Let Go or Be Dragged: The Cost of Carrying the Past

How often do you carry something long after the moment has passed? In this episode, Zach shares a powerful parable about two monks that reveals how easily we hold onto unhelpful thoughts. You’ll learn how to separate the event from the story, why release is a skill high performers develop, and how one simple idea ("The Invisible Backpack") can help lighten the load.

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Transcript

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Let me start by asking you a question. What are you still carrying that you should have set down already? Maybe it was a mistake that you've made recently. Maybe it was some comment somebody made that's kind of stuck with you. Maybe it was a bad performance, a tough meeting, a botched conversation, or just some moment that just didn't go the way that you had hoped. Now that event itself might have only lasted five minutes, but sometimes we carry it for something like five hours or five days or even five years. The emotional weight and toll of these interactions aren't always solely based on the events themselves. It often comes from our decision to keep holding on to them. So today on the podcast, I want to explore a simple parable that offers a powerful reminder about letting go and the hidden cost of carrying things longer than we need to. So the inspiration for today's episode comes from um several years ago, it was actually around 2020, I started this trend of every day kind of just having a mental minute. Stories, analogies, little insights and principles that I would pass along to players and staff. And it could just kind of became this like normal thing that every day I would have something. And the cool part was over time, I would start to have players or staff come to me and say, Hey, I got a mental minute for you. And they would share something uh with me. Now, a lot of times they would give it to me and then they'd be like, Hey, you go share this with everybody else. But I had one player in particular uh years ago who shared a parable about two monks with me, and I love the story so much. And I told him, I was like, I think this would actually be most impactful if it came from you. And so we had a uh pitcher's meeting, and he ended up sharing the parable in front of the whole group. So here's how it goes there's a senior monk and a junior monk, and they're walking together along this long journey when they come across a woman stuck in a river. She's struggling to cross and she's crying out for help. So without hesitation, the senior monk steps into the water, lifts her up onto his back, carries her across the river, and then he sets her down safely on the other side. Now the woman thanks him and continues on her way. Now the junior monk, this whole time, he's stunned. You see, the monks have taken a vow not to touch women. So he was speechless and he couldn't believe that his brother monk had done this. So the two continued walking for nearly about an hour in silence. And again, the junior monk this whole time just couldn't stop thinking about what had happened, and he was speechless. But finally he spoke up. He said, Brother, we made a vow never to touch a woman. Why did you carry her? And the senior monk replied, Brother, I set that woman down an hour ago. Why are you still carrying her? Now I don't know about you, but it took me a moment when I first heard this story for it to really sink in and to really, I think, appreciate maybe the the magnitude or the depth of it. The senior monk carried the woman across the river. But the junior monk carried her for miles. And I think this is something that we all see constantly, not just in sport, but in day-to-day life. The event itself isn't always the problem. It's the mental replay afterward. It's a crucial turnover or a missed shot that all of a sudden becomes a poor half for a player. It's a bad pitch that creates a snowball effect, and now all of a sudden a pitcher goes from cruising in and outing to all of a sudden it's a poor one. Or maybe it's a tough conversation, becomes something that we carry around all week with us. Now, psychologists oftentimes refer to this as rumination, that tendency to mentally replay events, analyze them repeatedly, and keep re-experiencing the emotion tied to them. And research shows that rumination it can amplify stress, it can prolong negative emotions, and it can interfere with our performance and decision making. In other words, the moment will end, but we keep carrying it. And the longer we carry it, the heavier it will get. And it reminds me a lot of a Zen proverb that goes, let go or be dragged. Uh this is again, I think, something that a lot of us unfortunately fall victim to is we become dragged by our events, but it's not the event itself. It's our thoughts, our stories, and our interpretations of those events that cause us to be dragged. So the question here becomes, what are you still carrying that needs to be released? And one of the most helpful distinctions is to make sure that you're separating that event from the story. The event is simply what happened, but what often lingers is the story we attach to it, the meaning we assign, the judgment we place on ourselves, or maybe even the interpretation that just goes on repeat in our own head. The key becomes once you're aware of these interpretations or stories of the event, the next step is finding healthy ways to release them. And one of the most powerful ways to release anything is to simply share it with someone, particularly someone you trust. So I remember um sitting in the clubhouse one day uh before a game years ago, and a reliever uh called over to me and he said he was sitting in the hot tub, and he says, Hey, can I talk to you about something? Now, most of the rest of the team was already out on the field. He wasn't going to head out to the bullpen until a few innings into the game. And um over the next few minutes, he started to open up about some of the stress that he had been carrying, things that were going on both personally and professionally, and the pressure that he was kind of feeling after each outing and how that was just kind of building and building. And he described it like this dark cloud that had just hovered over him that he just couldn't quite shake. And at one point, uh, he got really emotional, and he ended up sharing something that has kind of um st stuck with me. He said, Man, I've held this in for so long, I didn't realize just saying all of that out loud would actually be really helpful. Now the truth is, most of what I did in this whole exchange was listen. I tried to create space, I asked a few questions. But one of the things that I did share with him was an analogy that I've come to use oftentimes for others when they feel like they're carrying a lot of weight and they're carrying a lot of baggage in their own life. And I said, we all walk around with this invisible backpack that we're carrying. Every person you meet has one. And for some people, that backpack is a little bit lighter, and for others, it can be incredibly heavy, filled with things that they've been carrying for a really long time. And sometimes the most important thing we can do is start slowly taking things out of it. So we talked about imagining that everything he was carrying were these bricks inside that backpack. And when we would have conversations, when he would have moments of personal reflection or time to be even just self-compassionate towards himself and make sure that he was getting his own needs and stress kind of taken care of, it was like taking one of those bricks out. Not all of them at once, but just one at a time. And I remember the next day after a game, um, we were going through kind of the handshake line after the victory. He had pitched in it and he had thrown well. And again, I think he probably would have thrown well regardless if we had had this conversation or not. But what I remember vividly was I was in the back of the line, and as he was coming through, when he went to give me a high five, he's he looked over and he was like, hey, one brick at a time. And I thought that was just such a cool little reminder because releasing things again, it's not gonna always happen at once, but day to day we have to remind ourselves to just slowly take things out of the thing of the backpack that we're carrying. And sometimes that first step is simply just finding somebody who can help you set it down. Because in sport, leadership, life, we're gonna all be presented daily with choices like this, where something happens, a mistake, comment, a tough moment, something that doesn't go the way we want it to. And the question isn't going to be whether these things will occur. The question is gonna be whether we choose to keep carrying them. So the next time something goes wrong, simply ask yourself Did the moment end, or am I still carrying it?