We’ve Come This Far. We Can’t Quit Now. (Actually, Maybe We Should.)

The practice of letting go, in yoga, life, and organizations.

Last week in yoga, I started counting how many times the instructor told us to let something go. Not for any profound reason. Mostly because after about the fourth “let it go,” I thought, How many things are we apparently holding onto in here?

Let go of the tension. Let go of the expectation. Let go of what you think the pose is supposed to look like. Let go of your shoulders. Let go of the need to control the outcome.

At some point, I stopped counting. But I kept thinking about it, because maybe there’s a reason we need to hear it so many times.

Letting Go Is Not a One-Time Decision

We talk about letting go as though it’s a task. Identify the thing. Release the thing. Congratulations. You have successfully let go.

Except that isn’t how it works.

I’ve “let go” of things approximately 47 times before breakfast. An expectation I thought I had released suddenly sneaks back in. A conversation I decided I was done replaying gets another showing. A version of the future I had accepted wasn’t going to happen starts looking appealing again. An outcome I swore I wasn’t trying to control somehow finds its way back onto my mental project plan.

Apparently, I am very good at picking things back up. And I don’t think I’m alone. Maybe that’s why yoga calls it a practice. You don’t master letting go. You practice it.

Sometimes We Need to Let Go More Than Once

There are things we know intellectually that take our emotions a little longer to catch up with.

We can know a relationship has changed and still miss what it used to be. We can know a career chapter is over and still wonder what would have happened if we’d stayed. We can know our kids are supposed to grow up and still want to freeze time. We can know a plan isn’t working and still desperately want it to.

And we can absolutely know we cannot control an outcome while spending an impressive amount of energy trying anyway.

Letting go doesn’t mean we didn’t care. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t important. And it doesn’t mean we suddenly become indifferent to what happens next.

Sometimes it simply means loosening our grip enough to make room for what is actually happening instead of continuing to fight for what we thought was supposed to happen.

And then doing it again tomorrow.

We Do the Same Thing at Work

This is where I think we get organizational change wrong.

We announce something new and immediately start talking about the future: the new system, the new structure, the new process, the new strategy, the new way of working. Then we wonder why people keep looking backward.

Why are they still talking about the old process? Why do they keep comparing everything to how we used to do it? Why can’t they just move forward?

Because moving toward something new often requires letting go of something old. And that isn’t a switch people flip because we put a go-live date on the calendar.

They may be letting go of expertise they spent years building, a routine that made them feel competent, a team they trusted, a leader they knew, a process they understood, a role that was part of their identity, or a future they thought they were working toward.

Sometimes what looks like resistance is simply someone who hasn’t finished letting go yet.

And here’s the part leaders need to understand: they may have to let go more than once.

Someone can feel ready on Monday, have something happen on Tuesday that shakes their confidence, begin to see possibility in the new way on Wednesday, miss the old way on Thursday, and take another step forward on Friday.

That’s not failure.

That’s change.

Organizations Have Trouble Letting Go, Too

And it isn’t only individuals who struggle with this. Organizations do it all the time.

We keep the process because we spent three years building it. We keep pouring money into the system because we’ve already invested millions. We protect the initiative because too many senior leaders have attached their names to it. We keep the structure because changing it again would mean acknowledging that the last change didn’t produce what we expected.

There’s a name for some of this: the sunk cost fallacy. We allow what we’ve already invested, whether that’s money, time, effort, reputation, or emotional energy, to influence whether we keep investing, even when the better decision may be to stop.

We’ve come this far. We can’t quit now.

Except sometimes we absolutely should.

The money is already spent. The time is already gone. The question isn’t whether the past investment was worth it. A better question is:

Knowing what we know today, would we make the same investment going forward?

That’s a much harder leadership question.

Because letting go of an organizational decision can feel suspiciously like admitting failure. So instead, we rename it. Rework it. Add another workstream. Form another committee. Buy another tool. Give it another six months.

Anything but say, Maybe this isn’t working anymore.

Sometimes persistence is leadership.

Sometimes letting go is.

Strong organizations need to be able to tell the difference between the discomfort that naturally comes with change and evidence that something genuinely no longer serves them. Leaders need to be able to honor what an old system, strategy, structure, or way of working gave the organization without requiring it to keep earning its place forever.

Because letting go doesn’t mean the thing never mattered.

It means it may have finished mattering in the same way.

And this is where the People Stack matters at the organizational level, too.

Leaders need enough Clarity to recognize what is no longer working. Enough Alignment to make a different decision together. Enough Capability to change course. Enough Belief to choose a new direction. Enough focus on Sustainment to avoid slipping back into what is familiar simply because it is familiar.

And underneath all of it, they need Trust.

Trust that changing course is not the same thing as failing.

Trust that admitting something no longer works is not weakness.

Trust that the organization can let go of one answer without losing confidence in its ability to find a better one.

This Is Where the People Stack Comes In

When people struggle with change, we often ask, “Why haven’t they moved on?”

Maybe a better question is:

What are we asking them to let go of?

Because every organizational change disrupts something in a person’s People Stack.

They may lose Clarity because the rules they understood no longer apply.

They may question Alignment because they don’t understand why the organization is moving in this direction, or whether their leaders actually agree about it.

Their Capability may take a hit because expertise that once made them confident suddenly doesn’t feel as valuable in the new world.

Their Belief may wobble because they aren’t convinced the new way will actually be better.

And even after implementation, Sustainment becomes difficult when the old way is still familiar, comfortable, and waiting for them.

Underneath all of it is Trust.

Do I trust the people making this decision? Do I trust what I’m being told? Do I trust that the organization understands what this change is asking of me? Do I trust myself to be successful in what comes next?

That’s why I don’t think resistance is something leaders should simply try to overcome.

Sometimes resistance is information.

It may be telling us exactly what someone is having trouble releasing and which part of their People Stack needs attention before they can move forward.

That doesn’t mean leaders need to preserve everything people are being asked to leave behind. Sometimes the old system really does need to go. Sometimes the structure needs to change. Sometimes the organization needs to stop investing in something that no longer works.

But we can acknowledge what the old way gave people while helping them build what they’ll need in the new one.

We can restore clarity. Rebuild capability. Strengthen belief. Create alignment. Reinforce new behaviors. Protect trust.

And we can stop pretending that announcing the future automatically erases people’s attachment to the past. Because organizational change is really a series of individual changes.

Back to the Yoga Mat

By the end of class, I’m pretty sure I had been instructed to let go of nearly every muscle, thought, expectation, and ounce of control I possessed.

And I’m sure I’ll be told to do it all over again next week.

Maybe that’s the point.

The things we hold onto don’t always disappear because we’ve decided to release them. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes we pick them back up. Sometimes we don’t even realize we’re holding them again until something, or someone, reminds us.

So we notice. We loosen our grip. We make a little more room.

And then we practice letting go again.

BGPD Rule: Letting go isn’t something you finish. It’s something you practice.

Julie Ann Whitten is a change advisor, keynote speaker, and the author of The People Stack: Why Change Fails (and What Actually Fixes It), available now on Amazon. Drawing on more than 25 years of experience leading transformation, communications, and organizational change, she helps leaders understand the human side of adoption and build the trust required to make change stick.