Letting go isn’t easy yet essential for your well-being.
Your relationships, both at home and at work, rely on your ability to let go. Your attachment to possessions and people is strong for a reason.
Being attached means that you care; it means that you’re a human being. All of us find it incredibly hard to let go and move on. But if we don’t do it, we risk getting stuck, unable to make meaningful progress and change our lives for the better.
Why Read Encouraging Quotes About Letting Go?
Sometimes, the most difficult thing you can do is let go of someone you love. And you should if they don’t love you back. Why sabotage your happiness for someone who doesn’t love you anymore?
But since letting go is hard, all of us need powerful encouraging reminders. This is why I’ve put together this list of the best letting go quotes to help you improve your mindfulness practice, get unstuck, and move on with your life.
100 Powerful Letting Go Quotes to Improve Your Mindfulness and Move On
- “Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.” — Hermann Hesse
- “Love isn’t always about hanging on. Sometimes it’s about letting go.” — Reham Khan
- “Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past, and is therefore the means for correcting our misperceptions.” — Gerald Jampolsky
- “Part of the problem with America is that letting go of emotions is viewed as a weakness, but it’s my strength. That enabled me to write my songs.” — Melanie Martinez
- “Abundance is a process of letting go; that which is empty can receive.” — Bryant H. McGill
- “You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won’t receive the good things God has in store.” — Joel Osteen
- “By letting go of my fears and concerns, I’ve gained so much happiness and freedom. With that freedom I’ve also gained confidence.” — Sabrina Claudio
- “So we’re in this process of letting go of our own attachments to our physical forms and to the people we love, and… basically everything. Life is like this one big process of letting go.” — Adrianne Lenker
- We can learn the art of fierce compassion – redefining strength, deconstructing isolation and renewing a sense of community, practicing letting go of rigid us-vs.-them thinking – while cultivating power and clarity in response to difficult situations.
Sharon Salzberg - “The main thing in making art often is letting go of your expectation and your idea.” — Agnes Martin
- “As you become aware of what has robbed you of the purity of an innocent mind, a clear heart and a strong body, you will be deeply served by letting go of those familiar limitations.” — Debbie Ford
- “Have you ever struggled to find work or love, only to find them after you have given up? This is the paradox of letting go. Let go, in order to achieve. Letting go is God’s law.” — Mary Manin Morrissey
- “I think that what makes you cool at the end of the day is letting go, not being superficial or uptight, and being different.” — Peyton List
- “Anyone who takes the Bible seriously agrees that God hates suffering. Jesus spent most of his time relieving it. But when being healed becomes the only goal – ‘I’m not letting go until I get what I want’ – it’s a problem.” — Joni Eareckson Tada
- “I don’t have a problem with letting go of an album once I know I’ve pretty much done the best that I can.” — Bill Ward
- “I feel prematurely old. I’m actually having this major belated quarter-life crisis. I’m turning 30 in a couple of weeks. I’ve been thinking a lot about mortality. A lot about what I’m going to do with my life and how to enjoy it. One of the things I’m going to work on is being more spontaneous, letting go, embracing the beauty of come-what-may.” — Chris Pine
- “As an actor, if you were to simplify what acting really is, it’s about letting go.” — Derek Magyar
- “I think anybody who has had a long relationship and has had a really hard time letting go, wants to feel like it’s not all for naught, and it’s meaningful, because it makes you who you are.” — Rashida Jones
- “I think that what I have been truly searching for as a person, as a writer, as a thinker, as a daughter, is freedom. That is my mission. A sense of liberty, the liberty that comes not only from self-awareness but also from letting go of many things. Many things that weigh us down.” — Jhumpa Lahiri
- “All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” — Havelock Ellis
- “People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
- “The point of human evolution is adapting to circumstance. Not letting go of the old, but adapting it, is necessary.” — Sonali Bendre
- “There’s a victory in letting go of your expectations.” — Mike White
- “What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?” — Brene Brown
- “‘Haaye ve’ is about loving and letting go.” — Ammy Virk
- “I make mistakes daily, letting generalizations creep into my thoughts and negatively affect my behavior. These mistakes have taught me that the first step to successfully choosing kindness is being more mindful about it, letting go of impatience and intolerance along the way.” — Daniel Lubetzky
- “It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.” — Roger von Oech
- “At a certain point, when I let go and was done – when I stopped and could say I was blessed and thankful to be a champion, when I finally enjoyed life from this different perspective – that’s when I healed. Letting go healed me.” — Dominick Cruz
- When you’re passionate about something, you want it to be all it can be. But in the endgame of life, I fundamentally believe the key to happiness is letting go of that idea of perfection.
Debra Messing - “I think every girl has that a guy she has trouble letting go of.” — Rashida Jones
- “Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.” — David Bowie
- “Being deeply contented with God in my everyday life is a focused attitude. It is always available. It means practicing letting go of my obsession with how I’m doing. It means training myself to learn to actually be present with people, and seeking to love them.” — John Ortberg
- “I just don’t see ABC letting go of soaps completely.” — Michael Easton
- “I feel like I’ve kinda danced around telling the truest story I can for many years of my life. I’ve been a little distracted by trying to be shocking or edgy or cool or whatever, and by letting go of that and telling the truest story I can – even if it’s about aliens and talking raccoons – it works.” — James Gunn
- “I’m bad at letting go of things.” — Heidi Klum
- “Meditation is really letting go of all the thought processes or ‘mind traffic’ that gets in the way of just whatever is between you and space and consciousness.” — Trudie Styler
- “I’m just opening the doors. And a lot of this is new to me – thinking about it, and letting go again and again and again, trusting that if I’m meant to continue working as a musician, it’ll happen. If I’m not, then pull out the life support.” — Jane Siberry
- “Picasso is what is going to happen and what is happening; he is posterity and archaic time, the distant ancestor and our next-door neighbor. Speed permits him to be two places at once, to belong to all the centuries without letting go of the here and now.” — Octavio Paz
- “It’s actually meditative to sit in a character for an extended period of time, realizing what your relationship is to who you’re playing and then letting go, just being there.” — Frances Conroy
- “I spend a lot of time thinking about this business of letting go – letting go of the children God gives to us for such a brief time before they go off on their own; letting go of old homes, old friends, old places and old dreams.” — Susan Estrich
- “Questions don’t easily die within me until they’re answered, and so being able to write a song and put words to complex feelings is part of my process of understanding and letting go of things.” — Lucy Dacus
- “Letting go helps us to to live in a more peaceful state of mind and helps restore our balance. It allows others to be responsible for themselves and for us to take our hands off situations that do not belong to us. This frees us from unnecessary stress.” — Melody Beattie
- “Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go and starting over.” — Guy Finley
- “Even as kids reach adolescence, they need more than ever for us to watch over them. Adolescence is not about letting go. It’s about hanging on during a very bumpy ride.” — Ron Taffel
- “Relationships are eternal. The ‘separation’ is another chapter in the relationship. Often, letting go of the old form of the relationship becomes a lesson in pure love much deeper than any would have learned had the couple stayed together.” — Marianne Williamson
- “I have trouble with letting go. That’s my problem.” — Kevin Gates
- “Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.” — Gail Sheehy
- “I’m bad at baking. I’m bad at letting go of things. I’m probably bad at reading.” — Heidi Klum
- The real trick to auditioning is just letting go of trying to please them. Make it your own. That took me a long time to learn.
Allison Janney - “Every decision is tough, letting go a player.” — Brian Flores
- “For me, every single thing I do seems to be about the process of letting go because that’s what I so desperately need to do with so many things: with fear, with what people think of me, and all these things I’ve worried about my whole life.” — John Grant
- “I’m interested in form, in the shape of things. And in commitment to the degree of never letting go the quest for the meaning of things. That can come off as beauty and style, but that’s not where I start from.” — Luca Guadagnino
- “I have realised taking a stand is tough, but what’s tougher is maintaining it and letting go of all those who doubt your intent.” — Rhea Chakraborty
- “Forgiveness means letting go of the past.” — Gerald Jampolsky
- “I know nothing about letting go.” — John Hodgman
- “I was raised in a little church, the Grundy Methodist Church, that was very straight-laced, but I had a friend whose mother spoke in tongues. I was just wild for this family. My own parents were older, and they were so over-protective. I just loved the ‘letting go’ that would happen when I went to church with my friend.” — Lee Smith
- “And that’s where I think vulnerability comes in – the fact that we’re figuring out that there is strength in actually being vulnerable to one another, there is strength to letting go of grief, or at least processing grief more helpfully than we’ve necessary seen, particularly in these corseted upper class dramas before.” — Rege-Jean Page
- “I love being onstage. I love the relationship with the audience. I love the letting go, the sense of discovery, the improvising.” — Stephen Colbert
- “My family is really good at letting go of things and moving on.” — Meghan McCain
- “I think the only consistent thing is that I like projects that explore different social themes. ‘Our Family Wedding’ is a comedy, but it deals with two different cultures coming together. It’s also about people letting go.” — Forest Whitaker
- “The hardest thing on ‘Palo Alto’ was letting go because I kept working on it, trying to make it better.” — Gia Coppola
- “I was trying to be 27 at age 47, but God had to get rid of my vanity. I had trouble letting go of the old Lex physically. My human fleshly nature didn’t want to let go of what had come to be billed as ‘The Total Package.’ I guess God had to help me get rid of the last remnant of that vanity and pride.” — Lex Luger
- “Some kind of clutter is difficult – letting go of things with sentimental value, sifting through papers – but some clutter I find very refreshing to clear. I drive my daughters nuts because I’m always wandering into their rooms to clear clutter.” — Gretchen Rubin
- “Teenage years, having gone through it all, I know it’s a rough, rough time, and I would say to accept that message of letting go, letting it happen and accepting that things don’t always happen for a reason, or you may not understand the reason, but it’s all part of the journey, and try to enjoy the ride.” — Austin Stowell
- “I feel like, every single decision I make and every single album I make, it’s all about letting go. Letting go of the past and just getting on with it.” — John Grant
- “I can’t stand confrontation, which maybe is a character flaw. But having said that, I do feel like when I do get upset – which is rare, as my husband and family would say – I have a hard time letting go.” — Anna Faris
- “A huge problem we face when we’re in need is giving up our intuition and blindly following instruction. Letting go works when we are following our hearts, but not so well when we are following a leader.” — Tara Stiles
- “If I’ve learned anything from TJ, it’s that life is a fine balance of holding on, letting go, and never looking back unless it’s to admire how far you’ve come.” — Natalya Neidhart
- Life after the White House found Dad enjoying having his grandchildren around and letting go of all the enormous burden he shouldered throughout his public life.
Dorothy Bush Koch - “Playing the game, representing the team, giving my all and never letting go has meant everything to me.” — Jonny Wilkinson
- “Letting go of things and not being afraid of being ridiculous or over the top – I think that’s the main thing for me to work on.” — Charlotte Gainsbourg
- “I play Nitin Sawhney’s ‘Letting Go’ repeatedly, nonstop. I find it transformative. I’m so glad iPods were invented so I didn’t have to drive everyone around me mad with the repetition.” — Natascha McElhone
- “When you feel stuck in a hard time, jump-start a pro-change attitude by letting go of possessions that no longer work for you – like old clothes and old shoes.” — Karen Salmansohn
- “A lot of these teams really forget that part of success comes with having veteran leadership. You see a lot of teams forget that and start letting go of these old veterans. They don’t realize how important it is to have a veteran voice in your locker room or on the bench. It’s important to have guys who have been there before.” — David Robinson
- “I know when I used to chemically straighten mine, I did it because I wasn’t comfortable with my natural hair. I thought it was too poofy, too kinky. So for me, personally, when I started wearing it natural, it felt like I was blossoming because I was letting go of all the dead hair and all the parts of me that had rejected my natural state.” — Amandla Stenberg
- “I’ve tried to write in a way that transcends beyond just sexuality and is more about letting go of our fear and trusting the people around us.” — Calum Scott
- “It was like a dream come true for me. When you write the book, it’s still intimate. It might have been a best-seller but it’s still my story, as I wrote it. The moment we or they make a movie, it’s not my story anymore. There’s a lot of letting go involved in the process.” — Yossi Ghinsberg
- “I love to watch people not care too much about the choreography, or if they sing perfectly, or if the right label people are there to watch them. It’s just about letting go and being crazy and engaging people in dance and madness – being a human instead of a doll.” — MO
- “Entrepreneurship requires an unvanquished spirit of curiosity, an openness to learning, a letting go of OldCo so you’re free to create NewCo.” — Michael Gerber
- “One of the biggest challenges in my job is letting go of the movie once you go home at night, and knowing you can’t do anything to your performance once you’ve laid it on film.” — Amber Heard
- “Most people believe that results matter. The idea that results matter is one that you have to keep letting go of. And most of the time, I believe it.” — Russell Simmons
- “After filming, I can’t wait to shake off all that ’50s primness. I’ll go out to a gig and dance ridiculously. I love to lose myself in music. Just letting go – it’s dead important.” — Jessica Raine
- “One of my favorite reggae songs is Wayne Wonder’s ‘No Letting Go.’ And Sizzla ‘Give Me A Try.’ That’s one of my favorite songs as well.” — Tory Lanez
- “One of the things I try to work with white people on is letting go of our criteria about how people of color give us feedback. We have to build our stamina to just be humble and bear witness to the pain we’ve caused.” — Robin DiAngelo
- “The act of writing a song involves a degree of letting go of yourself, and that’s very much being a child.” — Alan Menken
- “My footballing curve; I never thought this could happen. But over the years of work, injuries, without opportunities, I’ve learned that deep inside an attitude builds which says: ‘The moment someone gives me the chance, there’s no way I’m letting go.'” — Pablo Mari
- “In the last few years in particular, I’ve found that it’s okay to let go of culture rather than hold on to it. And by letting go, you kind of realise that it’s there anyway.” — Anoushka Shankar
- No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.
Haruki Murakami - “Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny.” — Steve Maraboli
- “Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.” — Ann Landers
- “If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you’re allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.” — Shannon L. Alder
- “I demolish my bridges behind me…then there is no choice but to move forward.” — Fridtjof Nansen
- “I realise there’s something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they’re experts at letting things go.” — Jeffrey McDaniel
- “Your time is way too valuable to be wasting on people that can’t accept who you are.” — Turcois Ominek
- “You don’t have to let that one thing be the thing that defines you.” — Jojo Moyes
- “Thank God I found the GOOD in goodbye.” — Beyonce Knowles
- “The most difficult aspect of moving on is accepting that the other person already did.” — Faraaz Kazi
- “The art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.” — Rebecca Solnit
- “The best skill at cards is knowing when to discard.” — Baltasar Gracián
- “Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.” — Jack Kornfield
Final Words About Wise Let It Go Quotes
Remember that being attached is to be human, and letting go should be hard. However, being stuck and unable to move can sabotage your well-being and become a source of constant drama in your life.
I hope that these letting go quotes provide much-needed inspiration and support. Bookmark this article and use the provided resources to master the art of letting go.
And for more inspirational quotes to improve mindfulness, be sure to check out these articles:
100 acceptance quotes to be more mindful
100 trust quotes to improve mindfulness
100 patience quotes to deepen your meditation practice
100 non-judgment quotes to improve mindfulness
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I’m a freelance writer and mindfulness advocate behind this blog. I started my meditation practice in 2014, and in 2017 I launched this website to share what I learn with others. Here are the three things you can do here:
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