Just.Let.Go

You know the thing about holding on too tight? Gripping a dream with both hands, nails digging in to the palm of your hand, arms shaking, choking the life out of what made that dream beautiful in the first place, and trying through your own sheer force of will to bring it into creation? 

 It's exhausting. 

 And...it doesn't work. 

So often, we get caught up in this idea that So&So (a subsidiary of If I Could Only Be Like Them, Inc) did it this way. 

Step by step, this was their path to success....and if I'll just place my feet carefully in their footsteps never once 

overstepping the outer edges of their size 8 marks on the word, then I too can get to wherever it is that they've gotten. 

Because it's good to get to gotten. 

And the faster, the better. 

But here's the thing about following someone else's footsteps: it means you're never once blazing your own trail.

 And here's the thing about holding on so tightly to someone else's version of success: you have no idea just how much 

you might shortchanging what it is you're actually capable of. And day after day you go on, trading in your 

"go out and leave this world a better place" for their "hey, it looks pretty on the internet." 

Lately, I've been in a season of my life where I just keep getting the same message over and over and (since I tend to not 

get the message the first few times) OVER again. It's an image in my head that's as clear as any picture I've ever seen. 

It's of a balled up fist, nails digging in. Broken. World-wearied. Exhausted from holding on far too tight for far too long. 

And the relief that comes when you Just. Let. Go. 

Open your hand.

I saw it written somewhere that it's a lot easier to give a gift to an open hand than a closed up fist. And so for the past few months, every time I've caught myself anxiously striving, trying to force it,  trying to make things happen exactly the way that *I* think they should happen and in the order I see fit.... I take a second to take a deep breath and look down at my open hand. And in that moment over and over again,  I make the choice to- figuratively, physically and actually- just let go. I open up my hand, I open up my heart. And I make the choice to just go forward, out into my day, out into the world, with no clue what might happen next. But excited to see what it's going to be. Because I'm betting that it's way better than anything  I could have planned myself. I know there is a far better plan at play. And the truth is, all of the best things that have happened in my life are the things I couldn't possibly have predicted or made happen on my own. Now let me be clear, I'm not saying that we don't have to work for it. I still believe that it's the work that makes it worth it. But what I am saying is that we have to do our part, put in the honest work,  do the right things, act with integrity, put it out there and then let it go. And trust that we've done all we  can do and the right things will find us. So today if you find yourself holding on too tightly, striving for someone else's dreams, and hanging on by a thread. Take a deep breath and open your hand. You have no idea what might be waiting to fall into it.