The Awesome Power of Letting Go
Yes, it’s scary, but is holding on for long really an option?
Nobody is going to accuse me of being a “clingy” person. Growing up as the child of an army officer, I moved around A LOT. 3 elementary schools, Jr High in another country, 3 high schools, and 2 colleges. Moving around that much, I was constantly leaving friends and having to make new ones. Always being the new kid taught me that nothing was permanent and that made it relatively easy to just pick up and go.
Dayummmm you must be pretty cold blooded…
You know, Snarky Voice in my Head, I think I was pretty cold blooded when I was younger. It was a kind of a defense mechanism. Don’t get too attached to anyone because either you or them will just up and leave one day. Sometimes without even saying goodbye. But then I met a very pretty girl when I was a freshman in college and for the first time in my life the thought of just picking up and leaving didn’t make sense.
Oh, I tried to do that. Breaking up with her right before my family’s next move would take me to a new college across the country. It was time to move, so I needed to disconnect physically and emotionally from the place I was currently in so I could pick up and go to the new place.
Wow, that is DEFINITELY cold blooded!
I must admit, Snarky, that it was not my finest moment as a human. Not only did it come completely out of the blue, nearly wrecking her entire first year of college, it had a profound impact on me. I knew in my core that what I was doing was wrong on multiple levels and not what I really wanted, but I did it anyway. In hindsight, with decades of perspective, it was my normal defense mechanism just kicking in. Spoiler Alert! We’re coming up on our 31st anniversary.
So is this blog turning into relationship counseling?
Uhhh no, Snarky… I’m very slowly building context… After spending the first part of my life jumping up and leaving every two to three years, suddenly I was “settled down”. I had a wife, an apartment, car payments, and a cat. Oh, and I was also in one place for more than three years for the first time in my life. It was pretty comfortable.
We’ve had plenty of ups and downs. The glamourous life of a freelance artist/animator/editor/creative director/teacher isn’t without its challenges. A couple of layoffs, corporate shenanigans, dramatic world events… But then came my role at an online education company, Lynda dot com, and “comfortable” took on a whole new meaning.
Hmmm… I’m guessing “golden handcuffs”?
You guessed it, Snarky. I had a pretty cool job creating courses, building curriculum and recruiting amazing like-minded creative professionals to come to a little beachside town in Southern California to create the best online education on earth. As if that wasn’t enough, I was surrounded by wildly talented, funny and intelligent people AND I was making what many would call a “buttload” of money.
Those early days at Lynda were incredible, but all things change… As the company grew, it slowly turned into something other than what I signed up for. When we got acquired by LinkedIn, the changes became more pronounced, and I became increasingly unhappy and un-fun to be around. But I was deep deep in the grip of #goldenhandcuffs and telling myself all kinds of stories about why I had to stay…
This job is amazing, you’re lucky to have it!
You’ll never find another gig like this.
You’ll never make this much money again!
You have so many amazing friends here!
You’re nobody if you’re not this job!
And then in the fall of 2021, corporate shenanigans ambushed me on a Monday morning… I was the victim of a series of poor decisions that had nothing to do with me, but changed everything… What my role was, who I reported to, everything… and it came out of the blue.
Oh snap! I thought LinkedIn was the kind of place where that shit didn’t happen?
Right?? All of the marketing I’d experienced up to that point told me the same thing. The details aren’t important anymore but suffice to say this event violated every one of LinkedIn’s organizational values. Every single one. And yet, it happened. I didn’t realize it, but this incident would teach me a valuable lesson…
Like all companies, LinkedIn is an organism/organization made up of people and anything made up of people is only as good or bad as the collection of individual decisions that each of its components make every day. This event shattered my faith in the organization and changed the stories I was telling myself each day…
I’ll never believe the organizational hype again.
I thought I was a valued senior employee?
I don’t deserve this treatment!
How could they do this to me?
Overnight I had gone from a relatively high performing employee striving to find his way in a large organization to a person who didn’t believe in anything. Overnight, I couldn’t even explain why someone would want to work with our team… The core function I was getting paid for.
Bleah… that is a pretty dark place to be in.
Yes, Snarky Voice in My Head, it was dark… and you were right there with me the whole time. LOL… My therapist can testify to that. On good days, I grapple with anger and depression, and this was threatening to pull me under.
With the help of my therapist, I decided to take a leave of absence from work. The idea was so foreign that it took me a while to get my head around the concept. “Isn’t that something only white people do?” No… For a variety of historical and sociological reasons, it’s something that’s only “acceptable” for white people to do. But fuck that… Since I was in a bad place anyways, why should I care how it would look to the larger organization? You need to take care of YOU! (The words of my therapist)
LOL That lady does NOT hold back.
No, Snarky, she doesn’t play… You know, you’re the reason she doesn’t play right? Her whole deal is to make sure you don’t make me do or say anything stupid, and she’s doing a pretty good job of it.
Errrrrr maybe you should get back to the article?
I’m incredibly fortunate to have A LOT of very good friends who helped me through this dark time. One of them gave me a very small book that I normally would never have bought or even looked at… Buddhist Boot Camp by Timber Hawkeye.
Not only does the cover have a skin headed white guy in military fatigues, but it also has the word “Buddhist”. Two strikes against it right off the bat. Skin headed white guys in military clothing have a troubled place in society (to put it mildly) and religion is at best a double edged sword historically (to put it mildly).
But, the person who gave it to me knows me well and I value their opinion, so as part of my therapeutic regimen, I made a commitment to read it… one short passage a day.
This is the part where I’m supposed to say “This book transformed my life as my mind flowered into a new state of consciousness one enlightenment after another!” That is not what happened.
What DID happen is that I slowly came to realize my anger about the incident at work was holding me back, keeping me from moving forward in my life. My therapist had been telling me this for months, but the short meditations in this book gave me a framework for seeing what she had known all along.
I needed to let go. Yes… it was stupid and avoidable, but no it was not about me. It just happened to come at a time when my mental energy was at its weakest. The book also helped me to see that if I could just let go, this event could become a catalyst for transformation in my life. I could go from victim to being in control with just a change of perspective.
I wasn’t happy in my role, but I felt like I couldn’t leave. Therapy combined with the leave of absence gave my mind the space it needed to hear what the book was telling me. This incident gave me permission to not care about work.
Dayummm that is NOT like you at all!
Nope. It’s always been a source of pride that nobody could ever accuse me of NOT caring. Caring about shit is kinda my thing. But pride cometh before the fall and I had fallen pretty low. The Universe had just given me a reason to care more about myself than my work for the first time in a long time.
The rest is history unfolding itself in real time. I left my swanky role at a big ass amazing company, and I’ve embarked on a journey to build a creative life... Just by letting go.
Is there a catalyst for change staring you right in the face? Let us know in the comments.
Oh and since you’ve made it this far, here’s proof that I did NOT risk my life for the banner image…
