What I Had to Let Go of to Move Forward

Looking back at some of the biggest transitions in my life, I can see something I couldn’t always see while I was living through them: letting go and moving forward have often gone hand in hand. Sometimes that meant letting go of a role, a way of working or an expectation. At other times, it meant questioning beliefs about success, how I wanted to live and even what I thought was possible. Over time, I’ve learned that letting go isn’t necessarily about leaving the past behind. It’s about recognizing what still belongs, carrying its wisdom forward and releasing what no longer aligns with who I am becoming.

If you’re navigating a transition of your own, the 2-minute LITE Up™ Alignment Quiz can help you reflect on where you feel aligned and where something may be asking for your attention.

When Success No Longer Aligned With My Values

One of my earlier significant transitions happened while I was still working in the corporate world.

I had built a career and experienced the progression, title and status that often come with professional success. But over time, something more fundamental became increasingly important to me.

I needed to honor my deepest values.

I was no longer aligned with the leadership culture I was experiencing at the time. I also recognized how much I needed greater creative and entrepreneurial freedom.

The question I was asking myself began to change.

It was no longer simply, How far can I progress along this path?

It became, Is this still the path I want to be on?

There can be a significant difference between succeeding within an environment and being aligned with it.

Leaving meant letting go of some of the certainty and status I had worked to establish. Yet staying would have meant compromising something that mattered more.

I wanted to create.

I wanted greater freedom.

And I wanted my work and the way I lived to reflect more of what mattered to me.

Choosing to leave didn’t give me certainty about what would come next. It gave me the opportunity to find out.

Learning What It Takes to Build Something From Nothing

Moving toward entrepreneurship brought the creative freedom I was seeking, but it also brought an entirely different education.

When I started my business, I didn’t fully appreciate how long it could take to establish viability and credibility.

Entrepreneurship required more reasonable expectations, patience and agility. I learned the importance of mentorship, industry knowledge, experience and relationships. I also learned that there isn’t always a quick solution when something isn’t working.

Creating something from nothing takes conviction and perseverance.

Some things can only be learned through experience and by staying with the process long enough to understand what it requires. I also learned that perseverance doesn’t mean continually pushing forward. Sometimes progress requires enough space to assess what is working, what isn’t and what may need to change.

Over time, I began to recognize the value of those pauses.

Every successful transition I’ve made has included one — time to reflect, reconnect with myself and understand what the experience was showing me.

I didn’t know then how important that lesson would eventually become.

When Life Required a Different Kind of Pause

Years later, several significant events and losses converged within a relatively short period of time.

My father became terminally ill. I went through early-stage breast cancer surgeries and recovery. The world itself was moving through an extraordinary period of disruption.

I eventually stepped back from my business.

This time, the pause wasn’t primarily about assessing a business decision or considering my next professional move. Life itself had shifted my priorities.

My health moved to the forefront in a way it hadn’t before. I realized how much I had taken it for granted.

That realization caused me to reevaluate much more than my work. I began looking at what was happening within me and around me through a different lens:

How is this affecting my health and wellbeing?

The question influenced how I thought about my time, my priorities and the life I wanted to create moving forward.

I couldn’t simply pick up where I had left off and expect everything to fit in the same way. I needed time to process what I had experienced, reconnect with myself and acknowledge what had changed.

And something had changed.

I had.

That period deepened my understanding of letting go. Sometimes we consciously release something because we recognize that it no longer fits. At other times, circumstances change first, and we have to come to terms with what can no longer be as it was.

I began to understand that both can involve grief.

There Can Be Grief in Letting Go

We naturally associate grief with losing someone we love. But I’ve come to understand that we can also grieve a chapter of our lives, a future we imagined, a role we once occupied or a version of ourselves that once felt familiar.

There can be shock, denial, anger and sadness before acceptance and renewal begin to emerge.

The process isn’t necessarily orderly, and it can’t always be hurried.

Letting go can require time, patience and self-compassion.

But growth doesn’t have to wait until grief is finished.

Clarity can emerge while we’re still moving through it. We may begin to notice what matters more now, what feels different or what no longer fits. One realization can influence a choice, and that choice can reveal something else.

Gradually, a different way forward can begin to take shape.

For me, one of the most important realizations was that rebuilding didn’t have to mean recreating the life or business I had before.

I could carry forward what experience had taught me and build differently.

Starting Again With More Than I Had Before

Choosing to rebuild my business meant beginning a process I already knew could take years.

But this time, I wasn’t starting from nothing.

I was starting with experience.

I understood entrepreneurship differently. I knew the importance of credibility, mentorship, relationships and staying agile. I had experienced setbacks, adapted and persevered.

I was also returning with greater creative resilience and self-trust.

That mattered because starting again required me to reconsider some of my previous assumptions about what my business could become.

I had largely thought about my work through a local lens. Yet technology was creating opportunities for digital scale and global reach that hadn’t been as accessible when I first began.

Some of my earlier limitations had been practical. Know-how, financial readiness and timing mattered.

Others were self-imposed.

Experience helped me recognize the difference.

So rebuilding became less about returning to what I had created before and more about asking what I wanted to create now.

Redesigning My Business Around My Life

The purpose behind my work hasn’t fundamentally changed.

I still want to spread more LITE through motivated professional leaders and coaches who are ready and willing to create positive impact in their own unique way.

What has evolved is how I want to do it.

My business continues to be a lifestyle business, but one now focused on digital scale and global reach.

For me, that means working less but smarter. It means making a difference in a way that is synergistic with what matters to me and, importantly, is also fun.

I want to enjoy my precious life.

Nature matters to me.

Creativity matters.

Wellness matters.

Community matters.

So does having the time and freedom to experience them.

I’ve come to see these parts of my life not as things that need to fit around my work, but as part of how I want my life and work to fit together.

My business needs to support that life rather than compete with it.

And I don’t consider that redesign finished.

Our world continues to change quickly, and so do our circumstances. I continue to reevaluate and redesign aspects of my lifestyle according to what supports my health, wellbeing and what matters most to me now.

Perhaps that’s another belief I’ve had to let go of along the way: that at some point we arrive at a finished version of our lives.

What Moving Forward Means to Me Now

When I look across these transitions, I can see that each one required something different from me.

I had to let go of a professional environment that no longer aligned with my values.

I had to let go of unrealistic expectations about what it takes to build a viable business.

I had to reevaluate ways of living and working after my health and life circumstances changed.

And I had to challenge some of my own assumptions about what my work could become.

Yet I don’t think moving forward means discarding everything that came before.

I carry the lessons with me.

Experience has given me knowledge. Challenges have strengthened my resilience. Reflection has deepened my self-awareness. And making difficult choices — then living with and learning from them — has strengthened my self-trust.

What I try not to carry forward are the beliefs, expectations or versions of myself that no longer serve the life I’m creating.

I’ve also learned to respect the pause between what was and what comes next.

I’ve needed that pause more than once.

It has given me room to reflect, reconnect and grieve when grieving was part of the transition. It has also given me the space to recognize what had changed within me before deciding how I wanted to move forward.

Today, moving forward doesn’t mean leaving my past behind.

It means carrying its lessons forward and applying them with greater personal wisdom.

I can honor who I’ve been without requiring myself to remain who I was.

I can appreciate what once worked without assuming it will always work.

And I can continue letting go of what no longer aligns while creating more space for what does.

I’m not starting over. I’m moving forward with everything life has taught me.