10 Quotes to Help You Let Go
Letting go rarely happens all at once.
We decide that something is over, but our thoughts return to it.
These ten quotes remind us that letting go is not forgetting what happened. It is loosening our grip so something new has room to enter.
1. “People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.”
—Thich Nhat Hanh
Even pain can become familiar. Sometimes we hold on because we do not yet know who we will be without it.
2. “Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.”
—Epictetus
Some things ask for action. Others ask for acceptance. Peace often begins when we recognize the difference.
3. “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
—Soren Kierkegaard
Use your experience not to beat yourself up, but as instructions on how to move forward.
4. “Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.”
—Marcus Aurelius
Change can feel like loss because the old shape disappears before the new one becomes visible.
5. “No feeling is final.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke
A feeling can fill the entire moment. With time it will soften.
6. “If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”
—Toni Morrison
Surrender is not always defeat. Sometimes it is the moment we stop fighting what is already carrying us forward.
7. “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Forgiveness does not say that what happened was acceptable. It releases us from waiting for the past to become different.
8. “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on.”
—Omar Khayyam
We cannot rewrite what has already happened by returning to it again and again.
9. “What’s done cannot be undone.”
—William Shakespeare
Regret asks us to turn time backward. Life only offers the next choice.
10. “We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”
—Joseph Campbell
Letting go of an imagined future allows us to meet the life that is actually here.
We do not release the past all at once.
It happens when we stop hoping for the past to change. When we release our grasp on the past something new has room to enter.