need to be released, like saying yes to projects and requests that overextend us. But other times, it’s more nuanced. It might be that the compete-with-myself mindset that got us through graduate school now stands in the way of expressing gratitude to our teammates. It may have served us before, but now we have to let it go.
2. The coping behaviors and skills we have developed for self-protection.
Over time, we all develop habits we believe will keep us safe and secure when life is in flux. These may include becoming distant or aloof when things get challenging or, alternatively, heating up and becoming angry or judgmental. Of course, we have all the numbing behaviors to deal with too. Bingeing TV, overeating, drinking, shopping – we pick our poison. We put up barriers between us and other people to keep from getting hurt, but that also keeps us distant from the relationships we need most. We have to let go of the things we think are protecting us in order to move forward. It’s human to need to cope with uncertainty and change, but the very behaviors we set up to protect ourselves are an obstacle on the path forward.
3. The beliefs that limit us.
We all have thoughts that have settled in as deeply held beliefs. Sometimes that’s for the better, but often these hold us back. I am only worth what I produce or I have to find the perfect job/spouse/friend group/house to be happy aren’t the kinds of thoughts that ground us during change. They aren’t doing anything to help us move forward when things feel uncertain. Once we begin to uncover and examine these beliefs in the light of day, they can be renarrated based on the truths of Scripture, which offers a new kind of freedom. For example, I have worth and dignity because I belong to God, not because of what I do or I find my contentment in Christ, not in my circumstances.
4. The unhealthy relationships we have with individuals or systems.
When Dave told Lisa, “You’re allowing this system to define you,” it was a light bulb moment for her. Because she was a lifelong rescuer and people pleaser, her default mode was to identify the person or persons in an organization whose expectations mattered most. Then she would set about doing whatever was needed to meet those expectations. She had several relationships built on this dynamic that were causing her to operate way outside of who she was and how she could contribute best. As she learned to set boundaries and identify which expectations were realistic and which were not, she had to slowly let go of the relationships in which these boundaries and new ways of engaging were not respected or honored.
5. The need to control.
Control is about keeping ourselves safe. More often than we’d like to admit, it’s based in fear. We fear being controlled, being taken advantage of, being trapped in pain, or being harmed in some way. While our individual fears may be different, they breed the same need for control. When we are grasping for control, we cannot engage in healthy relationships, trust, or collaboration. We often work against the very things we say we want because the intensity of our fear keeps us from being present to ourselves and others. Control is not always bad or unhealthy, but when it creates highly restrictive boundaries that keep us out of relationships and the love God has for us in the midst of flux, then control has to be released and healed.
COMMON POSTURE: I stay attached to habits, patterns, and rhythms that no longer serve me but feel familiar.
UNCOMMON POSTURE: I release habits, patterns, and rhythms that no longer serve me and slowly replace them with new ways of being, doing, and showing up.
For months on end, Lisa cried in church every Sunday. As she did, she sensed God inviting her into a new way of being. This incredibly disruptive crisis – in which everything she knew to be true felt in flux – was also an opportunity for her to relearn to be a human being, not just a human doing.
As Lisa slowly and reluctantly let go of the story that she could save the day, let go of the impulse to take charge too quickly, and let go of her desire to control people and circumstances, she also put herself at the start of a journey of really learning to trust God and a close circle of friends. She engaged her own team of support in the form of an executive coach, a therapist, and a spiritual director who, over time, helped her let go of all that she was white-knuckling.
Stepping Back and Letting Go
Oftentimes, letting go happens after we pause and step back. Leadership experts call this “getting on the balcony.” We spend so much of our time and energy on the proverbial dance floor of life, but while on the floor it can be hard to gain perspective. We can’t see how the actions we take impact others or if we’re off-rhythm from the music. By stepping back and getting on the balcony, our perspective widens. We can not only see what’s going on across the entire dance floor but gain insight into how our actions impact others.
Rather than busying ourselves with activity or over-functioning, we learn to stop, cut the engine, listen, and wait until we have a clear sense of how to proceed forward. As we learn to do this, we get clearer and clearer, not only about who we are but also about the work that is really ours to do (and the work that’s not!). As we take small step after small step back, we’re often simultaneously, ever so slowly, letting go.
One of the most difficult parts of stepping back is that we see what’s causing our worry and anxiety more clearly. With that comes a difficult part of letting go: shifting our energy away from that which we are anxious about but have very little control over.
You might feel upset about a client who sends you a demanding email after hours. Or you may be overwhelmed by your sister-in-law who has too many toxic traits to list. Or you could be anxious because you send your kids to school in a country where we have an epidemic of gun violence. In each of these instances, you don’t really have control over what other people do. You can only control how you show up in the world and respond to the frustrating, overwhelming, or frightening parts of life. The rest? Well, you have the agency to let it go.
One of the most helpful ways to start to let go of the things we worry about but don’t actually have control over is by visualizing them. Consider the image below, which was first popularized by leadership author Stephen Covey in the late 1980s. His original illustration has been adapted and improved on millions of times and used widely over the years as a helpful tool to get clear on where we should focus our attention.
In these concentric circles, the outer circle is the circle of concern, where we place all those things that we care about but have no ability to directly affect. The middle ring is the circle of influence, where we place things we may be able to affect and that deserve some energy and attention. Finally, the inner circle is the place where we actually can control what happens.
Commonly, we spend an inordinate amount of energy on things in the outermost circle – things we’re concerned about but cannot control or even influence. This is often heightened when our personal or professional lives feel in flux.
The more we shift our energy and attention to the inner circle, the more we’ll be able to reduce our worry, anxiety, and stress. And the more we’ll be able to let go of what is hindering us when things are changing and the future is uncertain.
Of course, we cannot do this without first stepping back to become aware of where we’re focused and what it’s costing us. Once we do, however, we can shift our thinking. Understanding this paradigm can help us change the way we perceive and show up to all types of situations.
For example, I might move away from thoughts like this: My sister-in-law is so toxic! She’s the worst. (Full disclosure: my sister-in-law is an amazing human, but you get the point.) Then I can move toward thoughts like this: I know I can only be around my sister-in-law in limited doses. So, during a family gathering, I need to take breaks for myself and communicate about those breaks in clear and loving ways to my partner.
One way to identify the different things in each circle is to list all the things that are on your mind today. Include everything causing you to worry or feel stressed. Your list may include things in your political, economic, work, family, or community realms. Make the list (at least the first time!) as exhaustive as possible.
- my grocery list
- bullying at my kid’s school
- racism in my city
- how my presentation went yesterday
- my narcissistic colleague
Once you have created your list, ask yourself the following questions for each item to determine if it should receive a red, yellow, or green check:
- Is this in the past or the future? If so, give it a red check.
- Is this related to the actions or opinions of others? Red check.
- Is this related to things happening or circumstances around me? Red check.
- Is this related to how others take care of themselves? Red check.
- Is this related to things in the present? If so, give it a yellow check.
- Is it related to the people I lead or interact with regularly? Yellow check.
- Is it related to the systems I work within? Yellow check.
- Is it related to the circumstances I directly affect? Yellow check.
- Is it related to my thoughts and actions? If so, give it a green check.
- Is it related to how I react or respond? Green check.
- Is it related to where I am focusing my energy and attention? Green check.
- Is it related to the boundaries I have in place with others? Green check.
If you have mostly red and yellow checks, then you’re likely focusing enormous amounts of energy on things that may concern you (red) or that perhaps you can influence (yellow) but over which you have very little actual control. Only the things on your list that got green checks are things you can directly control. Take note that these green checks are focused on how you manage yourself. Not others, not politicians, not even the latest natural disaster. These things genuinely deserve our concern, and there may be things we can do in small ways to affect them. But generally, day in and day out, we can really only manage ourselves. It’s when we come to terms with this reality that we can move forward from a place of peace, not fear and anxiety. It’s not that we never think about gun violence, or how racism impacts our kids, or if an economic recession is looming. It’s that we reframe how we engage these things. We should continue to be concerned, and we can influence the way forward, but rarely can we singlehandedly control outcomes.
Getting this enables us to let go.
Michaela O’Donnell, executive director, Max De Pree Center for Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary; and Lisa Pratt Slayton, director, CityGate
