Let it Go

 

Managed to get a young man who I’ve been trying to guide along his path replace me in a meeting. I’ve been overcome with this strange emotion of satisfaction that after the second week on the job, he’s actually being allowed to do things without me and more importantly, he’s going to develop the confidence to it.

As I reflect on the emotions of this moment, I realise that a lot of significant moments in life come at a point of letting go of certain relationships so that they can develop. As parents, we need to let our kids go and become the adults that they were meant to be. As mentors, we need to let our mentees go and be their own people.

If I look at my own experiences, one of the most significant moments in my life was from a conversation I had with my Dad, when I told him I volunteered for a live-firing exercise in the aftermath of exercise Swift Lion (here’s the MINDEF Press Release of that awful day - https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/MINDEF_19970628001.pdf ). I told him that I was going and he said that he wasn’t happy about it (at the time, the possibility of coming home in a body bag remained very present). Then, he said “Talk about it with your mum. If you still want to go, I will support your decision no matter what happens.”

This was the moment that I’ve felt closest to my dad as in he really showed me one of the most important aspects of being a parent – letting go. Dad has done many things for me. I’ve lived well and been educated at his expense. However, all the money he had spent on my schooling and was about to spend and all the luxuries I had enjoyed because of him didn’t mean as much to me as the fact that he was prepared to respect a decision of mine even if he was unhappy with it.

Other significant moment came from letting go. In my professional life, the first instance came when my business partner at the time didn’t want to do the Polaris (now known as Intellect Design). He felt that there were too many risks involved because the deadlines were close. I chose to hang on and somehow despite everything I was telling the client about the very real chances of failure, the job proved to be a success and Polaris had a way of keeping me alive for a few years. Not only did I get work from them, but I made good friends and that opened the door to other parts of the Indian Expat community and to two of the three career highlights (the IIT and IIM Alumni events in 2012 and 2013).

The other great career highlight came in 2006, when I was a freelancer pitching for the Saudi Embassy job with BANG PR, which was helmed by PN Balji, who had been for the better part of the time, the father of my profession of being a commentary writer and a PR consultant. It reached a stage, where Balji dropped out of the job and I became the only contractor. This was my opportunity to shine and by some fluke, me, with no real “experience” to speak of, managed a job traditionally reserved for government-to-government agencies.

These experiences have made me understand that quite often, the people who limit us are not the people who dislike or even hate us. It’s the people who love us that harm us by not letting us grow.

Think of parents who expect their grown children to report every detail of their life to them and still expect to have a say in what their adult children do. It also goes on in the professional world, where you have bosses who remind their employees that “If you didn’t work for me, you won’t survive.”

This type of thinking is suffocating. It doesn’t allow for growth. A good parent will always want his or her kids to be able to survive without him or her. A good boss will ensure that the employees can survive without being employed by his or her organization. As Richard Branson argues, when you train your people so that they can leave, they won’t.

Too many of us continue to struggle for relevance without realizing that we only become relevant to people when we allow them to be irrelevant in their lives.