Build Resilience With “Oh Well” and Let Things Go

I read not one, but two books this week! There was a topic that showed up in both of them that have to do with resilience and so I wanted to talk about those pieces today. The books are What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter, and How Women Rise, by Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith. Both of these links are affiliate links. The idea I got so excited about that was expressed in these books was so simple, and was so much like “I will handle this” that I found myself putting it into practice all week and weekend since I read it! It felt like a revelation, but really it’s about how we can build resilience by letting go of the small things that don’t matter much to anyone except ourselves.

Oh Well!

The idea is “oh well”. That’s it. “Oh well, that didn’t go as I expected.” “Oh well, I was late.” “Oh well, that guy really ticked me off.”

If you’re anything like me, you may tend to replay negative events, even small ones, over and over in your mind. We might chew it over like a cow chewing cud until we’ve extracted every last little bit of indignation and self-flagellation and self-recrimination and self-righteousness as we can (and many times, long past the point where all of that is long gone). We have such a hard time just letting it go.

Last week, I was in a big meeting with my boss and other coworkers. The meeting was good, and we accomplished a lot. As is usual in meetings like that, there were times that were a little uncomfortable or where I said something not quite how I intended to say it. Or I reacted instead of responded. Maybe I didn’t control my face journey quite as well as I could have. Whatever the reason, I found myself going over and over those events in my mind, beating myself up about them over and over.

What does this do for me? I try to tell myself that I’m rehashing the events so that I can avoid them in the future. I point out to myself over and over where I went wrong and why saying that thing, or letting my face make that expression, or even sitting that way in my chair was a bad idea. Before long, I am convinced I did a horrible job, no one wants to work with me, and I’m a hairsbreadth away from getting fired.

I’m serious. It’s a problem.

Whatever Just Happened, I Can’t Change It

The thing is, what’s done is done. Rehashing it over and over in my mind, finding new nuggets of insight to beat myself up with, won’t change what I did or didn’t do. Not only have I probably blown the events way out of proportion by going over them in my mind again and again, but I literally can’t do anything to change them. They happened. For better or worse.

The worst thing about this is that not being able to let go of past mistakes just adds to the weight we’re already carrying, which might already be more than we can support. We add to the burdens we’ve already got by not being able to let go of things that are said and done.

What’s In My Control, and What’s Not

Obsessing over what I did wrong doesn’t serve me, let alone anyone else. It doesn’t help me change my behavior. It won’t change anyone’s opinion of how I showed up. All it does is take up valuable headspace and add stress, for no better purpose than to have one more thing to beat myself up over. Processing negative events this way doesn’t help us recover from them. We can build our resilience by getting better at letting things go.

So what can I do? I can say, “oh well.” Saying “oh well” doesn’t mean I don’t think it was a big deal. It doesn’t mean that I won’t try to avoid that behavior next time. It doesn’t mean that I don’t think there’s areas I can improve in my interpersonal skills. All it means is that I have identified something that didn’t serve me well, acknowledged a way in which I could have done better, and I’m letting it go. It doesn’t have to weigh me down for the rest of my day, my week, my life.

The reality is, I can’t change what happened in the past. I can’t undo mistakes. Unless I’m sadly misinformed, they haven’t yet invented a time machine that will let me go back and be on time for the meeting I was late for. There’s nothing that will put those words back in my mouth. I can’t control the past. All I can do is control my actions in the future.

Why Is It So Hard?

Understanding that whatever just happened, I literally cannot change it was really hard for me. I think somewhere in my mind, I thought that if I could just relive those events over and over in my mind, I’d find that one magic moment where I could have said or done something differently. But so what if I do? Even if I come up with the perfect “you know, what I should have said was…”, that doesn’t change what has already happened.

I’m not sure why many times we have a hard time letting failures or mistakes go. Maybe we think that if we don’t dwell on something, that we don’t care. Or maybe we think that we’ll gain some kind of elusive insight that will stop us from ever committing that mistake again. Maybe we get some kind of weird emotional juice from beating ourselves up over something from the past.

Whatever the reason, it doesn’t serve us. Outside of noting what we did wrong, rehashing past mistakes does us no good. In fact, all it does is hold us back and make us feel bad.

Take a Breath…And Let It Go

The beauty of “oh well” is it lets us acknowledge what happened and let it go. That frees up our brains to formulate a plan to help us stop doing whatever it is that we did. It also gives us the opportunity to let go of “sins” committed against us. For example, I found myself reliving how someone interrupted me while I was talking. I was so irritated by it. It felt like she didn’t care what I thought, she wasn’t listening to me, she totally disrespects me, you get the idea. I went over it again and again, with my self-righteous indignation growing with every retelling.

When I finally noticed what I was doing, I was able to say to myself, “Oh well. This happened. It made me feel bad”. And then stop. I acknowledged what happened, acknowledged how it made me feel, then I was able to let it go. What’s the point of rehashing it? I can’t change her behavior. Me getting upset about it over and over again won’t make her stop doing it. All I can do, the only thing I have control over, is to let it go.

It’s Not a Universal Solution

Obviously, saying “oh well” in every situation in our lives would feel bad. When someone close to you dies, you probably can’t (and shouldn’t) say “oh well” and let it go. If your child is in an accident and injured, saying “oh well” won’t stop you from flying into a panic.

The “oh well” response can help you to let go of something that happened in the past that you’re at risk of beating yourself up over. Things that probably don’t matter to anyone else as much as they matter to you.

Late to a meeting? Oh well. If you notice it happens all the time and it’s causing a problem for your boss or your colleagues, stop beating yourself up and just stop being late. Interrupt someone? Oh well. If it’s causing a problem in your relationships, stop interrupting people and work on being a better listener.

I think sometimes we beat ourselves up instead of taking positive action to prevent or stop the behavior that caused the problem. Almost like we think obsessing over the mistake will be what stops it from happening again. In my opinion, the only thing that will stop it from happening again is positive action.

Try It!

Maybe give yourself a week to try this out. Try saying “oh well” when you find yourself caught in a spiral of self-recrimination or self-righteousness. If you see that you’re rehashing something small over and over again, try letting it go with an “oh well”. See if it helps!