My current focus – part 1: letting go

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

I wrote myself a little reminder as a focus for the moment (nothing as structured as saying for this month or anything, yuck!)

To remember to let go, to protect myself and to listen to myself.

They’re basically three things that I felt I could do with having more of in my life. But as nice as a little one liner is, it doesn’t always make sense on it’s own. So here’s me writing out what it means to help me remember.

*The fact I call this part 1 in no way implies there will be a part 2, it’s just to say that it’s not complete. Watch me protect myself!

Letting go

To let go, is to let go of a particular outcome. That is, to be able to continuously push forwards without it being in search of a pre-defined idea of progress. To take action, regardless of whether a goal will be reached or not, simply so as to have taken action and moved forwards in some way.

I do not need some specific reward in order to act. The act is the end in itself. To do the washing is what I want, not to have a clean kitchen. To tend the garden is what I want, not to have lots of food. To write is what I want, not to have a finished manuscript/meaningful prose/famous blog.

To let go, is to cease to be goal oriented.

I cannot have a goal of learning to let go – it is like having my purpose in life be to seek my purpose in life, I’ll never get there because the set up prevents it. What has got me this far cannot take me the rest of the way.

Instead, I need to change my focus from setting myself goals, to working on enjoying the task for its own merits.

Merits of doing the task (regardless of the outcome):

I get to practice skills and learn new ones.
Time spent being active will help to keep balance. Yang for Yin. It doesn’t need to be productive to be constructive.
Accidental learning – all the stuff you learn that you didn’t intend to (and usually ends up being more useful).
Exposure to positive ‘black swans‘. Getting out there and letting the crazy world throw you a curve ball.

What about for you? What does letting go mean to you?