Mastering the nobel art of letting go
Photo by Kal Visuals
Why change starts with the courage to release what once made sense.
“You can’t change if you keep doing what you’ve always done.”
We’ve all heard it. It’s true. And yet, it’s anything but easy.
Letting go of what we know—what we trust, what feels safe—is often the hardest part of change. Not because we don’t want to grow, but because growth asks us to step into uncertainty. To leave behind what gave us comfort or identity. Sometimes even without knowing we were holding onto it.
Today, I want to talk about the noble art of letting go. Or, perhaps more accurately: the act of freeing ourselves from what has kept us anchored to a version of the world that no longer fits.
And I’ll start with myself.
A (very human) case in point
Ask my wife, and she’ll tell you: I’m not great at change.
She laughs when something in my perfectly organized life shifts—even slightly. “You? Helping people with change?!” she’ll joke. And I have to admit… she has a point.
Letting go of what’s familiar can throw me off completely. I can become short-tempered, restless, a version of myself I don’t particularly like. And yet, this is the terrain I guide others through. Which, perhaps, makes me a more honest guide.
March 2020, when the COVID pandemic emerged, put this all to the test.
In a matter of days, the work I loved—facilitating sessions, energizing groups, telling stories in front of real people—was no longer possible. No rooms, no buzz, no body language, no shared laughter.
I felt untethered. Frustrated. And if I’m honest, a little lost.
Then, just a few months later, the restrictions were lifted—and guess what? I didn’t want to go back. I had grown used to a slower rhythm: helping with homeschool, having lunch with my kids, rediscovering the meaning of my work in a quieter, more reflective way. And suddenly I had to let go of that.
That’s the strange thing about change. You resist it… until you don’t. And then when it changes again, you resist letting go of what you’ve just embraced.
Emotionally? Messy. Rationally? Perfectly human.
And that’s the essence: letting go is emotional work. And it’s what often holds us back from truly moving forward—unless we learn how to work with it, rather than against it.
Four dynamics that make letting go hard (and what to do about them)
“In The Process Of Letting Go, You Will Lose Many Things From The Past, But You Will Find Yourself”
Letting go always happens within a context. It’s personal, but never in isolation. There are patterns at play—between us and the world, between who we are and who we are becoming.
Here are four dynamics I’ve come to recognize that make the art of letting go particularly challenging:
1. The changing reality
The dynamic: what is true and known changes
Imagine: you are an accountant or an insurance agent, and you see algorithms and apps taking over your job. The belief that clients will always need your services because of your professional knowledge turns out to be a foundation on quicksand. But what is your added value? And how do you ensure that you remain meaningful to your customers? Answering these questions is dealing with the changing reality.
Successful change challenges you to look at the world differently and to let go of what is currently your truth. Sometimes that goes a long way. Think for example of the Dutch firm DSM, which has developed from a miner to a producer of nutritional supplements. The identity and logic of the company have changed completely. And with success. But DSM could not do this without letting go of the current situation.
With a changing reality, letting go is challenging in two ways:
To distance yourself from the current truth. This challenge means letting go of your mental legacy - the almost genetically determined truths and self-evidences that make your life orderly. Sometimes this doesn't work. For example, when the essence of your craft is so important to you that letting go becomes a "mission impossible.
To accept the new truth. For example, because you believe in a different future than your colleagues. This challenge leads to fundamental questions. How will we be meaningful to our customers in the future? How do we define our role for customers? And the critical question: how do we look at our identity together? What are we on earth for?
In both situations, it is about identity: individual identity and organizational identity. Most of the time, identity is not a topic of conversation because we take it for granted that everyone knows who we are and why we exist. But it is the essence of successful change to call this obviousness into question. You will recognize this in discussions. Everyone keeps arguing why their reality is the truth - the sham discussions with substantive arguments while the real issue is more fundamental: identity.
The art is to recognize that a change in logic impacts how we as individuals and as an organization view ourselves and the world. If the change is also about identity, take a step back to create space for this fundamental issue.
2. The inevitable getting used to change
The dynamic: mentally getting used to physical changes
Earlier, I shared an example about the changes in my work due to the Corona crisis. For instance, the change from physical meetings to working online. I vividly remember the moment when this change took place: Friday, March 13, 2020. But on that particular Friday, I was not immediately used to my new reality. I was grumbling and resisting the changes. Letting go of my old reality did not go smoothly.
Letting go is a phase of mental adaptation to change. William Bridges has done much research on this and written about it.
William Bridges distinguishes change from mentally adapting to a change. Compare this to changes in your personal life, such as having a child. The physical change is the birth of your child. The mental adjustment is getting used to parenthood, which takes months before birth to a long time after birth. Bridges calls this a transition, the mental adjustment to a new reality.
During a transition, your emotions swing in all directions: from happy to angry to inspired and disappointed. During an organizational change, you see this swinging back and forth of emotions intensified. You then get a collection of people who deal with their change process within the company and influence each other.
It's all part of the game, and it will be fine after a while - if you dare to trust in the normal process. And learn to recognize when intervention is required.
The art is to recognize the change process and the feeling that goes with it in yourself, give in to getting used to it and trust in your inner strength that it will be all right.
3. The choices from the past that get in the way
The dynamic: confrontation with choices and decisions from the past.
I worked on an organizational change at a family business some years ago. The operational director had worked within the company for over ten years and knew the organization in detail. For me, it was a new company in a new industry. I had to ask many questions to understand why things worked the way they did.
In one of the conversations with the director, he told me he was envious of the questions I could ask. In his words: "When I ask the questions you ask, people look at me in surprise. Like, "You were there when we came up with this, right?"."
It is a common dilemma. If you have worked in a company for a long time, you are part of the system and responsible for the design of the current system, even if the choices contradict the new strategy.
With this dilemma, better leaders distinguish themselves from their peers. Great leaders acknowledge their responsibility for the choices made and the consequences thereof. Other leaders defend the choices they make without showing accountability for the results.
Self-reflection is the keyword. The first group of leaders evaluates their behavior and takes responsibility for it. The second group looks at others.
The pitfall in self-reflection is self-criticism. Self-criticism can keep you from letting go of the past. The antidote for this is self-compassion — accepting yourself with your imperfections and emotions and understanding that suffering and flaws are an inevitable part of our being. the past.
The art is to find a balance between being responsible and fallible.
4. Our irrationality
The dynamic: the struggle with our irrational and illogical selves
A little over 15 years ago, I had the opportunity as a young program manager to lead a reorganization. As part of the reorganization, a large number of colleagues were strongly encouraged to pursue other interests. Some colleagues had worked for the company for over 40 years and had never worked anywhere else.
Emotions ran high, and the reorganization caused unrest. These colleagues had a hard time leaving the company.
A few years later, I talked to former colleagues who had left. Unanimously, they were happier in their new jobs, and, in their own words, they should have taken the step sooner.
Is this strange?
No.
Giving up an existing job with good working conditions is a big step, even if you don't like it anymore. We rather hold on to an unpleasant current certainty than take a step towards a potentially pleasant future.
This example is one of our thinking biases: the fear of losing is stronger than the joy of gain. A bias hinders us from making objective, rational choices. Another bias is our preference for the status quo rather than change. You'll have figured it out by now: we suffer from biases more often than we suspect.
Another one? The influence of our social environment prevents us from making autonomous choices. For example, within our society, we consider positions within work an essential part of identity and makes it difficult to let go of a role, function, or position. After all, how do you define yourself if you have lost an appealing part of your job?
Whatever bias applies, we do not make rational, well-informed, considered, and logical decisions due to our biases. And make the process of letting go more difficult.
The art is to discover which bias is getting in the way of the process of letting go. And to offer individual counseling in time when there is reason to do so.
From knowing to understanding
Letting go is a true art. It is an essential part of any successful change. If you understand the art of letting go, you will deal much more effectively with the invisible and tangible struggle against saying goodbye to the known and familiar.
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