Why Can't I Let This Go?
Richard Grehalva Leadership Coach, Sales Training TEDx
A recognized authority on personal development, executive leadership coaching, ,B2B sales training, sales coaching using proprietary methodologies with a tactical framework to create the positive change people want.
Learning how to let go of different things in life is a necessary skill all people must learn. At some point or another, you will experience something in your life that is tragic, difficult, upsetting, challenging, traumatic, or even some combination of those things. However hard it is to face whatever happens in your life, there is one truth to the experience: you must learn how to eventually let it go.
Why would someone hold on to something painful in their lives when they have the choice to let it go? There are a variety of reasons why you may find it difficult to let something go–even when you really need to do so for your own sense of well-being.
Consider these common reasons why you might struggle to let something go:
It is familiar to you and feels comfortable.
Even when you know something is bad for you or causing harm in your life, you may refrain from letting it go because it is familiar to you. People love to hang out in their comfort zones—even if they aren’t the healthiest or happiest places to be. Sometimes letting go is tough because it means you’re going to leave something familiar for the unknown, and that can be a huge challenge.
You have an emotional attachment to whatever it is that you can’t let go.
From old items to toxic relationships, if you form an emotional attachment to anything, letting it go is going to feel extremely challenging! Human emotions are complex and complicated things, and when you feel a strong emotional attachment to something you need to release from your life, it’s going to make you hesitate to pull the trigger and actually let it go.
You don’t want to face the unknowns of life.
Sometimes it feels much easier to hang on to old aspects of your life that you need to let go because you don’t want to know what life is like without them. People like things that feel familiar, even if they are not particularly healthy for them. This can cause people to remain attached to aspects of their lives they don’t need anymore, which stops them from fully embracing life and exploring new things.
The idea of forgiving someone else or yourself feels impossible.
Letting go of feeling wronged by someone else or even yourself can be extremely challenging. You may hold on to old grudges and rivalries, allowing those difficult feelings to go unexpressed or ignored, meaning you never really move past whatever happened. Whether this lack of forgiveness exists between you and another person or within yourself, it can feel terrible and cause a huge strain in your life.
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Your identity is somehow linked to whatever it is that you can’t let go.
Your identity or sense of self may be closely tied to whatever it is you can’t let go of in life. Even if you really need to let it go because it’s unhealthy or unhelpful for you, you may feel so closely related to whatever it is that it feels like it defines a part of who you are. At the risk of losing your sense of self, you may choose to hang on to that aspect of your life rather than letting it go for good.
Holding onto things can give you a false sense of control.
People love to believe that they have total control. However, the reality of human life is that nobody will ever have complete control over everything in their lives. Sometimes, people hang on to aspects of their lives they don’t need because it helps them feel more “in control"—even when it isn’t really giving them that power at all.
Be the leader people want to follow.
Richard Grehalva
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