40 letting go quotes to propel you forward in life

Letting go isn’t easy. Feeling hurt from past mistakes, toxic people, broken relationships, or unexpected career changes can leave you with an emotional burden that holds you back. 

The truth is that it’s OK to feel this way. If you’re wrestling with your past, that means you’re willing to move forward. Research shows that letting go can help rewire the brain, creating new pathways that reduce negative emotions and help you move on from the sadness of losing someone you love or other events. This can ultimately promote resilience and healthier, more positive associations with those events.

When is it time to let go?

It’s time to let go and release an emotional burden when you realize that sadness, stress, worry, or anger deeply affect your mental state, especially in friendship or with someone you love. If clinging to the past has left you feeling drained, where exhaustion outweighs joy, letting go is crucial for your well-being. 

This collection of “letting go” quotes may help you shift your mindset as you work toward building emotional resilience to move on.

This collection of letting go quotes suggests there’s power in releasing the past and embracing the future. Themes of forgiving yourself, moving forward, and gaining freedom are woven throughout to remind you that strength often lies in the ability to release what no longer serves you.

1. “Holding on is believing that there’s only a past; letting go is knowing that there’s a future.” — Daphne Rose Kingma
2. “Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward. If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.” ― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
3. “The only thing a person can ever really do is keep moving forward. Take that big leap forward without hesitation, without once looking back.” — Alyson Noel
4. “The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.” ― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
5. “If you want to forget something or someone, never hate it, or never hate him/her. Everything and everyone that you hate is engraved upon your heart; if you want to let go of something, if you want to forget, you cannot hate.” ― C. JoyBell C.
6. “In the process of letting go, you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself.” — Deepak Chopra
7. “You don’t always need a plan. Sometimes you just need to breathe, trust, let go, and see what happens.” — Mandy Hale
8. “Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them, they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.” ― Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption
9. “If you can’t do anything about it, then let it go. Don’t be a prisoner to things you can’t change.” — Tony Gaskins
10. “Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.” ― Deborah Reber, Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul: 101 Stories of Life, Love and Learning
11. “Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it, and then move on.” — Bob Newhart
12. “Life moves forward. The old leaves wither, die, and fall away, and the new growth extends forward into the light.” — Bryant McGill
13. “If you didn’t love him, this never would have happened. But you did. And accepting that love and everything that followed it is part of letting it go.” ― Sarah Dessen, Dreamland
14. “I realize there’s something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they’re experts at letting things go.” ― Jeffrey McDaniel
15. “Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
16. “There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.” ― Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements
17. “Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity, and a willingness to embrace paradox rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.” ― Tony Schwartz
18. “The best skill at cards is knowing when to discard.” — Baltasar Gracián
19. “You don’t have to let that one thing be the thing that defines you.” ― Jojo Moyes, After You
20. “Thank God I found the GOOD in goodbye.” ― Beyoncé Knowles
21. “The most difficult aspect of moving on is accepting that the other person already did.” ― Faraaz Kazi
22. “Let go of your attachment to being right, and suddenly your mind is more open.” — Ralph Marston
23. “Don’t look for peace. Don’t look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there and will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender.” ― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
24. “When one door closes, another opens, but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” — Alexander Graham Bell
25. “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
26. “Change can be good, but it’s always tough to let go of the past.” ― Emily Giffin, Love the One You’re With
27. “I suppose you can’t hold on to old things just for the sake of holding on.” ― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You
28. “…you fix what you can fix, and you let the rest go. If there ain’t nothin’ to be done about it, it ain’t even a problem. It’s just aggravation.” ― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
29. “Sometimes the hardest part isn’t letting go but rather learning to start over.” — Nicole Sobon
30. “To love everyone unconditionally does not mean to give everyone your unconditional time. Sometimes, to love completely, we must never see someone again. This, too, is love. This is giving someone the freedom to exist and be happy, even if it must be without you.” ― Vironika Tugaleva
31. “Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.” — Suzanne Somers
32. “Let go of the thoughts that don’t make you strong.” — Karen Salmansohn
33. “You can’t reach for anything new if your hands are still full of yesterday’s junk.” — Louise Smith
34. “It is mental slavery to cling to things that have stopped serving its purpose in your life.” ― Chinonye J. Chidolue
35. “The key in letting go is practice. Each time we let go, we disentangle ourselves from our expectations and begin to experience things as they are.” ― Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
36. “You only struggle because you’re ready to grow but aren’t willing to let go.” ― Drew Gerald
37. “If you let people’s perception of you dictate your behavior, you will never grow as a person.” ― Mr. George Feeny (Boy Meets World)
38. “I realized that there was no point or sense in chasing after happiness that had perished.” ― Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time
39. “Perhaps we never stop loving someone. We just learn to move forward. To live without them because of them. Perhaps we let go to hold on.” ― Caroline George, Dearest Josephine
40. “Sometimes feeling good isn’t about picking up more things to do, but about letting go of things that have nothing to do with you.” ― Curtis Tyrone Jones

• Put sticky notes around the house: Write some of your favorite quotes on sticky notes and stick them to mirrors, doors, or workspaces where you’ll see them often. Seeing these messages when you feel pain reinforces positive thinking as you move through your day.
• Start journaling about the quotes: Write down some of your favorite quotes in a journal. Describe how each resonates with your current life situation and the past events you’d like to emotionally release. Reflecting on each quote’s meaning will deepen your understanding and provide a personal connection that may inspire change.
• Say quotes out loud as a part of your daily affirmations: Use letting go quotes as positive affirmations during meditation or morning routines. Repeating these quotes can help shift your mindset and help you admit when you’re stuck in automatic negative thought patterns.
• Create a vision board that includes quotes: Incorporate letting go quotes into a vision board. This can include images and words that inspire you to move toward a future where you’ve let go of resentment. This tool can help you visualize success and let go of control.
• Set a quote as your phone wallpaper: Choose a quote that resonates with you and set it as your phone wallpaper. This ensures you see the message frequently and keep the concept of letting go at the forefront of your mind.

These methods create daily reminders that keep you focused on positivity and personal growth. Whether through visual cues or self-reflective practices, these strategies help you stay aligned with your intention to let go and inspire a more mindful approach to life.

Whether you’re dealing with rejection, forgiving yourself for a misstep, or trying to give someone space, the following tactics encourage you to actively practice acceptance, reduce emotional distress, and build healthier coping mechanisms as a more permanent solution to emotional healing.

• Allow yourself to feel negative emotions: One study found that people who force themselves to accept their negative emotions, as opposed to avoiding or repressing them, experience less psychological distress and better mental health outcomes. 
• Practice radical acceptance: Radical self-acceptance is the practice of fully accepting reality as it is, without resistance or judgment, even when it’s difficult or painful. It’s an effective emotional regulation strategy that can help you let go. 
• Mindfulness and meditation: Practicing mindfulness and meditation involves being present and nonjudgmental toward your thoughts and feelings. It’s been known to significantly reduce anxiety, depression, and stress. 
• Forgiveness exercises: Engaging in emotional forgiveness practices can positively impact your well-being. These exercises include writing letters of forgiveness (without necessarily sending them), visualizing letting go of grudges, and attempting to understand others and change your perspective, which can improve overall emotional health. 
• Visualize letting go: Visualization techniques, like imagining letting go of a burden, are effective for emotional regulation. One study found that visualization techniques also reduce negative emotional responses in the long term. 

Even with these tactics, letting go can be easier when you have external support, like that of a personal coach, to help you process emotions and develop healthier coping mechanisms.

Letting go is a powerful step toward personal growth and emotional resilience. While you might not want to forget the past completely, these quotes and strategies remind you that releasing what no longer serves you creates space for new opportunities. They can help you start over in life, build a growth mindset, and move toward a brighter future. 

Knowing when and how to let go isn’t always easy — sometimes, it takes guidance and support. BetterUp Coaches are experts at helping you navigate life’s transitions, let go of someone or something holding you back, and build the future you envision. 

Move on to better things and get matched with a BetterUp Coach to start your journey toward letting go.