What Are You Hanging On To?

One of my coaching clients, let’s call her Donna, asked me during her coaching session how to let go. She is downsizing and won’t have room for everything in her new place. But it’s not just stuff she needs to let go of. With all the kids grown and living away from home and now living alone since the divorce, Donna struggles more with the idea of letting go of her previous roles, commitments, dreams, and emotions

As I listened to Donna, I thought about something that had happened the previous  week.

My wife Kathy and I had new carpet and hard surfaces installed in our home last summer. We agreed to stop wearing shoes in the house.

Kathy bought a floor mat to put at the front door that says, “Cute shoes. Take them off.” And one for the utility room we walk through from the garage that says, “Mahalo for taking off your slippers.”

I built a shelf under the storage bench in the utility room, and we bought a nice two shelved bench for the front door. Now we have about 12 linear feet for shoe storage in addition to our bedroom closet plus a pile that gathers at the slider to the back yard.

Now that a full year has passed, both benches and the back slider have collected a variety of slippers, flip-flops, boots, sandals, and shoes and our new floor coverings look as good as the day they were installed.

Last week, Kathy asked me if I needed all the shoes in the utility room. I had a pair of slip-on casuals that I loved but the soles were worn out and I had already replaced them, so I threw them in the garbage.

There was also a pair of sandals with detached Velcro that I hadn’t worn for two summers. I deposited them in the trash bin too. I thought about throwing out one of my two pair of flip-flops but decided I needed some for the back slider and kept them both.

While I was just letting go of some shoes, Donna’s challenge was far more complex. But, I wondered, could the same process for letting go of shoes be applied to letting go of roles, commitments, dreams, and emotions?

I’m currently listening to The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallway who teaches the importance of awareness of what is so. When Kathy asked me if I needed all the shoes, I did a quick inventory and realized I had four pairs of slip-ons and two pairs of sandals.

One of the pairs of slip-ons no longer served me. My extra pair of sandals weren’t exactly what I wanted because they cover my toes. But I decided they would work until I found another pair I liked better. The pair with the detached Velcro were no longer needed.

To let go or to keep what I had was the challenge. When I saw that what I had was not needed, no longer served me, and offered no future use or value, the decision to let go was easy.

So, the steps were:

1.      Assess what is so

2.      Ask if what I am holding on to is needed, is serving me, or has a future use or value.

As Donna and I continued to talk, I helped her apply this process to the resentment she felt for her ex-husband who found a younger woman and divorced her ten years ago.

What is so? Donna and her ex-husband are no longer married. Donna still feels hurt and blames her ex-husband for her unhappy life. She resents him for the pain she feels when she thinks about the plans they made to live out their retirement years together. She lives in a house that is too big for her and is full of stuff she no longer needs.

“How does hanging on to blame, hurt, and disappointment about the future serve you?” I asked Donna.

We spent the rest of our coaching session discussing this. Donna drew the following conclusions.

Keeping her resentment alive was supposed to protect her from being hurt and disappointed again. As a result, Donna hadn’t even considered dating anyone else. She now saw that hanging on to anger and blame was keeping her isolated and had done nothing to resolve the hurt.

Before the session ended, Donna began for the first time since the divorce to cry. But now she cried with awareness of what was serving her and what was needed. She allowed the tears to flow and made no effort to keep them inside where they didn’t serve her.

In our next session, I asked Donna how the downsizing was going.

“I put the house on the market and plan to have a garage sale in a couple of weeks,” she told me. “It feels like I’m letting go of the blame, hurt, and resentment every time I cry - and I’m doing a lot of crying. Letting go of the house and some of my stuff seems a lot easier now that I don’t have to hang on to my resentment.”

“By the way,” Donna added with a smile, “there will be a lot of shoes and boots in my garage sale if you need any.”

What are you hanging on to? How is  it serving you to do so?