Letting Go and Moving Ahead – Traveling Through Transition Times

Letting go lets you keep moving.

Letting go is a time management skill that is key to getting things done. It’s not a skill that gets talked about all that much, though.

Maybe that’s because letting go is a little like the spaces between words, or between notes in a musical composition. The spaces are so important because, without them, there’s no movement.  

Yet we often just gloss over them, focusing on the words or notes and forgetting the silence in-between.

And so it often is with letting go. But the reality is that no transition ever happens without letting go of one thing and then picking up another.

The image of a trapeze is very helpful, when thinking about transitions. Whether they be small changes or very large ones, you honor your transitions and yourself by consciously recognizing the role that letting go always plays in moving ahead.

Letting Go of Summer – This Summer

I was thinking about this on Monday, when we experienced one of those beautiful, clear August days that feels more like autumn than summer. A harbinger of what’s to come, that day reminded me that soon I’d be letting go of summer.

It’s a familiar transition. Part of the rhythm of the seasons, we all experience this, no mater where we live. And while it’s a transition that happens with each turning of the year, there’s always something unique about it. The more mindful you can be about this, the more fully you’ll embrace and experience your transition.

So, for me, letting go of this particular summer evokes all the memories, sights, sounds, and smells that are woven into these past summer months for me. I see faces at family gatherings, spectacular sunsets, heat-drenched mornings when the air was heavy and it felt nearly impossible to move.

Reflecting on these details and savoring them, I say goodbye and open myself up to what is to come. Then I release each image slowly and with gratitude.

You see, the thing is that time keeps moving ahead, no matter what I do. So this process of consciously honoring what has been helps me assimilate and appreciate, even as I let each and every one of those moments go.