The Visual8

Despite all efforts to repeat success, your goal moves further away.

This is not about a shifting landscape. It is always shifting.

This is about our expectations staying in the same place.

It is a reminder that full maturity means letting go. When the effort is complete, let it be complete.

Learn from those who work the soil. When the tree takes root, their job is done.

Step one: let go of your expectations for others.

When our children are born, we imagine them accomplishing things we did not.

Of reaching their full potential.

You have carefully articulated what they should and should not do.

And yet, their choices take them away from your plan. Towards what they feel is right.

You stand speechless watching them walk confidently into the proverbial wood chipper.

And somehow they find their own way.

That’s because their work was never your work.

“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.”
–Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet)

Step two: let go of other people’s expectations for you.

Your found your own path, too.

It was influenced by others. But it was clearly your own.

You chose the adventure because it felt like an opportunity to see what you are really made of.

Whether or not you completed the journey matters not. What matters is that you leave the known to go to the unknown. For this is the hero’s journey.

Friends that ask you to behave in a way that no longer feels natural, are not your friends. They are well-intentioned people who seek comfort in a being with others like themselves.

This is community cultivated by confirmation bias.

“The problem with friends and family is that they know us as we are. They are invested in maintaining us as we are. The last thing we want is to remain as we are.”
–Steven Pressfield (Do the Work: Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way)

When you insist on those relationship that no longer breathe, you squeeze the blood away from growing parts of your life.

You don’t need permission to pause a friendship or complete a relationship. There is always an opportunity to return to book you put back on the shelf.

Step three: let go of your expectations for yourself.

The real adventure was never out there. It was always the battle within that was your calling.

Sitting with uncertainty is how we return back to our True Self. This is a fierce dialogue with Resistance.

“It is not the thing you fear that you must deal with, it is the mother of the thing you fear. The very thing that has given birth to the nightmare.”
–David Whyte (The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America)

What keeps us paralyzed is fear of loss.

We lose the sunlight every day. School does not last forever. Friends move away. Elders pass.

Our invitation is to continue the effort, but let go of material outcomes.

This is a healthy state of detachment. In the Vedic tradition, letting go is the path towards Sattva (clarity, purity, lightness).

Research indicates that there is a positive correlation between this mindset and life satisfaction.

However, we don’t need proof of statistical relevance to take this choice. The wisdom has been available for close to 2800 years in the Upanishads.

Recognize that only a part of you is focused on survival. Find the other part that wants more than that. The one that seeks the full expression of life.

“The first half of life is about building up a healthy ego. The second half of life is going inward and letting go of it.” — C.G. Jung

This does not suggest that it will be easy.  It does suggest that it will be worth it.

“When it is the hardest, it matters the most.”
–Dr. Joe Dispenza

Just remember that control is not the move. Letting go is the move.

The rollercoaster is a game of tension and release. If you are still white-knuckled at the end, then you have only enjoyed half the ride.