The idea
What are you carrying that you no longer need?
We are taught to persist.
To keep going. Stay committed. Finish what we started. Stand by our decisions. Hold on to relationships, careers, ambitions, possessions and versions of ourselves because they once mattered.
Often, that is exactly the right thing to do.
But sometimes persistence stops being a strength.
We continue carrying things long after they have stopped helping us — not because we have consciously chosen them, but because they are familiar, because we have invested in them, because other people expect them of us, or simply because letting go feels like failure.
LET GO begins with a different question:
What if the thing holding you back isn't something you need to find, fix or add — but something you need to stop carrying?
The principle
We are better at adding than subtracting.
When something in life isn't working, our instinct is usually to add something.
A new goal. A new habit. A new plan. More effort. More advice. Another commitment.
Sometimes the better answer is subtraction.
A belief that no longer makes sense. An obligation we never consciously chose. A goal that belonged to an earlier version of us. A possession that has become a burden. A role we have outgrown. An argument we no longer need to win.
Letting go is not about abandoning everything difficult.
Nor is it an argument for quitting whenever life becomes uncomfortable.
It is about becoming more deliberate about what deserves to continue.
The question is not simply:
“Can I keep carrying this?”
It is:
“Is this still worth carrying?”
The Audit
Start by noticing what is there.
The LET GO Audit is designed to create that pause.
It asks you to look across the different parts of your life, identify where things feel unnecessarily heavy, and question some of the assumptions underneath them.
It does not decide what you should give up.
Its purpose is to help you notice where persistence may have become automatic — and where another choice might now be possible.
The book
LET GO
What are you carrying that you no longer need?
LET GO explores why human beings find it so difficult to release things that have stopped serving them — and what becomes possible when we do.
It looks at the forces that keep us attached: identity, ego, sunk costs, familiarity, fear, expectations, possessions, old ambitions and beliefs we may never have consciously chosen.
But this is not a book about giving up.
It is about knowing the difference between persistence that is taking you somewhere and persistence that is merely keeping you where you are.
Through ideas, stories and a practical method of reflection, LET GO offers a way to examine what you are carrying, decide what still deserves a place in your life, and create room for what comes next.
Graham Madigan
A different way of thinking
Letting go creates space.
A career can become an identity.
A possession can become an obligation.
A belief can survive long after the evidence for it has disappeared.
A past decision can quietly become a rule for the future.
And sometimes the greatest cost is not the thing itself, but everything else we cannot do while we continue carrying it.
LET GO is about recognising those moments.
Not becoming detached from life, but becoming more selective about what we allow to occupy it.
The book is coming.
LET GO is currently in development.
Join the mailing list and we'll let you know when the book is available, along with occasional ideas and extracts from the project.
You don't always need more.
Sometimes you need less.