Today I lost a sock. Couldn’t find that sucker anywhere. I saw it’s match, right there where they both should have been. But it’s yang…nowhere to be found. I looked under the bed. In my suitcase. On the chair. Inside my covers. In my suitcase (again). And back and forth. I checked inside pockets and shoes. And in places that there is no way it possibly could have been.

It was my only pair of workout socks and I needed to go to the gym. No other socks would do. They were all too tall. Or too patterned. My white short sock needed to be found.

And I was running out of time.

I panicked. Asked “WTF?!” I knew exactly where it should have been, but nope.

So I gave myself a pep-talk.

“Ok Sally…you’re smart. You’re creative. You can figure this out. I mean it’s not the end of the world to have the wrong socks at the gym (yeah…but they realllllly would look ridiculous. Ok yeah…but is that really a reason to not go to the gym? Yeah, good point, but they’d looked realllllly ridiculous.) OH! I know. I have a sister. I should ask her if she has any gym socks.”

So I asked my sister and she indeed…had some socks. But they weren’t the right kind. I wanted to turn them down at first, but I decided not to. Fuck it…these will work (I said). Not perfect, but they’ll get the job done. And who cares!!?! They’re just socks. Ok good. Moving on.

And so I put on her peds, my foot sliding around a bit, but I figured it would be ok. I’d do the bike instead of run. No big deal. And I get to go to the gym. YAY!!

So I walk, with my shoes all laced up, feet sliding around, bandana ready to go, workout pants on, to the bathroom to put on my contacts and there, sitting on the counter right in between the sink and my contact solution was my ONE MISSING SOCK!

How on earth it ended up there, I have no idea. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that as soon as I stopped looking, as soon as I was willing to be open to new possibilities (different sock), and soon as I was willing to do what I wanted to do with my day regardless of the covering on my feet, I found exactly what I was looking for. Not by checking every drawer and around every corner. Not by frantically over-turning my suitcase for the fifth time. Not by checking the pockets of hanging up jackets that my sock would have literally needed to fly through the air in order to get to. But by letting it go. Not stressing about it. Not even caring. Doing my thing anyway. Trusting that my feet would be just fine no matter what.

And this got me thinking about life. About how we all try so hard to find what we’re looking for. We show up at places that we think our potential partners might be at. We follow the specific rules we think are necessary to have a successful business. We try to force decisions about our lives on ourselves because “I have a goal and gosh darnit I’m going to get there no matter what!” We’re frantically looking for our socks in life. And not only do we not find them that way, but we make ourselves crazy.

So we need to stop looking. We won’t find the love of our lives because we’re strategically figuring out where they might hang out. We won’t find the answers to HOW to do what we want to do by Googling it. We are not going to figure out life by TRYING to figure out life.

Instead, we will figure out my life by living life.

We will find all that stuff by letting go of needing it.

We can put it out there. Intend to have what we want. Be clear in our intentions. And then throw it out into the Universe, saying “You handle it.” Bring it to my doorstep. And only then…in the letting go of it, might you find what you’re looking for.
Or at the very least, you’ll find your sock.

What is it that you’ve been “looking for” lately, but not finding? What are some of the methods you use to let go? If you like this post, make sure to leave a comment. Let me know what’s going on in your life that you could use some help with And share this on FB. Tweet about it.