September 29, 2026 | Issue Archive​

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Living... Learning... and Letting Go

I turned 50 last week.

I thought that milestone might make me think about everything I still want to accomplish.

And it did.

But, perhaps no surprise, I’ve found myself thinking just as much about what I’m willing to let go of.

I’ve kept journals for much of my adult life, and over the past few months, I’ve been going back through them—along with things I wrote in high school and even middle school.

It’s been funny. Occasionally embarrassing. Sometimes surprisingly moving.

One discovery keeps confronting me:

I’ve known a lot of this stuff for a very long time.

I’ve written about courage before I consistently acted courageously.

I’ve written about alignment while living out of alignment.

I’ve recognized exits and driven right past them.

I’ve had hundreds of ideas when what I needed was to execute one.

I’ve called persistence resilience when sometimes I was simply afraid to let go.

Apparently wisdom and application run on different schedules.

I’m still working on closing the gap.

But at 50, I’m also beginning to understand something else:

Not everything deserves to come with you.

Some beliefs don’t.

Some habits don’t.

Some goals don’t.

Some old definitions of success don’t.

And here’s the really difficult part:

Sometimes the things that need to end aren’t bad things.

Sometimes they’re things that mattered deeply to us.

Last week, I heard a leader describe a conversation he’d had with his coach. He was maxed out, and his coach challenged him to decide what he needed to stop doing.

His realization stuck with me:

I have to stop doing something that was important to me so I can do something that is important to me now.

I’ve been thinking about that sentence ever since.

Because that’s a very different kind of ending.

It isn’t admitting that something failed.

It’s recognizing that something can have mattered—maybe enormously—and still not belong in the next chapter.

I’ve lived that one myself.

Last year, after more than 25 years of booking and representing speakers, I ended that side of my business to go all-in on my own speaking.

That business wasn’t bad.

It hadn’t been meaningless.

Quite the opposite. It introduced me to remarkable people, took me places I never imagined going, supported my family, and helped shape the person I became.

It mattered.

And it was time.

Maybe that’s one of the things I’m learning at 50:

We don’t honor every chapter by refusing to end it.

Sometimes we honor it by being grateful for what it gave us—and then allowing it to be complete.

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THIS ENDS NOW

There’s some fascinating research behind this.

A major meta-analytic review published in Nature Human Behaviour examined 1,421 effect sizes across 281 samples looking at what happens when people adjust goals that have become difficult, unattainable or too costly to pursue.

The researchers separated two processes that we often lump together:

Disengagement: letting go of the old goal.

Reengagement: moving toward a new or adjusted goal.

And they don’t appear to do exactly the same thing.

Disengaging from an unattainable goal was associated with lower stress, anxiety and depression.

The researchers described it as something like a psychological pressure-release valve.

But letting go wasn’t the whole story.

Reengaging with meaningful goals was associated not only with less distress, but with greater purpose, positive emotion, personal growth and life satisfaction.

In other words:

Letting go can stop the drain. It doesn’t automatically create a future.

You still have to choose what deserves your energy now.

That distinction immediately made me think about the three steps I teach in Choose Your Ending:

Claim the Choice. Acknowledge that something needs to change.

Create Closure. Actually release what you’ve decided to leave behind.

Anchor in Growth. Put your energy toward what comes next.

There’s even another wrinkle in the research that I find fascinating: mentally letting go while continuing the same behavior—or changing your behavior while remaining psychologically attached to the old goal—can work against wellbeing.

In other words, closure isn’t merely saying, I’m done.

Sometimes our behavior has to catch up with the decision.

And sometimes our heart does too.

One important caution: much of this research is correlational, and the authors themselves rate the overall evidence base as low-to-moderate because of limitations including cross-sectional studies, publication bias and substantial variation across studies.

So the lesson isn’t:

Quitting is good.

It isn’t.

The better question is:

When circumstances have changed, are you still pursuing something simply because it used to matter?

[Read the research in Nature Human Behaviour]

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THIS MOMENT MATTERS

I did something else for my 50th birthday.

I started making a list of people who helped make me… me.

Teachers.

Pastors.

Friends.

Speakers.

Colleagues.

Mentors.

People who opened doors.

People who believed in me.

People who challenged me.

People who sat at my table when I needed someone there.

And I started sending some of them messages.

It reminded me of the fifth C in Radical Adaptability:

Community.

I’ve spent a lot of my life valuing independence and solitude. I still do.

But 50 years makes something rather obvious:

I did not become Shawn Ellis by myself.

None of us do.

Someone encouraged us.

Someone taught us.

Someone took a chance on us.

Someone forgave us.

Someone showed up.

And some of those people probably have absolutely no idea that they mattered.

So here’s something you can do this week that requires no framework, worksheet or strategic plan:

Tell somebody.

Don’t wait for their retirement.

Don’t wait for their funeral.

Don’t assume they know.

Send the text.

Write the email.

Make the call.

Tell someone specifically how they changed your life while they’re still here to hear it.

This moment matters.

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And speaking of Community…

If you’re one of the people who joined us here after last week’s session in Charlotte—welcome.

I’m glad you’re here.

And to everyone who has been reading these notes for weeks, months or years, I want to say something I probably don’t say often enough:

Thank you.

Every time someone reads one of these emails, shares an idea, hires me, recommends me, sits in an audience, sends me a note, or tells me something I said helped them make a brave choice, you’re allowing me to do work I genuinely love.

I don’t take that for granted.

Especially at 50.

There are plenty of things I still want to do.

Places I want to go.

People I want to help.

Ideas I want to explore.

I hope there’s a lot of road ahead.

But I’m becoming less interested in carrying everything with me just because it once mattered.

Maybe the question for the second half isn’t simply:

What do I want to accomplish next?

Maybe it’s also:

What am I still carrying because it mattered then—even though something else matters more now?

That’s a question I’m taking with me into 50.

Maybe it’s worth taking with you this week, too.

Up we go—

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