Let go of the good

Are you a hoarder? A minimalist? Or something in between? 

I moved house recently, which has always been a pain. On the bright side, every time I move, I engage in my favourite activity—throwing things away. Every time I shift, I sort through all of our things and become merciless with what qualifies for box status. There is no danger of hoarding around here! 

I’ve always loved the prospect of clean slates, letting go and fresh beginnings. There’s something so mentally freeing about turfing out a box of old things you no longer use. 

If reading about me throwing away my stuff makes your heart beat faster, you’re not alone. It’s hard to eliminate things we already have and do – even when we know they’re not serving us or there’s a better option.  

We’re inherently loss averse – we value things we already have more highly simply because we have them. One in the hand, two in the bush and all that.  

“Getting to the next level always requires ending something, leaving it behind, and moving on. Growth itself demands that we move on. Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.”

― Henry Cloud, Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward

I see this at work, too. Last Thursday, I ran an excellent Strategic Focus workshop during which we raced through the programme—priorities, outcomes, action streams, tick tick tick. However, everything came to a screeching halt when I asked the group to make some trade-offs so we could find the time and money to implement change. 

Strategy is all about choices, and the most challenging part of any choice is the road not taken (or the box of stuff thrown away or the project, relationship, or commitment we need to let go of!). 

I always hear the same protests - “I have to do everything I’m doing!” “Nothing is negotiable!” But the thing about real change is that it can’t be as well as – we’re already at maximum capacity. Real change needs to be instead of.

This is fine if we’re releasing things we don’t enjoy, that don’t add value, or that we don’t care about—like my boxes of stuff when I move. Those are choices between right and wrong. 

How about when we need to choose between right and right? Or chuck out stuff we’re still using? This is hard, uncomfortable territory. We must let go of the good to get to the awesome - or we won’t grow.  

Henry Cloud nailed the best analogy for this issue in ‘Necessary Endings’ when discussing pruning rosebushes. 

Rosebushes produce more buds than they can sustain and require regular pruning to be healthy and thrive. Cloud distinguishes between three types of pruning. The first is to remove dead branches. These branches no longer contribute and are taking up space, making it harder for others to grow. Easy. The second is to remove sick and diseased branches, which are unlikely to recover and take energy away from healthy branches. Not bad. 

The third type of pruning, though, is the removal of perfectly healthy buds. Having too many ‘good’ buds prevents the rosebush from totally thriving by directing energy away from the buds that have the potential to be great. Without this critical third type, your rosebush will never be fabulous. 

What perfectly healthy things do you need to prune to get to great?