When I Clutched Too Tight
I had always believed that more control meant more security. I scheduled every hour of my day. I double-checked emails. I pushed for immediate responses. I held on to every outcome—jobs, relationships, even conversations like they were fragile treasures I had to protect.
Yet beneath all that control lived a constant ache: I was exhausted. My creativity was stifled. Every time I forced something, it cracked. I felt stuck, frustrated, like I was swimming upstream in a river I couldn’t read.
Then one evening, during a crowded subway ride home, I watched someone literally let go of the overhead handrail not out of carelessness, but because their train was so crowded that holding on felt futile. And nearly something inside me clicked: What if holding on so tight is what’s causing the tension? What if letting go could bring more than control ever did?
That was the turning point. I decided to trust the process to surrender my need for perfect outcomes and see what unfolds when I stop forcing. What followed changed more than I ever expected.
The Journey of Letting Go
Here’s how the decision to lean into surrender played out in real life and what shifted when I stopped trying to force things. I’ll break it into stages so you can see the unfolding.
Phase 1: Permission to Release
I started small. First, I let go of small expectations:
- Instead of demanding perfection in my work, I told myself: “Good enough is okay.”
- Instead of plotting every career move in exact detail, I mapped visions and values, not timelines.
- I allowed some days to be “slow.” No hustling. No pushing. Just being.
These were scary tiny steps. I felt vulnerable. Would people think I was lazy? Would I lose momentum?
But the relief was immediate. My mind quieted. I discovered energy I’d been wasting on being “in control.” And strangely, ideas came more easily when I relaxed.
Phase 2: Trusting Mid-Stage, Amid Uncertainty
Then came the uncomfortable middle. Things didn’t explode into immediate success. In fact, some projects I thought would fly seemed to stall. I felt that old impulse: panic, micromanage, push harder.
I caught myself in loops: reaching out, seeking validation, checking numbers obsessively. But each time, I paused, took a breath, and asked:
- “What would it look like to trust that something better is unfolding?”
- “What if I surrendered this result, knowing the outcome I want is already in motion?”
I practiced letting go of timelines (“It doesn’t need to happen by next week”), and releasing how exactly things should manifest. I replaced “I need this to happen so that…” with “I trust that this is happening in its own best way.”
Phase 3: Seeds of What I Truly Wanted
Once I loosened my grip, I started noticing:
- Opportunities I hadn’t seen people reaching out unexpectedly, collaborations emerging out of casual conversations.
- Reduced resistance and stress, the sense of “pushing uphill” faded. I slept better. I felt lighter.
- Clarity, not just chaos letting go didn’t mean letting drift. My values, intuition, and sense of what felt right guided me. I made decisions more from alignment than from fear.
Letting go revealed what was authentic. I stopped chasing what looked good or what others expected; I began doing what felt real to me.
Phase 4: Receiving What I Was Wanting
By the time three to four months passed, things I had been trying so hard to push into existence arrived with less force and more flow.
- A job opportunity I’d been quietly hoping for popped up—without me applying, someone forwarded my name.
- A creative project that had been stuck for months unlocked; inspiration came when I least expected it.
- A relationship deepened not because I pressured, but because I showed up vulnerable, open, and without an agenda.
These weren’t overnight miracles, but they were fruit of trust. They came in their own time, often imperfectly, often not the way my “control brain” would have scripted—but they felt more in alignment, more satisfying.
Trusting the Process Is the Real Work
Letting go didn’t mean giving up. It meant giving space for possibility, for timing, for life’s wisdom to move through me.
Trusting the process meant believing that what I want is already finding me, even when I can’t see how. It meant recognizing control as a kind of resistance often more damaging than helpful.
If you’re holding on too tightly over results, over timelines, over how things should look, I want to encourage you: try releasing even a small piece. Choose one thing this week to let go of. Surrender that control. See what emerges.
You may find that letting go brings not less, but more. More peace. More natural momentum. More of what you want, in ways you didn’t expect, but that feels more true.
Because at the end of the day, life tends to unfold beautifully when we stop forcing and start trusting.
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