baloonsAs we come to the end of 2014, what are you ready to let go of that’s no longer serving you well in your life?  I am asking myself this question in relation to myriad items: in life, love and friendships, and in work from clients to accounting and all the other administrative tasks that must be accomplished to maintain a soloprenuer practice. It’s not easy, letting go. I dread it, actually, because it brings up loyalty issues for me. However, I have come to realize if I do not let something go, I am going to continue working too much and playing too little. As a friend of mine (now dead) used to say to me in the cubicle we once shared, “No one gets to their deathbed and says, ‘I wish I’d spent more time at the office.’ ”

Ironically, this is the very thing I talk to with clients about quite a bit. As a career coach specializing in working with higher education professionals, such as professors and administrators, we discuss what happens to your brain when you fail to let it rest, and give it a chance to play. Rest is what restores our brain chemistry, and that in turn, restores our creativity.

“The opposite of play is not work, it is depression.” This aphorism of Stuart Brown, M.D. (quoted in Brown & Vaughn’s 2009 book, Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul), noted play researcher and president at The National Institute for Play, has been extensively quoted because it resonates with so many people. Play is a catalyst for good work and learning at any age. Working on something new—letting the mind play—will ease feelings of being overwhelmed and lack of fun. Google is one company that has taken this idea to heart. For 20 percent of their time, employees may go where their minds ask them to go. The proof is in the bottom line: fully 50 percent of new products, including Gmail and Google News, came from the 20 percent “free,” mind-wandering time according to John Medina (2008).

“Sleep on it,” your mother might have said, and in fact that is excellent advice at two levels: your brain repairs the chemistry it has expended during the day making all those thousands of decisions (What to have for breakfast?  Which project to tackle first? What do I really want to say here, anyway?). Your subconscious noodles away on the big issues as you sleep, often presenting you with solutions upon waking.

I know this works for me, and I even try to encourage it by asking myself the big questions just before drifting off, and keeping a dream journal by my bedside to record the answers on waking. It’s a practice David Whyte, poet and career advisor, recommends. I recommend his poem on the topic, What to Remember When Waking (2013): “…coming back to this life from the other…there is a small opening into the new day which closes the moment you begin your plans.”

So back to letting go:  The hardest part of business and life for me has been learning to let relationships go that no longer serve me. This may sound selfish at first, but the truth is that you can’t serve others well if you are not taking care of yourself. I had to let go of my family of origin to go to school and start a family of my own; I had to let go of my husband when he died in a car wreck; I had to let go of my children in order for them to fledge successfully, and I am now learning to let go of old friendships or business relationships that I have simply outgrown. And it ain’t easy!

I fight the old voices that tell me loyalty is more important than how I am treated, and that if I want a relationship to succeed, I have to do all the work. But again, that’s not a useful way to look at it. The truth is that putting energy into a one-way relationship just drains me, and leaves me with less to give the people that really do matter, like the man I married six months ago.

As a semi-retired academic, he holds the mirror up to me and my behavior and says, “I’m playing, why aren’t you?” Ouch. Inside, the pusher voice says, “Don’t listen to that man! The only way you are going to succeed in this life is to work harder than everyone else.” Never mind that my rational mind actually knows this is a lie. It’s really hard to break old patterns, to play more and work less. Not to mention that I actually love a lot of the work I do, exploring one-on-one with clients what direction they want to take their lives. This part doesn’t even feel like work: it feels like play.  The work part comes in all the other administrative details that have to be taken care of in order to do the play-of-work.

As you find your own way forward by letting go, here is my seasonal blessing for both of us (with thanks to Jim Koehneke for sharing his version):

In the good, we trust,

With the good, we let go,

In the good, we receive and share

In the good, we know joy.