What Are You Ready to Let Go Of?
Last Week in Denmark
Hello friends. I’ve just returned from my annual summer ritual – a week of solitude, reflection, and mountain air. Every year for many years now, I take myself away, just me, my notebook, my thoughts, and the hills. I like my summers a little chilled. Probably because of the hormones – wink – but also because that kind of stillness gives me a cleaner mirror to look into. The kind of space where the noise quiets and what’s underneath has a chance to speak.
And this year, what kept bubbling up wasn’t a new goal or a clever insight – something I usually love to reach for around this time of year, my own private mid-year check-in. It was something more uncomfortable. I realized how tightly I’ve still been holding on to certain ‘expectations’. Some were loud and obvious: where I should be by now, how certain things should feel. Others were more subtle: how a moment of rest should restore me, how clarity should arrive like a download from the sky. But the truth is, none of that showed up on cue. And because of that, I almost missed what did show up – quiet moments, strange conversations, unexpected thoughts that didn’t fit my plan but offered something better: surprise, presence, honesty.
It made me wonder: how many other things have I brushed past like that – just because they didn’t arrive in the wrapping I expected? How often do we all do this? We say we’re open, we say we’re ready, but somewhere in the back of our minds, there’s still a picture. A script. A way it’s supposed to look.
We block the very thing we’re longing for – not because it isn’t here, but because it doesn’t match the format we imagined. We carry ‘expectations’ about how our partners or spouses should behave, what they should say, how they should get us without us having to explain. We bring ‘expectations’ into our workplaces – how we think we should be appreciated, how our efforts should be noticed, how certain colleagues should act more like us. We walk through cities, through meetings, even through our own homes, so preoccupied with what’s missing or slightly off that we don’t register what’s quietly right. We think we’re looking, but really, we’re comparing.
And perhaps loudest of all: the ‘expectations’ we carry toward ourselves. Where we should be by now. What we should look like. What we should already know. How we should be handling this. What we should have figured out. What we should be capable of. ‘Should’, ‘should’, ‘should’, ‘should’, ‘should’ – and ‘should’ again. The internal pressure cooker. The invisible performance. So much of the tension we feel isn’t because we’re falling short, but because we’ve been measuring ourselves against a version we never consented to but somehow still believe we must fulfill.
I always thought I wanted to live by the sea. And now I do. I live in a country surrounded by coastline – you can cross it from one end to the other in three hours, and it’s water all around. But do I feel like I’ve fulfilled that dream? Not quite. Because I imagined it a little warmer. A little less windy. A little more Mediterranean. I got what I asked for – but because it didn’t arrive dressed in the version I had pictured, I almost didn’t recognize it as mine. That’s the slippery thing about ‘expectations’. Sometimes they convince us that something doesn’t count, simply because it came wrapped in different weather.
Letting go of ‘expectations’ doesn’t mean letting go of wanting. It doesn’t mean lowering your standards or silencing your desires. It means creating space between intention and outcome. It means being brave enough to name what you want, and soft enough to receive what actually arrives. Because sometimes life knows better. Sometimes the unexpected detour is the thing that cracks something open in you. Sometimes disappointment isn’t about what’s wrong – it’s just our ego reacting to reality being more real than it is ideal.
So the question I came home with – and the one I now quietly offer to you – is not “What do you want?” That matters, yes. But maybe just as powerful is this: What are you ready to let go of?
So… what are you ready to let go of?
Perhaps ‘expectations’…?
A Quiet Prompt
Just for you. No pressure. Just notice.
- Is something not feeling right… because it’s not what you expected?
- Are you holding on to how something should look or feel?
- Could your expectations be getting in the way of what’s actually here?
Letting go doesn’t mean giving up. It just means opening up to what’s real.
