Why "Letting It Go' is a Stupid Move

 “Just let it go.”

You have heard this phrase a hundred times. Maybe you have even said it to yourself. Something bothers you: a sharp comment, a messy task, a memory that keeps looping, and someone tells you, “Just let it go.”

It sounds wise. It sounds light. But in practice, “letting it go” usually means one of three things:

• Ignoring it.
  

• Deciding it “does not matter.”
  

• Or stomping on your feelings until they go quiet.
  

None of these are real solutions. They are acts of suppression. And suppressed resistance does not dissolve, it hides. Underground. Festering. Building pressure. And destroying your productivity.

You might feel temporary relief, but only because you get to stop thinking about it for a moment. The resistance itself has not gone anywhere. It will return, sideways, maybe through procrastination, distraction, sudden bursts of anger, or that mysterious feeling of “stuck” you cannot explain.

Think of it like this:

One person has a difficult meeting. Their boss “criticizes” a project. It stings, but rather than process the reaction, they say, “I am just going to let it go.” They push it down, slap on a smile, and pretend it does not matter. But later that day, when they sit down to work, the resistance surfaces. Suddenly they feel unmotivated, unfocused, annoyed by everything. They blame the project, the workload, the tools, anything but the buried sting that is still running invisibly in the background. Their productivity suffers.

Another person faces the same situation. Their boss speaks about their project, and it stings. Instead of rushing to “let it go,” they pause. First, they allow the feeling fully: they feel the defensiveness, the disappointment, the embarrassment, without acting it out and without trying to shove it away. The feeling is the alarm: resistance is present and running the show. Then they look again at what happened, this time in purely neutral terms. Did the boss actually “criticize” their work? Or did the boss simply provide feedback? The latter is the true reality; any label of “criticism” is just a story created in the mind. And when the story is neutralized, the resistance has nothing left to grip. Because no resistance can stand against a neutral event. From here, they are free to respond, not out of reactivity, but out of clarity. They can take action on the event, if necessary; they are more productive.

Here is the truth: the very fact that something bothers you is proof that resistance is present. And resistance is not something you can out-muscle or out-ignore. You have to meet it directly.

So stop trying to let it go. Start letting it be ok.

That does not mean you have to like it. That does not mean you condone it. It simply means you are willing to see what happened with neutrality. To acknowledge: OK, this happened. OK, this is how I feel.

That single act of acceptance transforms the whole equation. The fight with reality ends. The wasted energy stops. And suddenly the power you lost to resistance comes back online.

This is the secret most productivity systems miss. They tell you to push harder, plan better, manage tighter. But none of that works if your inner energy is clogged with resistance. Until you accept what bothers you, you will always be fighting yourself.

So the next time someone tells you to “let it go”? Do not. Simply remember: the path to freedom is not letting go. The path to freedom is letting it be ok.

To Try This Week
When something bothers you:

1. Pause and feel the feeling fully—without acting on it, without trying to push it away.

2. Name it: This is resistance.

3. Look at the event again in neutral terms. Strip away the story. What objectively happened?

4. Notice how much lighter you feels when the story drops.

5. Lather, rinse, repeat. As needed.