The Power of Letting Go ...

Our mythology is based on an important premise, there is no single life, there are cycles of birth and rebirth. Anything that happens, is a circle of Karma, from the life which we are in today and many in the past births. It sounds divine and celestial at the same time. The famous verse from Bhagavat Gita elicits – ‘ You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction.’

This got me reflecting on what is more important; who you are OR what you deliver OR both. ‘Who you are’ is defined by the individual’s purpose of life which is unique to him or her and how he / she approaches things. ‘What you deliver’ is an outcome of the purpose, approach and many other variable factors. Sometimes people feel ‘What you deliver’ is the way to one's identity and reputation and subsequently they end up seeking for acknowledgement and recognition in every action. The important point is, every human being’s identity is defined first by his / her purpose of life and this purpose drives the approach one takes to make decisions every day. Purpose and approach help deliver results. However, if a human being only seeks for acknowledgment and recognition to reassure one-self and defines his / her self-worth, it warrants deep thinking.

The magic happens when human beings start spending their passion, energy and commitment to make their everyday purposeful and meaningful than just chasing results, acknowledgement and recognition. To make this shift, one aspect that requires resilience is the ‘Art of Letting Go’.

The First Art - when an individual is unhappy, a process of internal churn begins which creates a viscous circle. This triggers self-talk and makes the individual respond internally on behalf of other individuals or situations when they actually don’t exist in that moment. The individual starts to live in the negative future. This fictitious future, if does not match with what he or she aspires for, creates a further self-churn. Our mind over powers our heart, and heart over powers the mind. Both feed into each other and viscous circle continues.

Important question is, can we stop the internal churn. The magic happens in our ability to be self-aware when we are about to enter this moment of internal churn. In that moment if both our mind and heart becomes a positive companion and believes that an outcome is a combination of an action, context, perspective and people involved in the outcome, who in turn have their own actions, context and perspectives. In this magic moment, if both heart and mind, come together to embrace that our lives and purpose is much larger than just immediate results, letting go becomes easy.

The Second Art - not taking everything too seriously around us because indeed it is not. Even the most difficult, complex situations can be simplified. While our conscious mind is interpreting things as it sees, hear, feel and smell; our sub conscious mind is engaged in looking inside the deep memories and experiences to unfold a meaning. Simply put, letting go the entanglement of words and interpret its multiple meanings said and unsaid, will help the individual from not being stuck in complexity. Hence the easy way to let go could be, not to make everything philosophical if its not and be conscious that not every conversation and moment, demands our view and debate. The art of just being a spectator sometimes with a simple thank you or sorry or deep listening is all that is needed to let go in the moment and move on.

There is a beautiful analogy I experienced during one of a coaching sessions on ‘Art of Letting Go’. River is indeed a heavenly example of moving on and letting go. There is a deep purpose with which a River flows. It flows through multiple terrains, experiencing solitude and multi-cultural people, cities, environments, crafting its own path, housing many plants and aqua life and taking along many natural resources. River is an important part of water lifecycle and finally blends with the sea or ocean. Many a times there are situations which might come in the way of river flowing through its journey. Imagine a big rock stuck in the path of river, the river simply flows through the sides of the rock without any disrespect, diverges for a few seconds and then converges back to flow its path again, it knows its purpose and how to change its course to stay committed to its existence. It creates alternatives since it knows its purpose is to continue flowing and reaching a destination. The choice of stagnation or flowing is with the river and at different stages, it makes choices and decisions. Flowing river is always pure, divine and brings calmness to many who come experience it in different forms.

In our corporate world in most complex, ambiguous, volatile and uncertain situations, its important our organization is driven by purpose and not just actions and reactions. Many times the fruits of actions driven by purpose are enjoyed by other generations to come. Hence it is important we create magic in the moments of our employees everyday and enable them to take purposeful actions which will help them to let go of their fears and apprehensions. Letting go in the difficult moments creates a much more powerful environment which helps businesses, teams and our employees thrive in future.