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The Art of Letting Go · The Daily Writer

• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Hey my friend, welcome to this episode of the Daily Writer Podcast.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about one of the hardest truths to swallow.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Here it is.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: The circle of relationships that brought you to where you are is not the circle of relationships that'll take you to where you want to be.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, most of us don't like conflict.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to feel like we're leaving other people behind in our journey.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this fact alone prevents a lot of people from growing because they're not willing to make the tough changes to their personal and professional relationships that they need.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you've probably heard the story about what happens in a crab basket.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: When you put a bunch of crabs in a basket and one of them tries to crawl out, the others pull him back in.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And most social and professional circles work kind of the same way.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever you try to grow or you try to improve or you try to do something outside the norm, the people around you who don't want you to grow or they don't want to grow themselves will try to discourage you from doing that.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, they may not do so directly, but they'll express their doubt that your plans and dreams are realistic.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: They'll talk about how they have just kind of settled for what's in front of them and they're not really happy about it, but they're not really sad about it, and they're just kind of going with the flow.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And there's all kinds of ways that people frame their disappointment in life.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's different ways they try to frame the fact that you should be okay with just kind of being mildly disappointed as well.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: People try to keep you in the crab basket of mediocrity in all different kinds of ways.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let me get personal for just a moment.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Once I'd been teaching college for 12 or 13 years, I knew there was something more that I wanted out of life.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to do that job forever because the context of our small school was really limiting.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: We had a small number of students, my salary was really limited, and there was zero potential for either one of those things ever increasing.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I've said this a million times in the podcast before, so if you've been listening for a long time, you've heard me kind of go down this pathway.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: But let me just let me just reiterate here and say that it's not all about money.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that, you know, when you hear things about changing careers or starting your business, that oftentimes people just accentuate the money.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's not all about the money.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: However, having a little bit more money in your life, it really does make life easier because if you want a bit of a newer car, if you want to make some improvements to your home, if you want to set aside, you know, some a lot of money for saving or investing, or you want to take a decent vacation, having more money is really, really helpful.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that absolutely was a factor for me.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I was very friendly with the people that I worked with, and I still consider most of them to be friends, but none of them had any intentions of building a business, as far as I knew.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there's nothing wrong with that at all.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they're wonderful people, but I knew that if I wanted to build a business, I had to start spending time around people who thought and dreamed in different ways than the people that I was working with every day.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to spend more time around people who were doing the kinds of things that I wanted to do.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: People who were taking a risk, people who were trying to build a business, people who were writing and publishing and doing podcasting and those kinds of things.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I started getting involved in mastermind groups and communities.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I started taking courses on my own and investing in myself.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started doing freelance work for clients.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I started podcasting and writing my own books.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And most of the people in my day job didn't know what to think about all this because it really wasn't in their DNA to build something of their own.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, most of the people that I was working with on a day-to-day basis, they, you know, seemed perfectly content working for an organization, doing church ministry and missions work and those kinds of things.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Again, nothing wrong with that at all.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not slamming that on any level.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm immensely grateful for my background in those fields, but that isn't what I wanted to continue to do.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I needed to get around others who had the kind of goals where I wanted to go in my own life.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not talking about denying the value that some people have had in your journey.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: You can be grateful for a season or a phase in your life and recognize its value while at the same time also understanding that you've got to have a different focus moving forward.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a big reason why people don't move forward in life, why they don't let go of some things and why they don't sort of back away from some of their existing relationships is because they feel like if they move forward, if they make a change, if they go a different direction, that somehow invalidates all the things that have happened before.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not true.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't invalidate anything.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: It just means that was good for a season and you appreciate those things, but you can't stay there.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's all that it means.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think that life is a journey, and if you're not willing to let go of some things, you're not gonna have room in your heart and your mind for the people and the things that you need to carry with you going forward.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that those relationships are not important and that you can't still be friends.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: It just means that you're gonna go a different direction in life and you're gonna be spending the bulk of your time and the emotional energy around people who have the same kinds of goals as you do.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is a very difficult thing to do, isn't it?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got to do a real gut check because it means some people in your life are not gonna agree with your direction and and those people won't fit into your new social circles and your new ways of thinking.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got to be prepared for that.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's tough, and it's a big reason why people don't move forward in their life because they don't want anybody to be mad with them or disappointed with them.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're okay with that, and if you're okay with people not understanding what you're doing and and maybe not following you in that same sphere of existence, then you're gonna be fine.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one more thing about this is that it's not necessarily just about leaving people behind and then going a different direction.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think we have to look at that in just a like a black or white or a binary sort of way.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: The cool thing about this is that whenever you start to move forward, whenever you take those steps, other people are gonna see that, and some of those people are gonna be really interested.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And they're gonna come to you and they're gonna say, hey, so-and-so, how did you do that?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: How did you build a business?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: How did you write those books?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how did you find the courage to build something and leave your job and create your own business?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Some of those people will come to you with those questions.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the people that you absolutely want to take with you, those people who are curious, who want to know how you did it.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I've I have a lot, a lot of conversations with people about that.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: I have a ton of conversations, people with people asking me, how did you transition out of your day job?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: How did you build a business and so on and so forth?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd love to have those conversations.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So again, it's not necessarily just about leaving your past behind and going a new direction and making a clean break.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's about, it is about going a new direction, but you're going to take some of those people with you because they also want to take that same journey.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're just waiting for you to be brave and to take that step forward and to go where you know that you need to go.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: So this has been a bit of a longer episode and I kind of went off on a tangent there.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: But here's my ultimate question.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Are you willing to let go of some relationships in order to make room for new ones that are more in line with your new direction in life, with your writing and your business?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to be honest about that.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Are you willing to let some of those things go?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are, then I think you're gonna be fine.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna do great.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: You really, really are.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And some of those people that you think that you're leaving behind, they're gonna be watching you.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And after a couple years or after a few months, they're gonna come to you and ask how you did it.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really, really a fun conversation because then you can help them.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just about you going up to another level, it's about you sticking your hand down there and helping to pull people up to where you are.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, there's also people who are above you who were once where you are and they're reaching their hand down to help pull you up.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's a constant journey upwards and onwards.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Never ever forget that.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever level you get to, there's always somebody who is above you and who's accomplished more than you, but who is willing to help you.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got to be willing to do the same thing for other people.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it means you've got to be brave.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to let go, you got to be willing to venture out into the unknown.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And my goodness, with the last year or the last couple years of this pandemic, right now is a great time to make a change in your life.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people are changing things.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I say, why not go for it?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, this episode is way much, is way too long, probably, but that's okay.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, hopefully this has been of value to you.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for listening, and I'll see you in tomorrow's episode.