We all know Jessica, who – despite it being 1000% clear that she should break up with her partner – is still holding on to the idea that the relationship might turn to the better. She invested 2 years of her life to get close to that partner – and continues to invest time, emotional and physical energy instead of letting go.
The same happens with Tom and his financial investments into the company of his friend. He’s been helping out hoping for his friend’s to succeed. However, it actually became clear after 3 months that there is problems in the business and how it is setup. And from the perspective of Tom’s friend?
He is keeping on pushing his work even though he knows that he needs to fundamentally change his service to meet customer needs.
Think of yourself and examples in which you’ve been holding on to an idea, a project, a time investment or financial investment for too long? It’s not very unlikely that this is currently happening ;-).
But why do we do this?
Particularly, if we have the faint idea or actually know we should change and let go to not get hurt more?
These are our loss aversion bias and sunk cost fallacy biases at work. We have a tendency to try to avoid any type of failure. We rather continue to push forward at all cost to try to become successful with something we decided to go for. Especially, if there already has been quite an investment of time, work, sweat and tears we might tend to grip on more tightly instead of making a healthy choice.
This is why it makes sense from time to time to look at different areas of your life and ask yourself honestly:
– Is this (input any investment of effort may it be emotional and/or physical) giving me a good feeling?
– Does it energise me?
– Does it help me to grow and learn?
– Does it bring me closer to the goals/dreams I have?
And if you answer these with “no”, make a cut, break up, feel the lightness of letting go and get closer to those things which do make you say “YES!“.