I woke up one day with a dream in my eyes

Was working hard to get what I strived

Hardly did I know the secrets of life

Later realised, clinging to what I want

 I’ll miss so much of the unknown paradise

Giving up had never been an option in my sight

But is that holding on to control only drains of my life,

It is definitely a fight

I am not the maker of what I see

But I am in charge of how it is seen

Letting of the ties that pull me away from peace

I hear the still space inside of me

And now I see the truth from my new eyes

There’s a greater plan and a higher intelligence of who is the referee

There’s a call to let go of what’s not meant for me to hold

Peace is what I want now- that’s life’s true gold

Every single moment of surrender

                                                   Is a peace treaty with my soul.. 

Certain incidents got me thinking about the difference between giving up and letting go. It seems there’s a fine line between them yet they are way apart. It boils down to the feeling behind it, the intention inside it and the embodiment of it. It’s a mind-set shift. It can either hold you down or set you free, when things didn’t happen the way you’d planned. When a dream fell short of realization, over and over again. Or when you wake up one day and look around at your life and things aren’t the way what you thought they’d be.

Giving up means selling yourself short, it means allowing fear and struggle to limit your opportunities and keeps you stuck. The I-won’t-be-successful-unless-that-thing-happens. The expectation that starts to feel unhealthy. Always wondering what could have been. It feels like letting yourself down and others down who might have invested their time and energy. Giving up is like self- defeat. 


On the other hand, letting go is releasing what isn’t working anymore. What you have no control over. Events in the past that has nothing to do with the present and the future. Letting go is the acknowledgement of the ending of something. This should not be confused with compromising. Letting go is to accept and to move on. The moment you realise that it’s not worth of your time and energy to hold on to something that hasn’t been destined for you, then you gather the spirit to free yourself from the shackles of the dreaded past and prepare yourself for the unknown future.

Sometimes it is a deep-seated desire or lifelong dream that you’re not ready to give up on. The feeling of giving it up can feel like you are giving up on yourself. Believe me, I’m a lifelong proponent of not giving up on your deepest dreams. But this is where letting go comes as a powerful tool for not giving up on yourself, where you move out of victimhood and into empowerment. The empowering choice is to let go of old expectations, to change the thoughts within the dream or goal or relationship.

Accept, review, ameliorate and recommit in a new way. That’s letting go and not giving up.

DISCLAIMER: The author is solely responsible for the views expressed in this article. The author carries the responsibility for citing and/or licensing of images utilized within the text.