From Ozan Varol:
The Beauty of Letting Go
There’s a Buddhist parable I share in Awaken Your Genius: It’s about a man who builds a raft to cross a raging river and safely reaches the other side.
He picks up the raft and starts walking into a forest.
The raft begins to snag in the trees, impeding the man’s forward progress.
But he refuses to let go of the raft.
This is my raft! he says. I built it! It saved my life!
But to survive today he must let go of the raft that saved his life yesterday.
Over the course of my life, I found myself carrying around rafts that no longer were serving me. For example, in 2021, I decided to leave my tenured position as a law professor in order to pursue writing and speaking full time.
It was painful to let go of that particular raft—to leave a career that I once loved. I felt anxious giving up the security of tenure and the safety net of a guaranteed paycheck for life.
But as long as I kept one foot in academia, I would remain tethered to the path I had followed before. I couldn’t fully step into who I was becoming because my academic commitments were depleting my limited supply of time and creative energy.
The rafts we drag around expand far beyond our career choices. A raft can be a relationship that has run its course. A raft can be a successful product or service that you created, but it isn’t what it used to be. A raft can be a pattern of behavior that brought you to where you are today, but is now weighing you down.
Leaving your raft is often painful and jarring. There’s a certainty to it. You’ve carried it around for years, if not decades. It makes you feel safe and comfortable.
What’s more, when you’ve invested time and resources into building a raft, the sunk-cost fallacy kicks in and prompts you to stay the course. (I’ve spent two years on this project, so I can’t quit now!).
And then there’s our ego. When we’re being rewarded for carrying around a raft, we fear becoming irrelevant if we let it go. If I stopped doing this thing that I’ve been doing for years, if I abandon the title of professor or senior director, what will I miss? More importantly, who will I be?
But letting go doesn’t mean forgetting. Quite the opposite: Letting go requires remembering your past. The time, money, and effort you expended to major in art history, go to law school, or start a business—these aren’t costs. They are gifts, from your former self to your current self.
Was your job a failure if it gave you the skills you need to thrive? Was your relationship a failure if it taught you the meaning of love? Was your art history major a failure if it gave you the tools to appreciate creativity?
Say thank you to the raft and let it go.
Let what’s dying serve as fertilizer for what’s awakening.