When I was in college, a pair of metallic silver jeans was my go-to weekend outfit. However, when I started veterinary school, the workload stress quickly gave me a muffin top, and those jeans went into my closet’s “I hope these fit again” section. Since then, and over the past two decades, I have periodically pulled out and tried on the jeans — jumping, pulling, holding my breath and praying they’d fit somehow. They didn’t. My daughter saw me doing it one day and asked bluntly, “Mom, when are you going to let them go?”
Letting go is a concept I’ve reflected upon for several weeks now after I finally parted ways with the veterinary practice I used to own. Many of us are at a career stage in which we’re starting to face the challenge of having aging parents and what lies ahead. We’re also thinking about our kids getting older and moving on with their lives.
However, when we consider our profession, our hospital and our relationships with colleagues and clients, the fear of letting go sits at the center of why we stagnate. For example, you might struggle with terminating a toxic employee you personally hired, firing a client who likes you but disrespects your team, updating an antiquated, money-losing inventory management system you’ve used for 20 years, or taking a new job. One pivotal psychology study found that a person always tolerates a certain level of discomfort before acknowledging the need for change. There’s no way around it: Change is uncomfortable at first.
Here are three ways to face fear head-on and jump-start an immobile hospital or human.
1. Tell Your Inner Control Freak to Sit Down
At one point in practice ownership, my business partner and I had to decide whether to change our practice information management system. We had experienced recent computer crashes, struggled with backing up the system and noticed more inefficiencies. However, making the switch in a 65-year-old practice with 11 veterinarians, over 50 team members and an outdated wiring framework seemed daunting at best. I tried to argue why what we used didn’t need to be replaced — it worked most of the time. Even when presented with a replacement system offering fancy features, significant upgrades and a more user-friendly interface, I resisted. I was the poster child for someone overcome with the fear of letting go.
Among the many reasons people don’t move forward are:
- We stick with what is known and comfortable.
- We have a stubborn, innate desire to be correct and in control.
- We’re emotionally invested in something or someone.
- We entangle what needs to be let go with our identity or purpose.
- We feel uncertainty about the path ahead and fear change.
When it came to the computer system, I was stuck in a cycle of needing to control. But as psychologist and life coach Dr. Amy Johnson explains, we try to control things because of what we think will happen if we don’t. Control is rooted in fear.
What I needed to do was take three small, actionable steps: notice, accept and surrender. For example:
- Notice yourself or have a trusted colleague or friend give real-time feedback when your control-mode tendencies take over.
- Accept your tendencies and choose a different path at that moment.
- Finally, allow yourself to surrender.
Surrender doesn’t mean giving up. Instead, it means stop fighting yourself and stop resisting reality. To let go and mentally release an attachment, we must accept what happened or needs to happen.
2. Remember That Letting Go Doesn’t Mean Quitting
I mistakenly believed the exact opposite for a long time. Like at most practices, we had a few toxic employees over the years. I was usually the last person on the management team to admit that those employees weren’t aligned with our mission, values and culture. I’d make excuses for them, blame the stress of the profession for their actions or feel guilty about how they would manage without a job. The worst part was when a bad employee was a good person and sometimes a good friend.
As I did some soul-searching, I realized that I took the employee’s failure at our practice as my failure. I associated giving up on them with quitting on them, and that feeling lingered with me as a personal weakness. But then a quote by self-help author Eckhart Tolle grabbed my attention: “Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”
Parting ways with someone can be intensely emotional and even painful, but noticing and letting go of toxic team members needs to happen. Likewise, when a management team wants to know why their hospital stagnated financially, the first thing most people examine is the profit-and-loss statement. “How can we trim spending?” “Are our prices competitive?” “Where are the redundancies we can eliminate?” “Are we efficient with scheduling and payroll?”
We often overlook the cost of retaining a toxic employee. However, think of the time spent putting out the person’s drama fires. Think of the negative reviews and lost clients arising from the team member’s interactions. Think of the consequences of postponing the inevitable letting go of the employee. Finally, think of the ongoing stress on your mental health. After all, your well-being as a practice leader is a top priority.
3. Replace “But” With “And”
Those four words allowed me to finally close a 17-year chapter in my professional life. I have many colleagues who, as previous practice owners, struggled to cut the figurative umbilical cord tethering them to their former workplace. That old role was what they knew, how they identified themselves, and how they measured personal and professional success. When that’s gone, most of us aren’t prepared for the sudden voids in life or the loss of control. We aren’t ready to leave behind what’s comfortable, and we might not be prepared emotionally.
Those feelings manifested in the statements I kept telling myself and others:
- “I sold the practice, but I can’t leave the team members behind.”
- “I sold the practice, but I’m still emotionally bonded.”
- “I sold the hospital, but clinical practice is all I know.”
Dr. Pam Peeke, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of Maryland, teaches that a critical mindset shift happens when a person stops saying “but” and starts saying “and.” The swing signifies acceptance and being ready to let go. For me, I was able to say:
- “I sold the practice, and I have wonderful memories.”
- “I sold my hospital, and I have great new opportunities in the future.”
- “I sold the practice, and I’m going to be OK.”
Dr. Peeke says that when “buts” become “ands,” we truly accept and let go. The physical changes can happen in seconds. Every part of our body that reacted negatively to the constant flow of stress hormones relaxes. I felt the release of heaviness and a tidal wave of calm water.
Putting “notice, accept and surrender” into practice can be extremely difficult. Yet, possessing self-awareness during a controlling moment can be the first step in moving on from stagnation.
GRADUAL CHANGE
The late Swiss-American psychiatrist Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified these five stages of letting go in people with life-threatening illnesses: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.