Why You Should Let Things Go

Hey there, Readers! I hope you’ve had a relaxing weekend and are ready for a great week ahead. Today, I just wanted to share a short little lesson I’ve noticed coming up more and more as a valuable mental model in my life. 

For context, most of the time we think about adding to our life. We add things like new routines, clothes, a new gadget, etc. The new additions satisfy for awhile, but eventually the novelty wears off, and then we’re off looking for the next thing to add.

After repeating this pattern for some time, you simply end up with too much stuff. Suddenly, adding one more thing is not a treat, but a chore. 

What should you do? Just let some things go. 

Spoiler alert, this is also the main lesson from Marie Kondo’s best selling book, Magic of Tidying Up. 

A decision to keep something is still an active decision. By non-acting, we’re actually still deciding to keep something that might not add much value to us. 

So this week, my challenge for you is to make a short list. Write down just a few things you could let go or give away. What could you sell? What could you throw out? 

Personally, I have shirts in my closet that never get worn, yet there they sit. As difficult as it is, I’m slowly donating most of these things to charity and making room for the clothes I wear the most. 

The other important point I should make, is that not all clutter is physical. We also carry around unnecessary stress or feelings about some past event, that really don’t help us in any way. Letting go of this kind of psychological clutter is a much harder task than throwing out a few pairs of old socks, but I’ve found starting with the easy stuff is the way to something much more transformative. 

The end goal of letting go isn’t to end up living like a minimalist in a robe. Rather, I want to empower you to see that an inactive decision to keep clutter in your life is still a decision. You can change that though. And if you do, I’d love to hear about your results in the comments below.