Why I said goodbye to a part of my job that I loved
This summer, I took five weeks off (the most time I’ve ever taken off at once!). And as it usually happens when I take time off, I spent a lot of time thinking and reflecting.
One day, I went for a walk and let my mind wander, and I stumbled upon a hard truth about myself: I'm not making progress on some of the things that are really important to me. The biggest of those things is my second book.
I’m constantly finding myself wishing that I had more time to work on it. Between meetings, speaking events, traveling, and leading and growing a business, I often don’t have the creative energy to put toward the book. That leaves me feeling sad and like I’m not making progress on something that’s really important to me.
The hard thing about this is that I love everything I am putting my energy toward. I live my dream day over and over again. So it’s not that I’m upset by how I am spending my time . . . it’s that I wish there were extra hours in the day and that I had unlimited creative energy and capacity so that I could dedicate more time to writing.
Obviously, that is not reality. I thought about this dilemma as I walked, and I asked myself if the second book is something that I really, really, really want to do. The answer, of course, is yes. Then I got honest with myself: If I want to make the book happen, I’m going to have to make some hard choices about what to let go of so that I can create space for it.
To help me figure it out, I thought about some advice from one of my favorite books: Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud. In it, Dr. Cloud uses a metaphor to compare our lives to a rose bush. He says that if we want our “roses”—the things that we're really excited about—to bloom, then we have to have the courage to prune the bush. Just like roses can’t grow if there are too many branches hindering their progress, we can’t have new beginnings if we don’t have the courage to make endings.
The second book is for sure one of my biggest roses. So, I looked at my calendar, and the question became: What are my necessary endings?
I spent some time reflecting and journaling about it, and that helped me get to the place where I decided I was ready to let two things go. One of those is a mastermind group that I've been leading for several years that meets every month, and that includes support that I offer to participants between meetings. And the second is my one-on-one work with a small group of clients. Altogether, these two things take up a significant amount of my time. They are also the reason for many of the meetings on my calendar. An ending here would allow me to have more unstructured, meeting-free time that I could put toward writing.
It might seem like this decision was so easy. It wasn’t. As soon as I came to terms with it, I thought about how sad I was to let these pieces of my work go. They have brought me so much joy and have led to incredibly deep friendships. I was also worried about how the people who would be affected by this decision might feel. I didn’t want them to think that they weren't important to me anymore.
As I’ve learned in the past, endings don’t always feel easy. But they’re critical. Because if we don’t have them, we can’t continue to grow and evolve. And no matter what, we can always control how we choose to end things and how we make others feel in the process.
First, I talked to our team about my realization and my decision. They fully supported it because they, too, want to see the book come to life. I didn’t want to end anything abruptly, so I told them my plan was to finish out the year with the mastermind group—which, at that point, would have been five more months.
Monique (who is my thought partner) lovingly challenged me on that. She knew that underneath that choice was my fear of disappointing people. She helped me work through that fear and see that I could have a shorter timeline and still be fair to our group. With Monique’s support, I decided to give the mastermind group two more months instead of five. And as for the one-on-one clients, I decided I would finish out the commitments I had made and not take on any new sessions.
Next came the most important part of all: how I would let each person know. I could have sent an email, but that felt so impersonal, especially for people I’ve worked with for so long. I decided to send each person affected by these decisions a private voice message that explained where I was in my life, why I was making this decision, how it was going to unfold, and what it meant for them. I told them that I sent a voice note instead of telling them in a meeting because I didn’t want them to be caught off-guard, and I wanted to give them time to process so that we could talk about it the next time we met.
I was scared to send those voice notes. I knew that once I sent them, I couldn’t take them back. I was afraid of how others would react and that they might be sad. I originally intended to send a few notes each day until I had reached everyone, but after I sent the first one, it gave me the courage to send the rest. Within a day or two, all of the messages had been sent, and with each one, I felt lighter and more at peace knowing that I had put it all out there.
So what happened next?
You probably guessed it: My fears did not come true.
In every single case, I was met with nothing but support, love, and understanding. In fact, a few people even said that they had wondered when this would be coming because they know that there are projects I really want to be working on and don’t have time for.
Once I received those messages back, I felt free. As sad as I was to have these endings, I was also so excited about what it meant for my schedule and my time. And now, here we are, several months later. I’ve been working more on the book than I ever have, and we’ve made more progress on it as a team than we have all year.
Making decisions about our time is not easy. It requires us to face the reality that we can’t do everything we want to do. And if we don’t have the courage to make hard decisions about how we spend our time, then we simply won’t be able to dedicate our energy to what really matters to us.
A lot of times what prevents us from making tough choices is the fear of how others will react. I hope my example shows you that when we become advocates for our time, most people will understand. Most people will meet you with support. And you know what? Even if they don’t, that’s okay. You still have to do what is best for you because it’s your life.
And so now, I want to ask you: What is one ending that you need to make? What scares you about making that choice? What might be preventing you from taking the next step? Hit “reply” and tell me more. Your reply will go to my team, and they always share your responses with me.
You aren’t alone!
Big hugs,
