Be okay with letting go
For the past eleven months I’ve been dedicating five to six days of each week to the company I work for, to the team I work with, and to the ideas we all work towards. That’s roughly 220 days out of the 324 that have passed since my first day.
Consistently spending that amount of time with something brings you pretty close to it. You get fond of it. You begin to identify with it. Eventually it becomes a part of you, and you become a part of it.
Because I’ve become so connected to these things I’m afraid to let them go. I’m scared to walk away. Worried that I might miss something, or worse, that I didn’t lay a foundation strong enough to merit me leaving for so long.
Day zero of my two week vacation has brought with it a load of anxiety. As I wrapped up with everyone and passed off documents, questions like, “Am I leaving these projects in the right place?”, “Did I do enough work?”, “Did I push the thinking as far as I could?”, and “Have I left this in a place that everyone can be proud of?” flooded my mind.
But sitting in the same seat for six hours while flying 30,000 feet in the air has given me time to realize something incredibly important. Walking away from something that feels like home is hard, but necessary. You need time to think. Time to reflect. Time to grow. Time to heal. You also need to trust that those around you have your back and will handle whatever comes up while you’re away.
You need to be okay with letting go for a little bit. Because without doing that, there’s no potential for you to understand what you should hold onto next.
