Nine practical tips for letting go in a chaotic world

let go: black and white photograph of (on left) fingers holding the cuff of a sweater over the hand (on right) fingers letting go of the cuff of the sweater from the hand "Let Go" by JFXie is licensed under CC BY 2.0.Recently, I’ve been practicing what Susan Pollak calls “letting go of whatever isn’t serving you right now”. Perhaps your first thought is “That sounds nice”, quickly followed by a second thought along the lines of “Huh, easy to say, hard to do. OK, Adrian, how can I let go in this chaotic world?”

I’ve no guarantees, but here are nine suggestions that almost always work for me.

1 — Notice what’s going on

Yes, we need to shut up and listen to what people say. And we need to notice what they do. But what is often harder is to listen to and notice ourselves. To notice:

A simple personal example is noticing I feel angry about a small irritation, like accidentally dropping something I’m holding. When I’m centered, an incident like that is no big deal. But when I respond with an expletive, that’s a sign something else is going on. I’m likely carrying some anger that has nothing to do with my fumble.

Without noticing what’s going on with ourselves, we’re unlikely to be capable of letting go of anything that isn’t serving us well.

2 — Meditate regularly

Regular meditation is the key to giving me practice and supporting my need/want/desire to let go of what isn’t serving me in the moment. Though I struggled to meditate daily for many years, I’ve finally developed a daily meditation practice that serves me well. I also try to meditate when I notice incongruence in my responses to experiences (see above).

3 — “Nothing to get. Nothing to get rid of.”

While meditating, thoughts and (sometimes) feelings appear. When this happens, reminding myself that there’s “Nothing to get. Nothing to get rid of.” calms me and helps me empty my mind.

4 — “Is it necessary?”

The question “Is it necessary?” is a useful tool to examine a disturbing thought that captures your attention.

Do I need to be thinking this thought right now 😀?

Usually, the answer is “no”!

5 — Remember who you are

I have a contract with myself, that I developed in 2005. Sometimes, I notice I’m circling through thoughts and feelings about a fantasized future unrelated to the current moment. I remind myself of my contract — who I really am — by mentally repeating it to myself. This helps me center and stop clinging to unhealthy and unproductive thoughts and feelings.

6 — Greeting what comes up with compassion

You can’t force letting go. Instead, you can accept the reality of what is happening.  One way to do this is to greet what comes up with compassion. Compassion is a form of acceptance that can allow persistent thoughts and feelings to lose their force.

6 — “Let John be John.”

Sometimes you find yourself worried, upset, angry, etc. due to a specific person’s actions that affect you. A helpful way to get some distance and relief from these feelings and associated thoughts is to accept that they are the way they are. Saying to yourself “Let John be John” (substitute their name for “John” 😀) acknowledges that:

  • They are not you.
  • How they interact with you is always about them, and, often,  not about you.
  • You accept their reality without it necessarily affecting yours.

7 — Use music

Music has the strange power to change our emotional state. I don’t know of a better way to move away from persistent distracting thoughts and feelings than by listening (and sometimes dancing) to music that I love.

8 — Other concepts that may help you.

I’m using imperfect words to convey helpful approaches to letting go. Here are some other words and phrases that may strike a chord for you:

  • Acceptance
  • Loosening
  • Surrendering
  • Releasing
  • Noticing the burden
  • Clinging is suffering; letting go ends suffering
  • Letting go is a form of love.
  • Letting go is an ongoing practice and process
  • Letting things be as they are

9 — Finally, be kind to yourself!

We are all imperfect realizations of our perfection. I fail at all the above over and over again. When the renowned cellist Pablo Casals was asked why, at 81, he continued to practice four or five hours a day he answered: “Because I think I am making progress.” So, be kind to yourself!

What practical tips do you have to help you let go in this chaotic world? Please share in the comments below!

Image attribution: “The image Let Go” by JFXie is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

Working with both sides

After a school board informational meeting the other day, I chatted with the moderator, Steve John. We discussed several aspects of the meeting, including the difficulty of working with both sides of an issue.

Working with both sides: A photograph of The Meeting for the Town/Community Center, Marlboro, VT. Photo by David Holzapfel. I'm the guy wearing a checked shirt.
The Meeting for the Town/Community Center, Marlboro, VT. Photo by David Holzapfel. I’m the guy wearing a checked shirt.

It’s rare for groups larger than a few people to agree unanimously on an issue. Sometimes the group needs to make a choice between alternatives. Our school board meeting included a discussion of an upcoming vote on whether to keep junior high students educated at our local school or have them “tuition out” to other schools. Strong opinions on both sides were evident during the meeting.

Sometimes there are win-win alternatives to win-lose situations, as I’ve described elsewhere. But sometimes there aren’t, and the group needs to make a choice that some members are going to be unhappy about.

Even though facilitators or moderators need to stay non-judgmental, I sometimes agree more with certain points of view. Steve and I talked about how hard it can be to facilitate discussion on an issue when we have an opinion about it.

Learning from practicing facilitation

Though I find it difficult at times, one of the things I like about facilitation is that it challenges me to practice non-attachment to a perspective.

I probably don’t moderate contentious issues as often as Steve—who has decades of experience running public meetings—as my clients are mostly associations and non-profits. In my work, however, there are often underlying tensions between subgroups.

One common example is conferences where suppliers and practitioners attend the same sessions. Generalizing, suppliers (who also sometimes sponsor the meeting) are there to sell their products and services, while practitioners primarily want to learn from and connect with each other. This can cause friction between these two groups. Part of my pre-meeting work is to uncover, understand, and prepare for potential discord. This involves designing the meeting to respect the wants and needs of each group and facilitating any sticky situations that surface.

Another example is when participants work for organizations of very different sizes or focuses, have disparate ideas about the meeting’s goals, but have historically avoided discussing the resulting tensions with each other. My job, then, can be to open and facilitate uncomfortable but essential conversations about the invisible elephant in the room.

Working with both sides and empathizing with all points of view is good practice for staying open to possibilities in my work and my life.

Image attribution: Photo [source] by and with the permission of David Holzapel.

Connection, attachment, and meetings

John Singer Sargent's painting, A Street in Venice. Image courtesy Clark Art Institute. A man looks at a woman in a Venetian alleyway. Is there connection or attachment between them?A teacher recently advised our daily meditation group to seek “connection free from attachment”. This is a wise practice for me. But what does it mean in the context of meetings? Surely we sometimes become attached to people we meet? Isn’t creating and strengthening attachments one of the desirable functions of meetings? So what is the relationship between connection and attachment when people come together?

Last week I was exploring paintings at The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts when this work by John Singer Sargent caught my attention.

Although Sargent is chiefly known as “a portrait painter who evoked Edwardian-era luxury“, this painting of Venice shows something different. Instead of “focusing on iconic views of Venice”, Sargent “offers a glimpse into everyday life”.

I see this painting as a depiction of an event about to happen: two people meeting, a foreshadowing of connection. I could be wrong because what we see is ambiguous. It’s possible that the man will turn away and continue his walk. But perhaps the woman is about to turn towards the man looking at her; they will connect in the alleyway. Perhaps they are about to enter the wine cellar and connect there.

My fanciful, though perhaps plausible, interpretations of Sargent’s painting illuminate how I think about the relationship between connection, attachment, and meetings.

Connection and attachment

Connection is something that happens in the moment. As another meditation teacher put it: “Nothing to get. Nothing to get rid of. Just this.”

In contrast, attachment is a description of a complex fusion of past, present, and future connections. It’s a historical construct. Even if we connect with a person once, that only creates attachment through our continued memory of the experience of the moment. Attachment is about our relationship with others. Our attachment to people is created and strengthened by one or more moments of connection with them over time.

Traditional meetings and connection

At meetings, as in life, connection happens with another person or, sometimes, in small groups. Not while someone is lecturing in a room full of people.

At traditional meetings, connection happens almost exclusively outside the formal lecture-style sessions. It’s inefficient and random. Even if someone asks a question at the end of a session and you want to talk to them more about it, you have to hunt them down in the hallways or socials.

Traditional meetings offer minimal opportunities for connection, attachment, and ensuing relationships.

Luckily, we can do better.

Creating connection and attachment at meetings

For decades, one of my core goals for participant-driven and participation-rich meetings has been to facilitate connection around relevant content. In our meetings, we need to provide plenty of opportunities and support for moment-to-moment connections around relevant learning. The resulting connections lead to attachments, and to valuable relationships between meeting participants that endure into the future.