Have you ever watched someone try to ice skate for the first time?
Often when people are ice skating for the first time, they want to hold on to something, like to the wall around the ice rink, or to someone’s hand. This makes sense. They don’t want to fall!
But here’s the thing: When you hold onto something that’s not in the direction you’re trying to go in, you will keep veering towards whatever (or whomever) you’re holding onto. Even if it’s a person who is skating alongside you.
In order to skate forward (fully forward), you have to let go.
Holding on doesn’t mean you won’t fall. (I say as someone who has gone down multiple times when the person holding onto me has fallen.)
It’s not actually necessarily safer. (You can definitely tweak a muscle during your attempts to hold on while falling!)
Of course, it’s instinctual to want to hold onto something or someone that represents safety when we feel insecure, when we’re worried about falling. Just think of a new manager who is still stuck in execution mode, the bilingual partner who is the constant interpreter without even being asked, or that friend or family member who remains in a place (or a social circle) they’ve long outgrown.
But as anyone who knows how to ice skate will tell you: Falling down is part of the process.
Lately I’ve been thinking about what I’ve been holding onto that seems safer, but isn’t necessarily, or that perhaps was safer once upon a time but that I now need to let go of in order to move fully forward.
This feels especially salient as a new parent and as one who is coming back to work. I feel like I’ve been slow to relaunch as I’ve been trying to figure out how to integrate things in this new configuration–and as someone who is not entirely the same person I once was.
In past transitions, I’ve had to let go of things like being the expert, of how I needed to act in certain ways while in certain jobs, of needing to fully understand things in order to make a decision (definitely can’t hold onto that and do anything in a foreign country!), and many more things. Some of these (okay, many), I am still working on letting go of.
I don’t have an answer yet this time (my kid is not even 6 months old yet at the time of this writing and I only took off my out-of-office on my work email a few weeks ago) but here’s the question I’ll be pondering:
What is it I need to let go of in order to move fully forward?
If you’re open to sharing, I’d love to hear what you’ve previously let go of in order to get to where you are now. If you’re also in a transitional space at the moment and curious about partnering with a coach to think through this question, please reach out and we can find a time to talk.
Author’s Note
I’ve been struggling to write my first blog post after quietly coming back from parental leave. (Although perhaps coming back is not quite the right phrase either as I get ready to take some time off again for family time?)
There it is again. That belief that there is a right phrase. That there’s a perfect sequence. That there’s a right order of doing this–integrating life and work and reintroducing myself and communicating that externally. As if I should process map my whole life.
But life isn’t linear. Most things are not dichotomies, not A vs. B but points on a continuum that has more than two dimensions.
Sure, there are things that can be sequenced for a smoother process. But even if you’re designing a service that is largely automated, and you have created a workflow that works for most people most of the time, you’ll still need to consider various conditions. There will likely be branch off points. What about the person using assistive technology? What about the person who has to pause and restart later because it is during the 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. window and the washing machine repair person has finally come? What about the person who is trying to pay the bills for their parent who has dementia?
I digress. Few things have been as loud reminders that there is no one right way of doing things as much as having a baby. There’s what works for this kid, for our family. There’s what’s works best for right now. There’s lots of discovering that what worked last week or worked in before times no longer works. And there’s a lot of…well, that’s really not all that important in the grand scheme of things.
Is it still a struggle to keep that in perspective? Daily. Sometimes hourly. Is working to let go of things a lifelong practice? Yes. But it helps to know what is important to me, what it is I’m moving towards, and it helps to have a good team. (I am so grateful to be navigating this together with my amazing partner!)
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