What a Bridal Shower Taught Me About Letting Go

And I've come to believe ego is at the root of a lot of what keeps us from delegating.

I never believed anyone else could do it as well as I could, so I never gave it away.

Meanwhile, I was drowning at the college some nights, at my dining room table on others, all hours, week after week, semester after semester, building that plug.

the schedule.

And all that time going into one task also meant I couldn't get to the things only I should have been doing.

I was also quietly limiting my own growth.

Talk about keeping my lid pretty low, as I've talked about in a previous episode.

And every opportunity that my time and focus could have gone toward something else instead, got invested into these schedules.

I had already proven I could build a schedule.

Every semester, I proved it again.

And to be honest with you, now as I look back at that time in my career, I can see with clarity that I wasn't proving it to anyone but myself.

Then I hit a breaking point I still think about.

A close friend who was also a work colleague had an only child.

Her name was Loretta and Loretta was terminally ill and she was having her bridal shower.

I still feel the deep remorse I live with as I talk about this because I skipped the bridal shower.

I was in my office at the 11th hour finalizing that September schedule as the start of the semester bore down on me and I'm not proud to say this but I chose the schedule over being with Loretta and her mom for such an important occasion.

I'm in fact ashamed of that choice.

It's the moment I go back to when I think about what holding on to work too long can really cost you.

And I don't want anyone else to have to hit a point of no return like that before they see it.

Looking back with the years and the maturity I have now, it's almost funny how attached I was.

But underneath the, you know, nobody else can do this story was something less flattering.

I needed to control it.

My ego needed the credit, the indispensability, you know, that feeling of being the one person who could pull it off.

And it wasn't until I woke up that I started slowly to bring someone else in.

I remember she needed support the first time, and then she didn't.