Letting Go

Every year I try to bring a slightly different angle to the new year resolution ritual. This time around I'm contemplating a set of questions I'll share below. Here's a brief description of how I got to them and why they resonated.

The process began with the recognition that evolution is a core measure of our fulfillment. We can all sense that if we're not evolving, we're dying. This is a central fact of life.

But there are two ways of thinking about evolution. On one level, it's all about competitive advantage. It's a never-ending struggle to find a better way of doing things. It's an endless quest for improvement.

On the flip side, it's about avoiding irrelevance. It's a ruthless and unforgiving game that is less about showing what works than destroying what doesn't. No company, no country and no species is immune to extinction. Advantages are always temporary, and a key challenge is knowing when to move on from cherished attachments.

These are two sides of the same coin: keep searching and striving, but also keep pruning and discarding.

The first bucket tends to carry more water than the second because we're primed for social benchmarking. The second requires honest introspection.

This is where questions can help, and here are some great ones from the Anglo-Irish poet David Whyte:

• What helped me get here that I need to give away now?
• What's on my to-do list that was put together by the person I was yesterday?
• What long-held promise do I need to break in my life right now?
• What commitment did I make sincerely that I now need to let go of?
• What in my life do I need to say no to because it's no longer an enormous yes?

Pretty hard-hitting questions, don't you think?

I'll continue to work through them and share some conclusions next week.