Could It Be As Easy As Just Letting Go?
Yes.
It very well could be.
My son, Zach and I recently participated in a five-day challenge in the Colorado wilderness offered by “Christ In The Rockies,” called “Passage To Manhood.”
We lived in tents, took on adventures, and learned the tenets of true manhood, ending with a rite of passage ceremony for the boys.
(By the way, I recommend every father-son do this, 16 and older! https://www.christintherockies.org)
Again, when I refer to Jesus, if you have a different faith don’t write it off, use it as metaphor.
In prison…
During this retreat the leader, Micheal Haddorff shared a story of a prisoner who’d just gotten his lunch and no one would allow him a place to sit.
He finally found a table alone and sat down.
He was obviously distraught, anguished, fully carrying the burden of his crime and imprisonment.
Jesus, wearing prison garb walked up and sat down with him.
The man looked up questioningly?
Jesus simply said, “You know the door is open, right?”
REALLY?
You mean, he – we – can just walk out?
I started to consider that.
The prison is… whatever holds you back.
Or holds you in.
Or holds you down.
Or keeps you out.
A way of doing things.
An addiction.
A mindset.
A habit.
A relationship.
A sin.
A fear.
The way you’ve always been.
Someone else’s charge for your life.
The echo of cruel words said years (and years, and years?) ago.
It’s that thing that came to mind when you read this list, wondering if I was going to hit it… that’s it.
Could it be as easy as just letting go?
I think so.
I’ll get vulnerable here and share that there are a few challenges which have plagued my life and heart and mindset for… most of my life.
As I was walking the other day, praying fervently about one of those challenges the prison story came to mind.
So I tried it.
I felt myself simply deciding to no longer cling to that, feel it, entertain it. I just… let it go… I allowed what I didn’t want to accept or think of to simply be. And be gone.
The freedom and release on the other side seemed too good to be true, too easy… so easy in fact that I at first retreated back to the “safety” of the familiar.
It was then I realized that to let go is to lose something. Even if it’s a bad thing, it served you in some way.
Letting go means you no longer have the right to… rightness. That can be a hard thing to let go of, and quite frankly, some never do. Or never will.
Ah… but when you let go of rightness what you get instead is… power. Your own power. And freedom.
So again I saw and felt myself simply let go.
Now, I personally turned that “thing” over to God, as God is my respite, life source, and reality, and he’s really good at it.
Regardless of your belief, try this.
Of course you may need counsel, resources, and just time to fully let go of something which has in whatever way served your life.
But letting go is a way of saying to whatever-it-is, “Hey, you are no longer helpful… it’s time to go.”
Real-life examples…
I have a client next month for whom Covid 19 has changed everything.
Sales are now all conducted on zoom.
25% of their people have embraced the new reality, learned zoom, changed their approach and are finding success.
The other 75% have an aversion to change.
Like SOOOO MANY in so many fields they look at this time period as something to wait out until “it all comes back;” until the sales come back, the gigs come back, the events come back… until we go back to doing things the way we used to.
Friends, that ship has sailed.
There is not a new normal, but there is a new reality and it is permanently effected by COVID.
So… what if instead of clinging to the false hope of a return, we simply decided to “let go” of the aversion to change.
Do a 180. Let go and jump in.
While fully fleshing out what it means to let go may take time, counsel, and resources, the choice takes about a second.
While I’m not a techno-phobe, I’m not a gadget guy and it bugs me constantly having to relearn everything every time Apple decides to needlessly update IOS.
Well, one day I just decided to change. I did a 180.
This thing I avoided – tech – I chose to learn, own and apply.
Not only do I now embrace technology, I have made it integral to everything I do.
I became the first keynote presenter ever to use hologram technology as my keynote closer, performing a duet of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony… with myself.
