Do What You Can and Let Go of the Rest.
Working skillfully with effort, limits, and the reality of what you can and cannot control
There is a question that sits at the heart of both psychological growth and contemplative practice.
How can you bring together effort and ease?
How do you care about what you do, while also not becoming burdened by it? How do you stay engaged with life without getting caught up in it?
In one way or another, this question shows up for each of us. You have responsibilities, relationships, work to do, and situations that call for clarity and effort. At the same time, you begin to recognize the limits of striving. You see how much tension comes from trying to control what you cannot control, or from holding on too tightly to particular outcomes.
So the question is not whether to make an effort or to let go. The question is how to live with both. It can help to begin with something very simple.
At a physical level, letting go is easy to understand. You release tension in the body. You unclench a muscle. We exhale. There is a natural shift from holding on to letting go.
In your mind, the process is similar, though often more subtle.
You may be holding on to a belief, an expectation, or an imagined outcome. You may be caught in a pattern of worry that keeps unfolding on its own. In these cases, letting go does not necessarily mean forcing your mind to stop. It may instead involve allowing the process to continue while you step out of identification with it.
For example, when you start worrying, you can observe it as a kind of movement in the mind. Thoughts appear, develop, and pass. If you do not feed that process, it tends to settle on its own. In this way, letting go can mean allowing something to run its course without reinforcing it.
There is also a deeper aspect of letting go that involves recognizing the limits of your power.
There are things you can influence, and there are things you cannot. You cannot make another person return your call. You cannot guarantee a particular outcome. You cannot shape the world entirely according to your wishes.
When you see clearly that you do not have the power to make something happen, there is a place for releasing the effort to do so. This does not mean indifference. It means that you stop struggling with what is not in your hands.
At the same time, there is another side to this. There is the matter of doing the right thing.
In each moment, there is something that fits the situation. There is a way of thinking, speaking, or acting that is more aligned with your values and with the reality in front of you.
Sometimes this is very simple. It may be sending an email that needs to be sent, completing a task, or following through on a commitment. At other times, it is more nuanced. It may involve choosing not to say something that would be unhelpful, or deciding to step back rather than push forward.
When you begin to orient yourself toward what is right in the next moment, life can become less complicated. Instead of becoming entangled in everything you could do, you return to a more immediate question.
What is called for now?
And often, if you are quiet enough, you already know.
In the rest of this article, I’ll explore how to stay connected to what is right without becoming strained, how to bring effort into better balance, and how this relates to a deeper recognition of your own nature. The aim is not just to understand these ideas, but also to apply them in everyday life, when things are not simple.
