The Ultimate Mindset: Let It Shatter
Story: Reinvented Herself
The way my cousin totally transformed this year taught me something: sometimes the most liberating thing you can do is stop pretending everything’s fine and let it shatter.
She was the quintessential “perfect child” other parents always held up as an example. She topped her class at school, landed a high-paying job after graduation, then did what everyone expected — got married and had a child. She never once caused her family a moment of worry.
But this year, she quit her job, filed for divorce, and prepared to move to another city with her child.
To the older generation, these moves are nothing short of heresy. Yet my cousin had been waiting a very long time for this day.
In her marriage, her husband played the nice guy to everyone on the outside, but at home he was habitually cold and withholding, never lifted a finger around the house, and paid no attention to their child. At work, things were just as bleak: her manager, knowing she was agreeable, always dumped the hardest assignments on her. Promotions and raises passed her by, but whenever someone needed to take the fall, she was always on the list.
Year after year she endured it, telling herself her husband would surely change, hoping her boss would one day recognize her worth. What she got instead was a demotion with a pay cut — and a husband who cheated.
This time, she stopped enduring. She summoned the courage to let it shatter and started living life on her own terms.
The truth is, we all have moments when we refuse to let it shatter. We tell ourselves: just wait a little longer, hold on a bit more, and the tide will turn. But more often than not, waiting only deepens the anxiety, piles on the pressure and the weight, and traps us in a hole we can no longer climb out of.
As Jung said, “For the ordinary person, the most important task in life is learning to accept oneself.”
Only when we stop fearing failure, stop clinging to perfection, accept ourselves as we are, and dare to let it shatter, do we get the chance to rebuild ourselves — and to be born again.
Today, I’d like to talk with you about an extraordinary mindset for reinventing yourself: letting it shatter.
The Cracked Pot We Won’t Break Is Full of Things We Can’t Let Go Of
“Letting the cracked pot shatter” may sound like something negative. But in psychology, it points to something quite different: letting go of the excessive demands and expectations you place on yourself, accepting your imperfections and failures, and releasing your grip on a single, narrow definition of success — so that you can ease your anxiety and live more loosely, more freely, more happily.
Have you ever been through something like this:
- Being hurt over and over by a partner, yet lingering because you can’t forget how sweet the beginning was;
- Being crushed by work, yet unable to resign because you keep believing that one more push will finally pay off;
- Being betrayed by a close friend, yet unable to cut the cord because of years of history.
Every pot we refuse to break is overflowing — let it shatter. It keeps pulling us back into loops of indecision, pain, regret, and grievance, draining and tormenting us over and over.
In reality, we won’t let it shatter because we’re caught in four psychological traps.
1. Loss aversion
In behavioral economics and psychology, there’s a concept called loss aversion: when making decisions, people are far more sensitive to — and far less willing to accept — losing something of a given value than they are motivated by gaining something of equal value.
Put simply: the pain of losing far outweighs the pleasure of gaining. The sting of losing 100 yuan might take 200 yuan or more of gain to make up for. Compared with gaining, people are much more afraid of losing.
2. Sunk costs
You’re probably familiar with sunk costs — expenses or investments that have already been made and can never be recovered.
In the hit reality show See You Again 4, Ge Xi was tormented by everything she had already poured into her marriage. Even though she couldn’t stand so many of her husband Liu Jishou’s flaws, she still chose to swallow her grievances and stay. The outcome was plain for everyone to see.
Sunk costs keep our eyes fixed on what we’ve already paid. But the people who refuse to change, the things already set in stone — none of them will shift because of what we once gave. Wrongheaded persistence does nothing but prolong the pain. Letting go at the right moment is the only way to stop the bleeding.
3. A weak sense of self-worth
Deep down, feeling you’re not good enough; craving other people’s approval; being hypersensitive to criticism; over-accommodating others; suppressing your own real needs — these are all signs of a weak sense of self-worth.
The renowned psychotherapist Virginia Satir, speaking about self-worth, said: “When I feel good about myself and appreciate myself, I am far more likely to meet life with a noble, honest, and courageous posture — full of vitality and love. When I don’t like myself, I put myself down. I become fearful of life, feel incompetent, and fall into a state of seeing myself as a victim and giving up on myself.”
People with a weak sense of self-worth tend to swallow their feelings and people-please in relationships, and to shy away from challenges and change at work. Even when they’re unhappy with how things are, they don’t dare to leave.
4. A misguided obsession with outcomes
Shaped by the environment we grew up in, we’re trained to chase a flawless ending and to struggle with accepting failure and setbacks.
In elementary school, the ultimate goal is getting into a good middle school. In middle school, it’s getting into a good high school. In high school, it’s getting into a good university. After that, a good job, a good partner… But once all of those are checked off — is life then complete?
Caring too much about whether everything turns out perfect doesn’t elevate us; it just binds us to a predetermined outcome and makes us forget to enjoy the scenery and the surprises along the way.
The “Let It Shatter” Mindset Can Dissolve 80% of Life’s Worries
Life is never smooth sailing. From the big forks in the road to the small questions of what to eat and what to do today, that cracked pot can show up anywhere.
Rather than painfully propping it up and sinking deeper into these psychological traps, it’s better to let it shatter and reshape it — and allow everything to happen as it will.
As Nietzsche said, “You might as well be a little bolder and more daring with your life, because you will lose it in the end anyway.”
If you’re still not sure when to use this mindset, try dropping yourself into these four scenarios:
1. When you’re in a relationship that torments you
In intimate relationships, many people obsess over everything they’ve already invested and fear starting over with someone new. So even when they know the partner is full of flaws, they can’t bring themselves to let go.
This is exactly when the “let it shatter” mindset can help you decide.
Walking away from a relationship that tortures you isn’t failure, and it isn’t giving up on yourself. It’s you, bravely saving yourself.
2. When things slip beyond your control
Missing a flight, arriving too late for the high-speed train, watching the bus pull away without you, failing to make it to the place you wanted to visit — these things happen constantly.
But if we stay wallowing in resentment that things didn’t go to plan, we won’t recover the loss, and we’ll ruin our whole day and our efficiency at everything else.
Since it’s already too late, since you’ve already missed it — then just let it shatter. Accept what happened. Calm down slowly, and wait for the next train, or change your route.
Most things are nowhere near as bad as you imagine. Eighty percent of what you worry about never actually happens.
3. When you’re settling yourself for other people’s opinions
Imagine this: you walk into a restaurant at random, open the menu, and discover the prices are absurd — way beyond your budget. Do you grit your teeth and order anyway, or simply get up and leave?
If you order, you’ll feel you’ve wasted money, and may spend the next few days steeped in regret. If you leave, you worry the waiter will look at you with contempt.
But honestly — life doesn’t have that many spectators. There’s no need to care so much about what others think. You can put your own feelings first, let it shatter, and walk out with your head held high.
4. When you’re doing work that makes you miserable
In a sluggish economy, many people don’t dare to quit or change careers. Even when both body and mind are breaking down, they force themselves to keep going.
But life’s margin for error is far larger than we think.
I have a friend who was a programmer. He coded late into the night every day, ate and slept irregularly, and kept developing small health problems. After a checkup lit up with warning signs, he finally quit and started running a street stall selling grilled sausages.
By conventional standards, he’d “fallen.” But only he knows how happy he is now that he’s escaped society’s definition of “success.”
Beyond these, there are plenty of other situations where this mindset applies: studying a major you hate just to fulfill your parents’ wishes, wrecking your health in pursuit of perfection at work, hiding your true self to fit society’s expectations.
In all of them, you can choose to let it shatter — and break through the trap you’re in.
How to Build It: Three Steps
1. Hit “pause” in time, and reopen the possibilities
If you’re in pain right now and don’t know which way to turn, try pressing the pause button.
Imagine sealing the pain into a container, and tell yourself: “I’m choosing to put this away for now. I’ll open it again when I’m ready.”
Then, for a few days, switch into low-power mode and simply live. Cook yourself a proper meal. Cut out unnecessary socializing. Go to bed early.
After a few days of emptying, return to the people, things, and situations causing you pain, and ask whether there might be a better way through.
Some pain is just a case of being too close to see clearly. Try calling a “pause” for yourself, and let the light come in through the cracks — so you can find your direction again.
2. Say out loud: “I don’t want it anymore.”
The writer Wan Tete once said: “Four things in life can change you: love, music, words, and loss. The first three give you hope; let the last one make you brave.”
We come into this world with nothing, and we leave with nothing. There is nothing you can hold in your hand forever.
Rather than chasing endless desires through pain, learn to let go, and say out loud to yourself: “I don’t want it anymore.”
You’ll find that everything suddenly opens up.
3. Fully realize that you have choices — and control
When we get used to surrendering our own interests and letting others arrange our work, our marriage, our lives, it becomes easy to lose sight of our real thoughts and needs.
The truth is: we have the right to choose, and the power to steer, our own lives.
Take my cousin from the beginning of this piece. Her parents raised her with constant criticism, turning her into the well-behaved child everyone praised. As an adult, she subconsciously believed that when life treated her unfairly, she could only accept it and endure it — that she had no right to choose anything else.
But life is constantly flowing, constantly iterating and optimizing. Other people only have a right to participate in your life and to offer suggestions.
Only when you realize “I always have a choice” and “my life is mine to decide” can every decision you make in the present truly work for you.
One more thing I want to stress: letting the cracked pot shatter does not mean ignoring consequences and practical realities.
For instance, if your work feels meaningless and joyless, but you have no other source of income and no job prospects, you probably need to carefully weigh the pros and cons before letting it shatter.
But whatever the case — in this moment, put your own health and happiness first.
In Closing
I once read a line online: “I will mess everything up, and then sit among the beautiful ruins and rest for a whole day.”
Life inevitably involves many choices and many hardships. Long-term slacking and passively giving up is, of course, no way to live.
But an occasional “letting the pot shatter” gives your mind a short rest — and gives you the energy to weather the storms ahead.
So go ahead and let it shatter.
Congratulations: you’ve just earned yourself a chance to rebuild who you are.
