Should I let this go?

As I reflect on my younger years, I can see I held onto many things for much longer than I should have. They were well past their “expiry date”, but yet I kept these “things” around, in part because I didn’t want to accept that our time was up. I didn’t want to let go because moving on felt too hard.

I held onto men for much too long, I stayed in jobs I was unhappy in for too long, I held onto material “stuff” for too long as well.

Why do we do this??

For nine years I remained in a toxic relationship, and I stuck around because I was hanging onto the hope things would change. Also, the perceived pain of leaving and heading into the unknown felt worse and more scary than the pain of staying and tolerating what I already knew. And what if he was about to change, but I’ve already walked out??

I’ve also been guilty of hanging onto jobs I was unhappy in. The job sucked, the boss was awful, and yet I stuck around for much longer than I should have. It wasn’t until staying felt more painful than leaving, that I finally took the steps to free myself from that situation.

Can you see a theme here?

I’m not sure if you can see it, but in the two situations I found myself in as mentioned above, it was a matter of what felt more scary/painful that kept me in each situation.

The pain of staying there felt less than the pain of getting out, so I stayed.

Once the pain of staying felt more than the pain of getting out, that is when I was able to leave.

What do I do if I find myself in this situation?

There are a number of things you can do if you find yourself in this situation, and it’s really important to get really clear with where your mind is at before you act.

Start off by asking yourself the following questions:

1. Ask yourself if this situation, in its current form, is serving you.
2. If it’s not, then it’s time to work out why you’re staying.
3. If it is serving you, ask yourself why/how it’s serving you. You may want to write this all down.
4. As yourself if you could handle another 5, 10, 15 or 20 years of this same situation.
5. Determine the benefits/drawbacks of staying/going. I’ll explain below.

Once you are clear on where you’re at, the following benefits and drawbacks grid may help you with your decision making.

What is a benefits and drawbacks grid?

A benefits and drawbacks grid is a little tool I learned about during my first coaching certification training, and it’s a tool I have used for myself and with many of my clients! It creates a visual reference to help with decision-making as you will see!

Here’s how it works…

Draw up a table with the headings as marked in bold, like this one.

Brainstorm all of the benefits or drawbacks of each option and write them into the appropriate part of the table. You may have more options too, so these can just be added in a new row.

	Benefits	Drawbacks
Stay	The money is good I like my coworkers It saves me having to look for another job	Working here is literally making me sick I hate my boss The work is boring I could be stuck here for years
Leave	I get to find something new I won’t have to tolerate my awful boss any longer I might find something more interesting or challenging I want to grow, and moving will help me do that If I start looking for another job while still in this job, I can retain some security	There’s no guarantee I’ll find something better What if my new boss is awful too?

Once you have completed filling out the table, determine which option seems to look the “strongest”, and think more about the potential benefits or consequences of this option.

The amount of thought or effort you put into this process will depend on how important/impactful either decision will make, but it will at least give you some idea of what could possibly happen if a specific option is chosen, so you can prepare for it!

If you have any questions about this or would like to understand this process more, please reach out!