Letting go

How? How do you let go? How do you let go of something you still want, but can’t have? This isn’t a trick question, nor is it a post with any insightful wisdom, rather a plea for others’ insight. Insight into something that seems so trivial – we hear people toss that phrase around regularly, “You just have to let go,” – that’s all well and good, but tell me how? It’s just like when people tell you that you need to love yourself – yes, I know this, but again, tell me how?

I’m struggling at the moment because I don’t know how to let go. I don’t know how to accept the things that have happened in my life – the unfairness I feel, the unluckiness I’ve experienced. I’m struggling because despite all of it, I still feel unaccomplished – I had a dream and I haven’t achieved it. And yes, I understand that I need to “let go” of wanting to “make it” – but isn’t that essentially letting go of my dream? A dream that society also tells me that I should “chase”?

Due to a few recent emotional episodes, people close to me have observed that I’m only reacting this way because I haven’t dealt with the other things in my life. And they’re right. I haven’t. I haven’t dealt with them because I don’t know how to. And their solution is always the same – “You need to see someone.” Will this someone be able to offer me the answers I’ve been seeking? Will they be able to understand if they themselves haven’t been through similar? And how will I connect with them when therapy is a very one-sided relationship?

What I’m finding is that I have a lot of anger, resentment, and bitterness towards others in my life. Resentment towards others who have achieved what I’ve wanted. Anger towards those who have prevented me from achieving my goals. And bitterness towards my entire life. But what I think is behind all of those emotions is actually anger towards myself. I’m angry for the decisions I made that hindered my opportunities. Angry for not learning the lessons I’ve clearly needed to learn. And angry for not knowing then what I know now.

I read something the other day from Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power, “Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power…Everyone has insecurities. When you show yourself in the world and display your talents, you naturally stir up all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity. This is to be expected. You cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others. With those above you, however, you must take a different approach: When it comes to power, outshining the master is perhaps the worst mistake of all. Those who attain high standing in life are like kings and queens: They want to feel secure in their positions, and superior to those around them in intelligence, wit, and charm. It is a deadly but common misperception to believe that by displaying and vaunting your gifts and talents, you are winning the master’s affection. He may feign appreciation, but at his first opportunity he will replace you with someone less intelligent, less attractive, less threatening.”

I wish I had read this ten years ago. I realise now, through no intention of my own, that many of the conversations I have had with people in authority would have done just that – threatened them. I was fortunate to grow up in a family that encouraged questioning and that supportive environment allowed me to become the outspoken individual that I am. But it’s this exact outspokenness, combined with a base genetic intelligence, that has caused these people in power to be dismissive of me and worse yet, attempt to get rid of me.

So there it is. For my entire life I’ve believed I have been doing what’s in the best interest of the team – offering my observations and knowledge, based on my experiences and studies, and believing that it might create the change the culture so desperately needed. And instead of this knowledge being considered, I was being perceived as a threat. I realise now more than ever that intelligence isn’t a blessing. It’s a bloody curse. Or so I’ve been made to feel.

I recently finished Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and there’s a particular story that is heartbreaking. Chris Langen, one of America’s smartest individuals (IQ of 195), did not achieve as much as might have been predicted. Through Gladwell’s storytelling, it becomes clear that the one thing Langen lacked more than anything was what Robert Sternberg defines as “practical intelligence” – “knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect,” (p. 101).

What I’m struggling to understand though, is if intelligence is a natural, unavoidable threat, how then, do intelligent individuals navigate their way and get what they want without triggering those insecurities in people above them? Would that not require these individuals to become someone they’re not? And how is that considered practical intelligence and not inauthenticity?

I don’t have any answers. I actually don’t have much right now other than a wealth of pain, a pain that I’m not sure how to let go of. Or how to deal with. Or how to process. I’m very aware of where I’m “stuck” – of the limitations in my perception, but I’m less aware of the mechanisms to alter such limitations. I’ve often wondered, if I just neglected to think about anything from the past, could I not just live freely in the present? Why is that concept so difficult to conquer? What evolutionary mechanism caused us to hold onto the pain from the past and what purpose does it really serve? Why is it so hard to “let go” and live in the present? And why are some people so seemingly okay with the events that have unfolded in their lives while others, like myself, continue to be tormented by them?

Perhaps letting go is merely grieving in disguise. Perhaps it isn’t. I don’t know. What I do know is this: I don’t know how to let go. And this not knowing, this inability to let go? It’s destroying me.

What is the most important attribute in becoming successful?

Luck. Yes, you read that correctly. Luck, not hard work. Hard work certainly has its role, but it’s the presence, or absence, of luck that will ultimately determine whether or not someone is successful, or unsuccessful, in achieving their goals.

Reading that first paragraph makes a lot of you feel uncomfortable, doesn’t it? The reason we often overlook the role of luck in our lives is because we want to believe we’re in control – we want to believe that we’ve achieved what we have because of our own doing. Not because of something unpredictable, something we couldn’t foresee. Believing the latter challenges our sense of self-worth and it threatens our ego because it appears to take some of the credit for our accomplishments.

This is known in social psychology as a self-serving bias. We attribute good events to ourselves, whereas anything that doesn’t work out in our favour we attribute to our environment or some extenuating circumstance. We take more of the credit when things go right and less of the blame when things go wrong. It’s a natural human tendency, but one that is not entirely balanced.

When we see people who have succeeded* in their professions, what do we do? We look to their past to explain how they became successful. The fundamental problem with this process though, is that at any given point in their story, no one could have predicted what was going to happen in their future. As Steve Jobs said, “You cannot align the dots moving forward, only when you look back.” Yet, we believe that by understanding someone’s past, we can ultimately predict the future. But what happened in the past couldn’t have been predicted, why? Because the future is unknown. It’s unpredictable. We look favourably on the past because of the hindsight bias – believing unpredictable events were predictable in hindsight.

We do this because humans have an incessant need to make sense of things. We don’t like the unknown. It’s one of the reasons religion offers comfort to individuals, because it makes the unknown (death, how we got here) known. Here’s an example that proves this point, as used in Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: Hitler really loved children and he really loved dogs. That sentence makes you feel a bit uneasy, doesn’t it? It makes us feel uneasy because it’s incongruent with the image we have of Hitler being evil – evil humans don’t like the same things we non-evil humans do. When in reality, Hitler was more like us than he was different. He did what he did not because he was evil, but because certain things happened to him – things that were unforeseeable. Still not convinced luck or opportunity played any role? At one point in his life, there was a 50/50 chance Hitler could have been a girl. Would the same events in history have occurred had this been the case? Unlikely. Luck, then, played a significant role in everything that followed.

Have you ever noticed that when someone achieves something great, we attribute it to their hard work and we never question what other factors contributed to their success? Yet, when someone doesn’t achieve something, we immediately question their integrity and commitment to working hard? Again, we do this because we want to believe that our future is within our control. It’s the same reason we believe that if we work hard enough, we can achieve anything we want. But the truth is, if you’re never given an opportunity, you won’t achieve much at all. You can be the world’s best soccer player and live in a desert, and if no scout ever comes to that desert, well, you probably won’t get very far in becoming a professional soccer player.

Luck, when it comes to our achievements, should be viewed in a similar fashion to the likelihood of finding a future partner. Almost everyone knows that predicting a connection between two people is almost impossible and the only reason you and your current partner, or previous partners, ever met is because of nothing more than luck and timing. It doesn’t matter how “hard you worked” or “how great a person you are” you could never have predicted meeting the person you did. Our lives are no different.

Here’s another concept that aids in supporting the role that luck plays in an individual’s future – regression to the mean. This means that if someone has an excellent game one week (I’m thinking of soccer here, but this same theory applies to other sports and professions too), they are likely to either have an average game the following week or worse, a below average game the following week. Why? Because individuals cannot constantly perform above average – 50% of the time an individual will play above their average, and 50% of time they will play below their average. Now, what’s the likelihood then, that a potential scout will be at the game and the individual will be playing above average? Well, 50% in this example. What’s the likelihood that the player won’t be injured? Or that the scout is looking for that particular position that the individual plays? Or that the individual will fit the age bracket of what the scout is seeking? And what’s the likelihood that the individual’s personality will be compatible with that of the recruiter? When you take all these other factors into consideration, you soon realise that very little control of whether that individual gets selected is actually within their control and much more lies within luck – being at the right place at the right time.

I’ve seen this multiple times within the sporting world – opportunities are awarded to some individuals and not others, despite those others being equally, if not more, qualified. How can this be explained? Our mind tries to rationalise people’s decisions by finding causal explanations. “Oh that first person must have been better." Or, "They must have worked harder.” When in actual fact, that first person was just lucky. And the others, unlucky. The Matthew Effect also plays a role. This effect suggests that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer – more opportunities will be presented to those whose names are known than to those whose names aren’t. That is why a CEO of one company is much more likely to become a CEO of another company than someone who isn’t a CEO of any company.

This cognitive bias is something we’re all susceptible to. We choose the name that looks familiar. Because it’s easier. And their name is readily available in our mind (also known as the availability heuristic). And the risk of choosing them and them not being successful is far less than choosing an unknown individual and that individual not succeeding. Humans do not like deviating from the norm or from what is easy, so we stick to what we know and to what is readily available.

Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner, explains this extremely well in his aforementioned book. As he states, “It is difficult to imagine people lining up at airport bookstores to buy a book that enthusiastically describes the practices of business leaders who, on average, do somewhat better than chance. Consumers have a hunger for a clear message about the determinants of success and failure in business, and they need stories that offer a sense of understanding, however illusory,” (p. 206). We believe that by studying experts, we too might become an expert. What we neglect to consider though, is the role that luck has played in their story of becoming successful. Who would buy a book that focused more on luck than on an individual’s attributes? Not many. Because it lacks a major selling piece, hope.

It isn’t all doom and gloom though. Hard work has its role. Obviously the harder you work, the longer you stay in the game and the more opportunities you have for luck to play a role in your favour. But the opposite is also true – the more opportunity you have to become unlucky too. We like to attribute our misfortunes to something bigger than ourselves – but how can you explain a child getting cancer? Or someone getting in a car accident on their way to work? Was that always “part of their story”, or did they just happen to be extremely unlucky? It seems silly to believe hard work could have prevented either of these tragedies, so why then do we believe hard work is the recipe for the converse, success? Does luck not play more of a role?

I recently posed this question to someone close to me – I asked them if hard work or luck had played more of a role in their owning of a business. Their response, “fifty-fifty”. I challenged this though – how hard had this individual actually worked? What had they given up to own this business? How did they come to obtain this business? And the answer lies not in their hard work, but in the opportunity they were presented – the former business owner unfortunately passed away suddenly, gifting the business to his two employees. Without this strike of luck, this individual could very well still be working “hard” without owning a business. But it was the opportunity that contributed more to their owning of a business than it was their own doing.

I’ve been guilty of believing that if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything you want in life. But my recent experiences over the past few years have forced me to question that. I look at what I’ve achieved (and conversely what I haven’t) and I look at what others have achieved. Is it true that they have worked harder than me? No, it isn’t. The truth is, they’ve been luckier than I have. Luckier with injuries (or lack of), luckier with coaches, and luckier with just general opportunities. I look at those who are like me, those that didn’t achieve what they perhaps set out to achieve, and what do they all have in common? Not a lack of willpower, or dedication, or commitment, they were all just unlucky. Suffering career ending injuries – how can you predict that? How can you prevent that? The truth? You can’t. Because the future, no matter how much we study the past, will never be predictable. Because life isn’t predictable. So my departing question to you is this – what role has luck played in your life? Remembering that we luck into where we’re born, what we’re born into, and what opportunities are presented to us.

*Succeeded by definition of achieving what they initially set out to achieve.

A work in progress

The only thing that’s constant in life is change. Our state of mind is never guaranteed. That’s why striving for happiness is an unobtainable feat. Happiness is temporary. As is its opposing emotion, sadness. But each cannot exist without the other. My former blog post was written from a place of clarity, of sound mind. But that isn’t something I experience all the time. Logically, I can understand almost anything put in front of me. So logically, I know this isn’t the end for me with regards to soccer. I know there are great things to come from this adversity. But emotionally? I’m still hurting. I’m still struggling. I’m still grieving. And I’m still healing. And I will be for some time.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have good days, because I do. And that’s one of the most common misperceptions about life – we think it’s a linear journey towards success. But it never is. It’s always filled with obstacles, setbacks, detours, and quite often, entirely different directions. Anyone who has suffered from a mental illness is never fully “cured” – they’re still a work in progress and always will be. And perhaps that’s one of the beautiful things about being human, we’re complex beings with multifaceted emotions.

I’m currently tormented with what my head knows makes logical sense and what my heart is aching for. At what point do you need to accept that the dream and goal you are chasing was never intended for you? Is the universe “testing” you, putting you through these significant adversities so that you can one day assist someone else who goes through similar? Or is the universe guiding you and you’re ignoring its messages? When do you decide to let go of what filled your life with your greatest joy? Can you ever do that without wondering “what if”?

I look at the people who represent our country in an array of different sports and logically, I know they’re not the best. They’re the ones that have been gifted with opportunity and timing. So what do you tell someone who has aspirations of representing their country or playing at the highest level, but a body that has been broken more times than it’s been whole? Or who has had more coaches overlook them than they have advocate for them? Are these all merely obstacles to overcome or are they messages guiding the individual to an alternate life?

One of the things I’ve been struggling with is how, from my experiences, the ones that get ahead in the sporting realm are not the ones that are team players. Not the ones that show great character. It’s the ones that advocate for themselves. The ones that put themselves before the team. The ones that vocally complain. And quite often, those individuals have actually captained their teams. And this isn’t just limited to sport, either. I’ve seen it in academia, in the workplace, and in families. The individuals that make the most noise are the ones that get rewarded. Not the ones that are doing what’s in the best interests of the bigger picture; their team.

Perhaps this is one reason why I’m struggling so much – because I don’t fit in with this dog-eat-dog mentality that is needed to succeed here in the Western world. My heart yearns for something bigger; it yearns for the comradery you build when you sacrifice your own individual performance for the betterment of the team. And I’ve always been that way – putting others before myself because I believe that’s what a leader does. But I ask this question again, where has this mentality gotten me?

In my logical thinking world, I can see how others have achieved their success and I too could make those changes and become my own selfish advocate. But emotionally, it’s just not me. Part of life is accepting all aspects of yourself, even those you wish you could change. I know there’s reasons behind my struggle. And these reasons will probably be so that I can create a team in which the aforementioned self-advocating individuals have no place. Through pain we can create beauty. And I know this. But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. Life is unfair, I know that. You know that. We all know that. But that knowledge doesn’t stop anyone from feeling the inevitable despair that comes along with that reality.

When it comes to role models, in essence what we see is what they are doing and we aspire to have that. We try to align our paths with theirs. So we do what they did – we commit to that goal. But there’s a fundamental flaw to this: others’ paths are not our own. You can do what the most successful people in the world do and still never become successful. How much of that is within your control and how much of that is beyond our human comprehension? We believe we can achieve anything. And our recent understanding of the brain’s neuroplasticity would support this claim. And it’s a great belief to hold, because control lies within us. But again, it’s flawed. Flawed because it neglects to account for something bigger than our physiology – it neglects to account for the fact that often opportunity dictates our direction in life.

How many people do you know are doing what they always dreamed they would do? And how many people instead have ended up in jobs they never even considered but have since accepted this is actually their path?

I currently sit with a blank space in front of me. I have no idea what I’m doing next year. And that in itself can be overwhelming. And it is at times. We as humans don’t like the unknown. We don’t like surrendering. We don’t like not being in control. And so I’m trying to let go. Letting go of people and things and allowing what is supposed to be to fall into place. But this hasn't been easy. I'm uncomfortable. I'm hurting. I'm struggling. But I know it's necessary. I’ve removed myself from certain environments because they’re too triggering. How can I be around an environment that serves as a constant reminder of what I had, but no longer do? What I could have been, but no longer will? By avoiding these triggers, am I ultimately just prolonging the pain? Or am I doing what I need to survive, to keep my head above the water? Because at times I feel like I’m going under. And I know, this is part of grieving. There’ll be days where you’re swimming comfortably, and others where you’re gasping for air, drowning in your thoughts and emotions. As shit as those days are, deep down I know this is all just an unglorified work in progress.