Letting it go is good advice any day
- col-dave-mast
- June 21, 2024
- 538
June 23 marks “National Let it Go Day.”
Some part of my heart believes that this holiday was designed by some group of trophy fish who got hooked by the expert fisherman.
As the fisherman reels in that massive swordfish, I can almost hear thousands of other fish in the sea screaming, “Let it go!”
But I digress, as usual.
The idea of “Let it Go” seems appropriate for just about anything in life. It goes together with everything, like peanut butter and jelly… or like peanut butter and chocolate… or peanut butter and anything, I guess, because peanut butter is just plain awesome and gets along with everything.
Perhaps we could all take a cue from peanut butter’s willingness to mesh with everything it touches to create something comforting.
Let it Go Day, marked annually on June 23, serves as the perfect reminder for all of us to stop wasting our time and energy on negative feelings from events in the past and instead strengthen ourselves.
Everyone at some point in their life has experienced things that they regret or something that hurt them so much that they are unable to get over it.
No matter how much time has passed, it feels very hard to let go of those things. But isn’t it time to move on from those negative feelings that are dragging you down?
Because here’s the key: We can’t change one single speck of the moments in our lives that have come and gone. They are part of our memories, our history, our legacy.
What we can control is the many more moments to come in the future and the things we are experiencing right now.
I always used to tell my baseball players I was coaching that as hitters, they can’t control what direction the ball takes once it leaves the bat, and that teachable moment is as important today as it was back when I coached eons ago.
What they can control is what takes them to that moment of impact. The smooth transition, the swing path of the bat and all the little things that go into the difficult art of hitting a speeding, tumbling, circular ball with a round bat.
The key is understanding, learning, preparation and repetition. All of those qualities are things that are in a batter’s control.
It’s that way in life, too.
We can prepare ourselves for success. We can instill qualities in our lives that set us up to grow.
However, much like in the game of baseball, you can do everything within your power to do everything right and still make an out because failure is part of baseball and life.
Nobody wants to make an out, to fail, but it happens.
However, dwelling on it for the rest of the game will only drag your game down the tube with a poor attitude because we spend our time thinking about how we got hosed over.
That at-bat is over.
Let it go.
Focus on the things that you can control for the next at-bat.
And the next, and the next and the next.
I always told people my goal was to get a hit every time up.
“That’s an unrealistic goal,” they would tell me.
Maybe so.
Maybe I’ll make an out in my next at-bat, but here’s the thing: the goal never changes, only my attitude does.
Let it go and the next time up, the goal is exactly the same. That last at-bat is gone. You’re up for a new day, a new challenge, ready to succeed and get a hit.
That philosophy is only baseball.
When it comes to relationships, Let it Go becomes a much more critical thing than a simple game.
Let it Go might be a spousal relationship. It might be work colleagues, siblings, parent/child related or anywhere two or more people meet. It may be a situation where you got cheated or swindled, your trust was broken, a vow was not kept.
Hanging on to negative past events and harboring ill will toward someone who we feel has wronged us is more damaging to us than it is to them, and so often the things we dwell on are insignificant.
Yet like a splinter, we let them fester and annoy us, the pain of that splinter felt every time we touch it on something. Or we want something so badly that we become bitter when we don’t get what we want.
Let it Go.
Find peace in your own heart, so you can live in peace with the others with whom you’ve built walls around your heart with hate, disappointment, resentment and more.
It’s not a good way to live, not when we can choose something so much better.
I’m reminded of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and the chase for the treasured Holy Grail that Christ drank from at the Last Supper.
With the goblet within inches of Indiana Jones’ reach as the earth crumbles around him, his father Henry Jones Sr., who is hanging on for dear life to his son as he dangles on the precipice of a cliff reaching so valiantly for the goblet, calmly looks at his son amid the chaos and says, “Indiana. Indiana. Let it go.”
It’s as if a weight is lifted and the son understands that what he treasured so greatly paled in comparison to what truly mattered, the love between a son and his father.
What are you harboring in your heart that hurts, that keeps you from realizing joy instead of pain? What is stopping you from living purposefully and joyfully in preparation for the things you can control rather than what you can’t?
Nobody else can choose other than you.
It may be time to Let it Go, and the nice thing is, you don’t have to wait until June 23 of each year to do so.