What would you most worry about deleting and what would be a release to have deleted?

If you woke up and found something deleted, what is the thing you’d be grateful to have gone?

What is the thing you’d make every effort to salvage or recreate?

If you could never delete anything what would you do differently?

If you could delete one thing, what would you delete?

These are the questions that came to mind after recent conversations about personal projects started and unfinished, about things that come to an end outside our control, about the times we stick at something we no longer believe in or feel connected to, and the times, far longer than we thought, when we finally finish something we have been working on. Of the conversations one statement in particular stood out: ‘the reason I didn’t delete the book I started writing was….’

That statement was a reminder that we can delete or discard things, that is a choice.

A coach once asked me what I meant when I said ‘letting go’ as the solution to what was stressing me. What does it actually look like? What if deleting, discarding, putting down are acts of letting go?

I notice that my computer keeps things in the bin for 30 days before it is ‘permanently deleted’. 

What does that say about deleting or letting go?

Sometimes it can be an accident. 

Sometimes we only know we miss something when it is gone.

Sometimes it is difficult to delete something, to put it aside, for good (don’t even get me started of trying to get out of some subscriptions). 

And even if we delete something, is it ever permanently deleted? 

A famous TED talk reframes ‘moving on’ as ‘moving forward’. While the talk refers to grief the idea seems more widely applicable. 

If we come back to deleting, often the final version of something is not the first version. The first version is an essential part of the final version even if by then we have moved forward from it. 

And what of the projects or plans or ideas that we hold on to rather than delete, that take up space on our desktops or in our minds.

What would we free ourselves to hold or to take on if we deleted them? 

Or thinking about the moving forward idea, what is possible if we recycle or compost them? Whether it be by repurposing them or simply letting them break down, knowing that while it may not be clear, in some way they are the stepping stone for the thing they have created space for, even as they decompose. 

And what of the things that if discarded, or deleted, or decomposing you would most desperately struggle to salvage? 

And finally what of the things we contribute to or care for or hold space for that are deleted and totally out of our hands? What do we need to move forward from these? 

So what could you delete, recycle or compost to move forward? What would be fuelled from that composting? 

What is the thing you feel inspired to finish when considering what it would be like to discover it deleted? 

What is the thing you want to preserve more, to, as much as possible, protect from accidental deletion? 

What is your appreciation of the thing out of your control that you will miss most if deleted?