Welcome to Day 9 of the Outsourced Optimism Lightly Festive Digital Advent Calendar. Click here to learn more about this small seasonal series or to unwrap all the gifts in the archives.
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Did you make your Wish List and Granted Wishes List yet?
You know, as powerful as it is to own what you want, I think it is equally powerfully to acknowledge and release what you donât want. Especially when it is something we used to want or something we thought we were supposed to want.
We donât talk about this a lot. Actively letting something go. We wait for it to expire or leave on its own. Or we fight the changing nature of things with great resistance, expecting permanence.
One of my favorite Substack discoveries this year is
âs Good Riddance thread. A weekly space to let go of something you donât want anymoreâ a gripe, a burden, a fear, a hurt, an insecurity, an obligation, an expectation, a limitationâ something thatâs holding you back or weighing you down.Itâs kind of like the âChoose Againâ and âI Will Never ___â exercises I shared in this Oh Dear Column. So many of you wrote to me afterwards to say you went through these prompts, and the most commonly used word to describe the experience was: Freeing.
This is the gift of today.
As weâre charging toward the end of the year, our thoughts inevitably turn toward reflection (what went well, what went wrong), anticipation, and resolution. I wonder how it would feel if, this year, we began with release.
Grab your notebooks and letâs put it all on the page:
What are you letting go?
What are you releasing?
What are you getting rid of?