Dr. D. explores the costs of letting go—how choosing freedom can mean losing friendships, community, financial entanglements, and a sense of normalcy—and invites reflection on personal trade-offs.
Dr. D. says getting older and watching your eyes change is not fun. He says his doctor told him he doesn't blink enough. Today, we are going to be talking about letting go and the cost of letting go.
For the month of freedom, we have to let go of things. But there is a cost to letting go, to get the freedom that we say we want. One thing is we lose friendship and community and this sense of belonging. When we lose a connection, there's another one coming.
It costs money to disentangle yourself from someone. Another cost of letting go is this sense of normalcy. When we choose to walk away, we get this freedom and peace of mind. Change is not easy, but sometimes change is necessary.
Nikki: I want to challenge you to think about what is the cost of letting go for you personally. We can lose so much. There's a cost to it, but sometimes the cost is necessary. I will catch y' all next week for my last talk about freedom.
Hey, Cadre. It's me, Dr. D. I'm here. I made it. I was really rushing to get here because I just left an eye exam. And let me tell y' all something. Getting older and watching your eyes change is not fun. And my doctor. Let me put my coffee down. My doctor gave me a fun fact of our eyes change when we hit 40, and she also shared that our eyes change again when we hit 45, and that will be next year for me. So my prescription hasn't changed in the past four years, thankfully, because I don't want to keep paying for new glasses.
But there's been a little shift, and I've noticed some changes as I'm getting older. So. Hello, everybody joining me. So I was just letting everybody know I just got back from my eye exam, and she also gave me a little nugget. She said something about a behavior that I do that I kind of took that personally about my life. So let me tell you all real quick. She did say that I don't blink enough. And I don't blink. She said I take baby blinks because I was telling her about my eyes being dry. She's like, you.
You take these baby blinks. You just did it. I was like, okay. She's like, it's kind of like you feel like you're gonna miss something. And I was like, you know what? I do live life that way. I always feel like I'm gonna miss something, so I need to work on that. So that was my little therapeutic moment with my eye doctor today. But today, we are going to be talking about letting go and the cost of letting go. So getting back into our theme for the month of freedom and how freedom, you know, we have to let go of things.
We have to let go of relationships, let go of ideas, let go of memories, let go of some things that hurt us. But there is a cost to letting go, to get the freedom that we say we want. And I had to take some notes because I want to make sure I hit this for you guys. Not. Let me. Let me move this over just a little bit. I am at my office, y'. All. I was rushing to get here, but let's just talk about the cost of letting go. All right? One thing I wrote down. You know, when we choose to walk in freedom, that sometimes that comes at a price.
And think about if you've ever made a really hard decision to leave any type of relationship, whether that's romantic, maybe it was a job, maybe it was a group of people that you belong to. Maybe it was a sport or whatever, but you've made a decision that you had to let that go for whatever the reason was, and it was probably because it was costing you something to stay. But there's also a cost to letting go of that thing. And so a few things that we lose when we get freedom. Because we chose to walk away from a relationship and we let go of that relationship.
One thing is we lose friendship and community and this sense of belonging. And that is a basic need that we all have. We all have a basic need to belong. We belong, and we need connection. So letting go of a connection, there's a price to that. We no longer have that until we come around, we walk around the block and there's another one. And that's something I truly believe in, is when we lose a connection, whether it was by choice or it just happened and someone chose to left to leave us, there's always another connection coming because we're wired that way.
That's just life. So if you're in that space where you've lost a connection, just know there's another one coming. So just hold on, hold on. All right? Another thing that we lose is identity. We might. Hi, Nikki. We might lose a sense of who we are because we've lost the connection. So letting go of a connection can feel like we're losing a part of ourselves. We don't know who we are in this new space, and we can only identify who we used to be. And that can be scary. And let me know if you've been in that situation before.
Letting go of identity of who we were. Yes. That can be a sense of freedom, because on the other side of that, we have the choice to become who we want to be, and we have a choice to connect with who we want to be connected to. But I think a bigger cost of walking away or the cost of letting go is money, finances. That is one thing that will keep us in a relationship is because it costs too much to let it go. You guys ever heard this phrase, it's cheaper to keep her? I've heard guys say that it's cheaper to keep her.
So you might stay in a toxic situation because it costs money to disentangle yourself from someone. You know, divorce isn't cheap, okay? That's why some people stay in their relationships longer than they need to because it costs too much. And there's also a financial burden. What if you're in a partnership for business? And there's a cost to letting that go. There's a cost to disentangling yourself from the partnership. There is a financial burden sometimes when you might have been in a relationship where that person was taking care of you, and now you're choosing to let go and you've got to take care of yourself.
Well, how are you going to do that? So there is a cost of letting go. You might have to move into a new home. You might have to relocate to a whole nother state or a whole nother area. And that costs money. So we may not want to do that. Another thing, you know, another cost of letting go is this sense of normalcy. So even when we're in situations that are toxic for us, when we can kind of expect, we know what to expect, rather, we know what to expect. And so even though it's toxic, it's normal.
And so when we let go of that toxic situation, we don't have anything to hold on to. That's a normal routine, right? And so that can feel and I don't know, describe that for me if you've ever been there. So put that in chat for me. How does that feel? How does that feel to not have normalcy in your life because you chose to get free freedom in your relationship? It can feel scary. It can feel uneasy. It can feel like you don't know what the day is. You don't know what to expect. But I think there's beauty in that too, because you get to choose what you want.
You get to choose what's next for you instead of being stuck in a situation where you're disruptive. That's a good word, Nikki. I love that word. Yeah, it can feel disruptive. Change is not easy, but sometimes change is necessary. And the last thing I want to highlight of. Sorry, y' all got gum in my mouth. What we lose when we let go, the cost of letting go, we lose the former version of ourself. Now, I don't know if y' all have experienced that. The former version of ourself is the person that was living in toxicity.
The former version of ourself was the person who was allowing pain to continue to break us down and break us apart and not allow us to be who we need to be. And so letting that go, that can be scary because we don't know who to be. We just know we don't want that anymore. Right? And so I'm going to get to the flip side. I like to, you know, I call it flipping the coin. So let's flip the coin on this cost of letting go. Now, one thing we do gain when we choose freedom in relationships. And again, let me, let me just, let me give you some details on that.
When I say freedom in relationship, that doesn't always mean completely stopping the relationship or ending a relationship. Sometimes freedom in relationship just means you show up differently in the relationship for yourself. Okay, hold on to that. So one thing we gain is emotional safety. If you were in a situation that was emotionally abusive, verbally abusive, physically abusive, mentally abusive, that doesn't feel safe. And so when you let go of that, you gain emotional safety. You gain the emotional safety that you can give yourself now because you have freedom to do it.
Or you can go into other spaces that will provide that for you. And maybe you weren't allowed to go into those other spaces before. Okay. The second thing we gain is a peace of mind. So think about all the chaos you experienced before you let go of the situation. You know, we can stay in the midst of chaos. I like to say that we stay in the midst of chaos because again, it's normal, we know how to operate in it. It still doesn't feel good, but we know what to expect. And so we might stay a little longer.
But when we choose to walk away, we get this freedom and peace of mind. We don't have to wonder when is the next time this person's going to do this to me because we've let it go. Okay. Third thing we gain is we gain opportunities for new beginnings. So if we stay stuck in what we're used to doing and we're stuck in this pattern, we don't often choose anything new for ourselves. We don't allow ourselves to even think about doing something different. So the flip side of letting go, what we gain is new opportunities, new beginnings, new relationships, new connections, new ideas.
Because we have peace of mind. We, we get, I would say, new opportunities in the sense of we might get to show up differently. Maybe we show up differently on our jobs because we have peace of mind and we have emotional safety that we didn't have before. Okay, let me know if that's that happened to you. And then the fourth thing is we get self discovery and autonomy. We get to show up as who we really are. So if we're in a toxic situation, we often will hide for safety. We will minimize ourselves and who we are because we have to keep ourselves safe.
Who we are at the core can't show up because that person was getting hurt. So when you let go, yes, it costs you something, but you're also gaining this sense of I can be who I really am. I can be who I was created to be because now I'm emotionally safe and I have peace of mind, okay? And the last thing that we gain is we get new connections. I told y', all it's coming around the block again. Just wait a little bit. Right? But if we stay in what's toxic, we don't move. We just play the same toxic cycle over and over and over.
And so we never branch out into new opportunities and new connections. So, yes, it cost us something to stay in it. It costs us something to leave, but it also opens the door for something that we've been craving, which is healthy connections. All right, that's all I got for y'. All. Nikki, thank you so much for joining me today. And Speak Wonder. I see you, too. And for those of you guys watching the replay, let me know. Shout me out. Let me know where you guys are located. I'm trying to open my coffee because I need a sip today.
It's been a long morning. But I. I want to thank you guys for entering this space with me today. And if you can even think about what is the cost of letting go for you personally, right? We can. We can lose so much. There's a cost to it, but sometimes the cost is necessary. And so I want to challenge you, if you're in the space of deciding, should I let this go, should I stay? Right? You can stay and watch the video that. That I did from last week that talks about how we can do it safely and if we choose to stay, what that looks like and what we can do about that.
But I will catch y' all next week for my last talk about freedom, I might extend it to the last week of July. We'll see. I like to kind of freestyle sometimes, but, yeah, I will catch y' all next Tuesday, same time, same place. Y' all have a great week. All right, Bye.
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