Letting Go
It was my dream in high school to go parasailing before I left for college. I grew up on Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, and every day I would watch some tourist flying up behind a fast boat with a gorgeous parachute catching air. I pictured the view and the thrill, and I wanted it.
I saved $100 working at my ice cream scooping job and convinced my boyfriend to join me on what I was convinced would be an epic adventure. I fell hard for the parasail attendant’s upsell. For only $20 more, I could dip my feet in the water. I would soar high, be brought down to touch the water, and then raise back up high. It’s the best, he told me. I’m 17 years old, I believe him, and the next thing I know we are strapped in and lifted high above the water.
The view and the rush of the up high experience was exactly what I had hoped for, but when it came to the upsell, I freaked out. The boat driver stopped the engine so that we could free fall to dip our feet in the water. Instead of a thrill, all I could picture were my legs hitting the water, my body falling forward, and me drowning. The one thing I wanted, even paid for, I could not relax into. I could not let go.
I pulled my legs up straight in a pike, screaming at my boyfriend to do the same, insistent that our legs never touch the water and our certain death. I couldn’t let go, and I missed out.
Letting go has such an easy sound to it. Just surrender. Let go. Release. We want to. We get the importance of it. But it’s one thing to know about letting go, and another thing to make it unfold in reality.
Obviously letting go is a time intensive process, but is there a way to speed it up?
William Bridges offers an incredible three question framework for moving yourself along in the letting go process. Grab a journal and answer these three questions:
If your life right now is a course in school that you are enrolled in, what would be the course title? What are the learning objectives in this course?
In order to do this course well, what do you need to unlearn? What would you need to let go of? What chapter in your life is now over?
Now that you know the name of the course and what you need to let go of and unlearn to really embrace it, what might be waiting on the edges of your life to enter in? If you were to be successful in this course, what is the thing in you that gets to take center stage when you take the final?
When the engine of our lives gets cut and we find ourselves freefalling, whether that is by choice or by surprise, our ability to let go places us in a unique place to begin again.
These questions put us in the place to welcome the letting go instead of resisting it. They help you to dip your feet in the water, bringing your fear right along with you.
One last note…with the course you identified above, please remember to take it. Don’t just audit it or skip class. Be an engaged student. The letting go is just the beginning.
Featured in May 2023 Pro-Age Women Magazine
