Learning to Let Go

Of all of the skills of life, learning to let go is one of the hardest but most valuable.

Letting go of Things

It could be a relationship, a project, a hobby, a group, a friendship, a car, an object...

We have many things in our lives, and sometimes we need to let go of them. Because they are toxic, or no longer serve their purpose, we have grown out of them or many other reasons.

It's a life skill to learn what to hold on to and what not to. Often these are tough decisions to make, fraught with emotion.

Letting go of a Creative Coffee Meetup

Today I stepped down as organiser of my Porto Coffee Creatives Meetup, which was a hard an easy decision. And like decisions it was made for a few reasons. New projects, changing priorities, achieving original goals and freeing up time.

The original Exmouth and Exeter Coffee Creatives were two groups setup in summer of 2019 in Devon, England. They were there to provide a space for creative people to chat and for me to meet meet more creative people. And many of them were midweek!

The Porto one has also been great. I'd organised 87 events for it, mostly coffees. From it launched my painting group, it introduced lots of people and I've made many friendships because of it. But it never developed a strong community, partly down to a shifting format and partly down to Porto being far larger than Exeter and Exmouth.

I'm always doing many things, and this means things get squeezed. I'm feeling like that at the moment as I get on with writing a book and more dancing. Also I'd like to create a new group, and Meetup limits you to three. I'm happy enough with my Picnics and Drawing groups, so it was time for the coffees to go!

Lastly, it feels more like the closing off of a project that started 5 years ago. I now feel like most of my life is spent in creative endeavours, I'm surrounded by creative people and have a group where we meet just to create with paint and pens!

So maybe someone else will take my old project and make it something amazing.

Sometimes There's No One Reason

The point is that some things are easy to make a decision to let go of. A relationship that's gone toxic, a group based somewhere we used to live or a hobby we no longer have time for.

But often the decision to let go of something is less obvious. Existing in a space where it's ok. The possessions we keep for a rainy day, the friendships that have been around forever but we no longer have anything in common, and the things we've being doing since forever, but never really questioned why.

Letting these things go is harder because there's less motivation, but they can free up space in our lives and minds.

Sometimes these are the hardest to let go of. Or sometimes we let go of them bit by bit, letting them fade into the background and then out of our lives...

The Corollary: Holding On

There is a clarification/corollary to this, that sometimes it's better to hold on when things are tough. Because a relationship is still important, because someone needs us, because a project could still have lots to offer if we stick to it for a bit longer.

Finishing Up

There's no magic formula for what to keep in our lives and what to let go.

What have you let go of recently?