What Alysa Liu Taught Me About Letting Go

Letting Go, Non-Attachment, and the Real Secret to Feeling Free

I haven’t watched the Olympics in years. But this year, I was captivated. Snowboarding. Skiing. Bobsled. And especially ice skating.

First, by the “Quad God” (uuggghh… that outcome was crushing).

And then by Alysa Liu.

She skated with such ease it was mind-blowing. While other skaters looked intense and determined — almost constipated — she was smiling.

In one interview she said, “This is just ice skating. It’s not life or death.”
If she didn’t medal, it would be no big deal.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about that.

She just wasn’t grasping for a spot on the podium.

Yet… there she was.

And those are the keys to feeling free in your life: non-attachment, non-grasping, and surrender.

Or in yogi terms: aparigraha, vairagya, ishvara pranidhana.

Add some levity to that and you just might land your triple axel.

What Non-Attachment Really Looks Like

I don’t know what inner work Ms. Liu has done. I do know she took a break to live the life of a kid. She got her driver’s license. Went to concerts. Remembered there was more to her than skating.

Then she came back with perspective.

And that part struck me.

Because I know the version of me who makes things life or death.

I get attached to results.
To making things happen.
To pushing… mostly out of fear, not fun.

Watching her felt significant because I want that ease. That joy. That openness to life.

That quiet knowing of,
“I’m just going to see what my life brings me… and be okay with it.”

But here’s what I’ve realized.

She didn’t skate well because she stopped caring.

She trained. She practiced. She showed up.

She just wasn’t grasping.

And that’s different.

Letting go doesn’t mean you don’t do the work.

Why Letting Go Is So Hard

For most of us, embodying non-attachment is hard.

Because we have histories.

Hard things have happened.

We absorbed messages that say:

You need to work really hard to get what you want.
You need to prove you are worthy.
Even if you achieve it, you still might feel like a loser.
Life is serious. Stay vigilant. Stay safe.

That doesn’t disappear because someone says,
“Just let go and have fun.”

So yes… work needs to be done.

Work to clean up the bullshit messages you’ve absorbed.

Work to take the charge out of the things that happened to you that keep you from living with levity, from letting go, from having fun.

We can bear the hard things that shaped us without letting them define us.

We can learn to be with life as it is — without demanding it deliver a specific outcome in order for us to feel okay.

That’s the real spiritual work.

Letting Go and Self-Worth

For me, loosening my grip hasn’t meant pretending outcomes don’t matter.

It has meant doing my work.

Looking at the parts of me that believe my worth rides on the result.

The parts that feel safer when I control.

The parts that learned achievement — and yes, money — equal value.

And seeing myself as valuable anyway.

Even with flaws.
Even when things don’t work out.
Even without the medal.

Because the medal doesn’t make you gold.

It just exposes what was already there.

Your worth was gold before the medal ever showed up.