It’s sometimes hard to let go of what you’ve built, but not letting it go keeps it from becoming what it might.

We build relationships around who we were in one slice of time, but if we don’t make room for growth and change, then we can’t experience the richness of relationship that celebrates who we are and supports who we’re becoming.

We raise children and are scared to let them fall off the bike or head off to college on their own. Ifthey don’t fall, they don’t learn to ride. If they don’t find their own way, they’ll be left with no way but ours – in a world that requires a different way of being.

We build careers getting good at a few things and are reluctant to give that position or responsibility over to someone new. If we don’t, we can’t grow through new challenges, and those under us can’t carry on the work we’ve started.

We build business momentum around certain things only to find that those things don’t sustain us in the same way they used to. Doing the same thing repeatedly gets us the same results and we can’t build on the foundation we’ve laid because we’re too busy polishing it.

We build ideas – plans, designs, books, art – in our heads and are scared to let them out in the light of day. Despite what we tell ourselves, the excellence the idea will have out in the world will outshine the perfection it has in the abstract.

No matter what we do, there will come a time that we have to let go of what we’ve built.

The measure of our success as a builder is in whether what we build can thrive without us – and the only way we’ll know that is if we let it go.

Photo Credit: upturnedface