Knowing When To Let Go - Jan 30

Is there something—or someone—in your life that you need to step away from? In today’s 5 Minutes in Nature, Liz reflects on a community project she is moving on from. As she does so, she notices a sense of sadness arising alongside the recognition that her life is changing. Through this transition, she reflects on the importance of letting go when the time is right.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.

Wow it's a grey old day up here on Dartmoor.

The Moorland Rami is absolutely streaming with water.

Water is gushing in places that it doesn't normally gush.

We've had so much rain over the last 24 hours.

I thought I was going to get really soaked on this walk but it's not rained so far I'm so pleased to say.

There is a very low cloud,

A mist,

All around me and I'm sort of squelching my way in my wellington boots along the hedgerow here that's going to take me down to an old abandoned golf club and then I'm going to just wander back home.

I'm not going to go high on the moorland today and as I was walking up onto the moorland I listened to a message from a friend.

Just to give you a bit of context I've spent five years from 2020 to 2024 I worked running a not-for-profit in our local community and it was very much around sharing listening,

Sharing well-being listening as we called it and there's a course on well-being listening here on Insight Timer if you're interested.

Very much exploring the power of listening in communities,

The power of particularly those people that are helping others,

Maybe they run groups or they're educators or they're therapists or counsellors or they work in local government,

Just sharing a very simple way of listening to other another person soul to soul and as part of this community work my friend and I we were inspired to set up a couple of online communities one of which was to promote all the great stuff that was going on in our local community and then there was another community where we had a forum that we could connect and chat with each other and it feels as though over the last 18 months I have gradually been drawing away from this community work more and more.

I closed down the social enterprise or the not-for-profit 18 months ago and just gradually I've been finding my own way transitioning as you know into a new way of exploring who I want to work with and how I want to work and very much drawn to work with older women and I've just listened to a message from my friend on the phone and she's just been explaining how this process of winding up these online groups is now going into the final phase.

There seems to be somebody that wants to take on ownership of them and will support running them and it means that myself and my friend can step back and it was interesting really because it feels both exactly right the right thing to do that somebody else is stepping forward and it also I feel a sense of sadness a sense of sadness that this project that I'd been involved with for so long in my life is coming to an end and realising that actually there is a process there is a sense of letting go there is an honouring of the work I've been involved with and in and also an honouring of what it is to step back from being so involved in a project that was very much part of my life for such a period of time.

So today is all about transitions it's about stepping back it's about giving things time to have their cycle and to realise when that cycle has come to an end.

It's not about clinging on to something it's not about hanging on at all costs it's not about saying well I'm committed to this so I'm gonna stick with it forever.

For me it's been about realising that commitment is saying I'm committed to this for as long as it feels right in my world and then respectfully I'm going to move on hand it on and move away and the sadness I feel is more of a sadness of transition and change rather than a sadness and regret at what I'm doing.

So today is all about transitions it's about letting go and I guess it's about you asking the question is there something in my life that has run its course that the cycle has gone fully around and now it's time for me to step away it's time for me to move on.

Is there something in your life that you realise is moving in that direction and it might be tough you might have invested energy and time and love and commitment into it and yet you also know that now is the time to start allowing it to make its own way in the world.

It might be a person it might be a project.

So let me know if this resonates for you and just realise that you can let go it can be exactly the right thing and you can feel sadness and it can be exactly the right time to move on it might have been a successful thing that you were involved with and now it's time to let it go.

If that resonates for you then I'd love to know.

Reviews

This definitely resonates today. After a restructure at work, my job is being made redundant by being amalgamated with that of a colleague into one single job. I have worked there for 25 years. Whilst I am sure that I don't want the new job and have not applied, redundancy is not quite the way I envisaged finishing my working life at this establishment. Also as it's an educational institution, the change doesn't take effect until the end of the academic year, at the end of August. It will be a big change. I have some ideas about how I want to move forward but it will definitely require a shedding of the old to make way for the new. Part of me is excited by the possibilities while another is concerned by the unknown. Although I by no means define myself by my job, the fact that I've been there so long means that it is currently a big part of who I am and what I do. There has to be a big transition between now and September into something or someone new/different. Letting go is definitely required.

Sometimes it IS hard to admit something has reached its expiration date and to let it go. Thanks for reminding me it is still right to do so AND perfectly normal to feel sad about it. 💜