How do you let go of something that hurts to let go?
“Things don’t always go the way you planned. Fortunately.” @ The_Fog_Always_ Lifts
How do you let go of something that hurts to let go, or means a lot to you? I am exploring this idea today as I am in the process of making one big change in my writing practice. I have decided to shift my monthly blog post to a quarterly post as of April 2024. To spend more time and energy on some of my other writing projects, I must make room by letting something go. So the monthly post is going.
Letting go is not easy. It’s a skill that takes practice. I talk with clients about letting go of colleagues, institutions, projects, clutter, books, grudges, guilt, children, partners, perceptions of failure, fear of success, and toxic relationships. Letting go of my monthly post is hard. I learn so much each time I write, and like most writers, I learn what I think about an idea by writing.
Letting go to move on
In my life, I’ve had to let a lot of different things go. I let go of my family of origin to go to college. I let go of graduate school plans to start a family. I let go of ideas of a family with a father, mother, and children when my first husband died in a car wreck. I let go of my children for them to fledge successfully; and as I age, I am learning to let go of old friendships or business relationships I have simply outgrown because we have gone in different directions.
You can probably name many things you have also let go of over a lifetime.
Learning to let go of relationships that no longer serve me has been particularly difficult compared to letting go of projects or physical things like books. Though I must admit, as a bibliophile, parting with books is truly difficult for me! Once I enter a relationship with another human being, I operate from the premise that the relationship will continue indefinitely.
It follows that letting go of people in my life brings up loyalty issues for me. Old voices tell me loyalty is more important than how I am treated. That if I want a relationship to succeed, I must do all the work. The truth is putting energy into a one-way relationship just drains me and leaves me with less to give the people who really matter. Letting go of old relationships may sound selfish at first, but you can’t serve others well if you are not taking care of yourself. Feeling listless and drained of energy is no way to conduct a human relationship.
You can, of course, apply the idea of whether you are in a one-way relationship when you are thinking of leaving a job that no longer sustains you. Letting go of a job can be a big decision. Not all decisions to let go need to be this momentous.
Get ready to make big decisions about what to let go by practicing letting go with smaller choices. Does your house really need to be spotless when you are dealing with small children and trying to write a syllabus? Probably not. Do you really need 10 copies of a reprint? Probably not. Do you need to listen to the inner critic beating you up for not getting a project done more quickly? Probably not. It’s hard to break old patterns, to play more, work less, and let the unimportant items go.
Letting go of what you don’t need, whether a thing, an emotion, or a relationship, will allow more time for rest. If you are having difficulty allowing yourself to let go, your parent might have said, “Sleep on it.” That is excellent advice at two levels. First, your physical brain repairs the chemicals expended during the day making thousands of small decisions (What to have for breakfast? Which project to tackle first? What do I really want to say here, anyway?). Second, your unconscious mind noodles away on the big issues as you sleep, often presenting you with unexpected solutions on waking. Rest restores our brain chemistry, and that, in turn, can reduce anxiety and restore creativity.
A primer on letting go for academics
Academics are often intrinsically motivated to advance knowledge in their field. There is constant pressure to do research and publish while simultaneously preparing and delivering new courses and engaging in service or administrative work. Controlling a research plan or designing a syllabus is second nature to many academics. Perfecting an article in every way before sending it out to an editor is another attempt to control outcomes. Unfortunately, trying to control for every contingency is impossible and will leave you exhausted. Think about some of the things you might let go.
1. Let go of perfectionism
You’ve probably heard the maxim, “Perfection is a worthy goal but an impossible standard.” An overemphasis on perfection can create a spiral of endless revisions, procrastination, and even self-doubt. When you find yourself fixating on a tiny detail, like a word in an essay or a picture in a presentation, ask yourself, “Will this ultimately make a difference to the point I am trying to make?” If the answer is “no,” let it go. Cultivate nihil nimus, the conscious practice of allowing your work to be “good enough.” If you answer “yes” to the question, “Will this make a difference?” you might, as my grandfather would have said, “Have another think coming.” That still does not mean it needs to be perfect. Maybe just different.
2. Benefits of imperfection
Relinquishing perfectionism means more time to nurture your own well-being. You will have more time to exercise, socialize, and maybe even eat better instead of washing a nutrition bar down with coffee at lunch. Healthy self-care, not self-indulgence, can lay the foundation for sustained academic success. Practicing imperfection is what we humans do innately. You can stop focusing on performance and liberate new ideas or ways to do things. Your energy will be unbound for transformation.
3. Let go of control
Of course, you do not let go of all control. You must sign off on the final product if you are the Principal Investigator. You want that to reflect well on you and your team. On the other hand, you must recognize you cannot control for all variables in academic life. You may have a reviewer who doesn’t agree with your premises and will give you a bad review. Grant applications may get rejected no matter how “perfect” the submission. Deadlines may be missed for a variety of reasons: someone got sick, a collaborator had a child, or a supervisor decided to change research directors to pursue more promising avenues for solutions…or funding. Clinging to control creates rigidity and anxiety.
4. Benefits of less control
Letting go of control helps you cultivate genuine resilience. Persevering in the face of obstacles can help you grow a stronger determination to succeed. Ultimately, you may become a guide to someone else or a leader in a larger capacity. Failure looks less terrifying and begins to seem more like a setback or an obstacle to overcome. I always say, “If you’re sailing, you can’t make a course correction unless you’ve left the port.” You can control some variables, such as the overall quality of the work, how quickly you adapt to change, and your own response to unexpected challenges. Let that be enough.
5. Let go of saying “Yes”
There are endless ways to say “yes,” from serving on committees to evaluating curriculum, leading new hire searches, reviewing files for tenure, advising students, and serving on a faculty senate. The list goes on. Not saying yes is particularly hard for women, trained by most cultures to be nurturing. Your available time is limited, as is your emotional bandwidth. Practice saying “No” to those draining your time and energy.
6. Benefits of saying “no”
Saying “no” to those commitments that do not align with your own long-term goals lets you stick to your core priorities, whether that is research, teaching, service, or administrative work, and protect your energy. Saying no does not mean refusing to do anything, but letting go of the idea that everything rests on your shoulders allows space for collaboration. Successful collaborations can amplify the impact of your chosen work. For example, you might collaborate on a community outreach project leveraging your academic knowledge of a topic like the psychology of drug addiction. Be strategic. Saying “no” makes space to say “yes” to the things that matter most to you.
7. Let go of guilt
Juggling multiple responsibilities professionally and personally can create a burden of guilt. If you are spending time with your family, you are not doing your academic work. If you are doing your academic work, you are not spending time with your family. Give yourself a break and practice a little self-compassion. Academic life can be a pressure cooker. You do not need to add guilt to the demands of prepping courses, long hours of grading, or meeting deadlines while caring for family, young or old, and maintaining important personal relationships.
8. Benefits of going guilt-free
Make up your mind to enjoy your family when you are with family or friends and to enjoy work when you are working. This is a balancing act. Balancing will look different at different times in your life. Sometimes work will take priority, and sometimes family will take priority. You are only one person. Practicing compassion for yourself will allow space for self-care and self-nurturing. You will be a better academic and a better partner or parent once you give yourself permission to live free from guilt around work.
9. Let go of the past
Academics have been known to obsess over the “What ifs” in life: “What if that grant was not rejected?” “What if that administrative work could have led to promotion?” “What if I had written the book about X instead of Y?” Dwelling on the “woulda shoulda coulda” is not helpful. What happened is over now. The question is, “How do I want to go forward from here?” Is there a different administrative path to investigate? Is there a new funding source for a rejected grant, or is it worth considering a completely different approach or a new topic? Is a new book project interesting or exciting? Answer the question, “What can I learn from this experience?” and let the past go.
10. Benefits of looking forward
At its heart, academia is about the pursuit of knowledge. Going forward means acknowledging what hasn’t worked and looking for new ways to learn and grow. Letting go of the past and looking forward can be transformative. Expertise is never static. With a little bit of luck and lots of hard work, you will always be learning new things. Exploring new ideas may lead you to new peers, mentors, or collaborators. You may even want to cultivate new interests outside of academia and grow your knowledge in new areas. Learning is a process and a practice, not a final result. Shift your attention back to the present and focus on the next best step. Recognize you have new contributions to make.
Overall benefits of letting go
I am not advocating for letting your standards go or abandoning your responsibilities. I am advocating for letting go of an intellectual or emotional load when it becomes unsustainable. Letting go may be uncomfortable at first. Doing something differently usually does feel strange. Some of the overall benefits of letting go as an academic are:
- Reduced stress: Lightening your load can provide more mental space. You can make better decisions coming from a place of calmness. You can improve your mental and physical health. You may find sleeping, eating right, enjoying friends and family, and reducing muscle tension easier.
- Increased productivity: Perfectionism, tight control, and over-commitment can make you sick, even hindering action or causing paralysis. Addressing self-sabotaging behavior by putting aside unhelpful inner critiques lets your work go into the world more quickly and easily, sloppily or shoddily, but in good enough form to warrant a serious look by your colleagues. As the old saying goes, “The poem you publish is better than the perfect poem in your head.”
- Elevated joy: People who have worked with me know I say, “What you do with joy, you will do better.” When you stop listening to the self-flagellating saboteur of your inner critic, you have a chance to rediscover the fun of learning, the pleasure of creating, and the sharing of experiences through teaching. Joy can trigger beneficial physiological and emotional changes. Joy can strengthen your immune system, alleviate depression, and diminish perceptions of pain. Joy predicts greater longevity. For academics, it can avert burn-out or help recover from burn-out.
Conclusion
Letting go is a skill. Practice by letting go of the smaller stuff first. Celebrate small victories while being compassionate with yourself. In time, You may find it easier to let go of the big stuff, like a book you really don’t want to write or a toxic relationship with a person or an organization. Over time, you will make room for the new by letting go of something old.
That’s my hope for myself as this blog transitions from a monthly post to a quarterly one. I’ll have more space for new ideas and learning, and perhaps something unexpected will emerge.
See you in July 2024!
If you need help letting go, contact Hillary for a FREE 20-minute session.
Tags: academia, academic, get organized, Getting Organized, goals, happiness, letting go
