Let It Go
““Let it go, let it go
Can’t hold it back anymore
Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door””
Quick, don’t overthink it: Name one thing you should just let go.
That grudge. That resentment. That snide comment someone made to you. That little annoying thing your spouse said or did. That time when you flopped at work. Or embarrassed yourself. Or when you got ripped off. Or lied to. Or cheated on. Or made fun of. Or insulted. That injustice that happened many months—or even years ago—but that you still cling to like a stress ball gripped in your fist.
With some reflection, you’re far more likely to name several things that you should let go of rather than have a hard time thinking of just one. There’s no debate as to whether you should or should not let go of these slights, failures, injustices, or mistakes. You definitely should. Extensive research shows that holding on to these slights and grudges or ruminating over missteps and mistakes can have negative effects on your mental and physical health. This includes increased anxiety and depression, as well as increased risk for heart disease and hypertension.
So why can’t we let go?
Throughout much of my life, my progress was just as much about what I needed to let go of as what I needed to embrace. Like a pack of bricks strapped to my back, these burdens that I carried with me stymied my path forward.
Chances are you can name things you are best served to let go of in both your personal and professional life. I’ve been in the middle of many deals when, in the heat of the moment, people berated me, tried to take advantage of me, or insulted my competence. This is, by the way, largely uncorrelated to my actions or competence. Instead, it’s almost always a function of the other person’s state. Hurt people hurt people, as they say.
Do I slip up and find myself displaying similar behaviors sometimes? Without a doubt, and I feel terrible about it. Digging deeper into this negative energy only takes you further away from where you want to be. The miraculous thing is, while you can’t change the behaviors of others, you can make a simple decision, which in many ways is even more powerful than altering someone else’s disposition—you can just let it go.
Once you do this, you’ll start building your “move on muscle,” and find the ability to do it repeatedly.
You see, people are like mirrors. What you see isn’t a reflection of someone else’s perspective on or interpretation of you (don’t flatter yourself by thinking you’re that important to them). Instead, what you see is a reflection of their inner workings. If they’re angry at you, they’re reflecting their own inner anger. If they berate you, they’re reflecting their own insecurities. People can’t give what they don't have. If they don't have forgiveness and tolerance for their own inadequacies, then it’s more difficult for them to have forgiveness for your inadequacies.
Once you understand this mirror phenomenon you can move from a place of indignation to compassion. Compassion is contagious. Once you show it for others, it enhances your ability to express it in yourself, and vice versa. Often, it’s the failure to see people’s actions as a mirrored phenomenon, rather than deep indictments of who you are as a person, that makes it so hard for people to let go.
Part of the human experience is having encounters and experiences that go counter to your hopes and expectations. I did not plan to spend four years in the library studying engineering, never to earn full-time employment in the profession. I doubled down on that sentiment by spending nearly a decade in medical training, ultimately not becoming a long-term practicing physician. For me to move on to my third professional endeavor at the age of 32, when I got my first full-time job, doing something I was not trained to do, I had to let a lot go. I had to let go of that sense of frustration and resentment that I spent so much of my youth tireless training to become something that I would never directly embrace.
When I started my first venture business within a large organization, there was not a lot of support for me. That was understandable. I started a venture business having never worked in the industry—I had just left the medical profession having no prior investing experience—and I was very much learning on the job. I was continually derided for putting the firm at risk by entering a new asset class, for not knowing what I was doing, or for not being a team player. At various times, the firm’s executive committee decided to de-register my business. I had poured my heart and soul into trying to transform my venture concept into a client-bearing franchise, and it was a long and lonely journey, with more rejections than reinforcements. I can’t count how many prospective client meetings I had in the early years that resulted in “thank you but no thanks.” And those were the better results. Most possible clients wouldn’t even take a meeting.
I had a lot of frustration built up in a lot of different directions, which could have proved debilitating. I took it all personally. I worried that I was just not good enough to make it. My experience with medical training seemed to reinforce that. The only way through was to move past the sense of resentment I had toward anyone stymying my path or doubting my vision. The only way forward was to let go.
Accepting circumstances is very different from resignation—the two should never be confused. Letting go is not giving in. It’s realizing that along the way in life you accumulate baggage that no longer serves you. Accepting your circumstances is seeing the reality of a situation and saying, I can work with this. It’s not the ideal set of circumstances that I had envisioned, but I’m capable of wading through the muddy currents to get to clean water.
Once you embrace your imperfections, you can embrace the imperfections of others, and see their actions as a scientist would, as fascinating anthropological behaviors that you can analyze and learn from.
Give yourself a gift—find something to let go of. If you can’t start with that one big grudge or personal affront that you most want to release, start with something smaller. Build that muscle and work your way up to the bigger releases. I’ve yet to meet someone who has truly embraced this practice and not deeply believed in its long-term benefits.