Winding river flowing through green hills, rocky cliffs, and autumn trees at sunrise

Trust as a Practice: Five Things I’m Learning to Let the River Carry

Posted by: RealEfforts Posted on: June 9, 2026

I’ve been sitting with the idea that life is a river — that our job isn’t to dam it or redirect it but to learn to move with it. In theory, this is liberating. In practice, it turns out I’ve been gripping the banks rather tightly for most of my adult life.

Letting go isn’t a switch you flip. It’s more like a muscle you train, and some days it’s sore. Here are five things I’m actively practicing releasing right now.

The need to know how it turns out. I’m someone who likes to see the end of the story before I commit to the middle. That preference for certainty has cost me more than I’ve admitted — opportunities I didn’t pursue because I couldn’t guarantee the outcome, relationships I kept at arm’s length for the same reason. I’m practicing taking the next right step without requiring a map of what comes after.

Old stories about what I’m capable of. We all carry narratives from our past that were true once and aren’t anymore. The version of me who failed at something fifteen years ago is not the person making decisions today. I’m trying to notice when I’m consulting that old version as if it were a reliable narrator.

The approval of people who aren’t in my corner. This one is slow work. There are people whose opinions I’ve given far more weight than they deserved, simply because their disapproval felt like a verdict. It isn’t. Other people’s assessments of us are about them at least as much as they’re about us.

The outcomes I can’t control. I can do the work. I can show up with integrity. I can prepare, communicate, and follow through. What I cannot do is control what happens next. Releasing that has made the work itself feel lighter.

The idea that rest is something I have to earn. This might be the deepest one. The belief that slowing down is a reward for having done enough — rather than a necessary condition for doing anything well — is one I’m still unlearning.

The river is moving. I’m getting better at moving with it.

RealEfforts

My name is Martin Fenton III. I created Real Efforts because I've reached a point in life where I find myself spending less time asking, "What's next?" and more time asking, "What did it all mean?" Like most people, my life has been filled with chapters I never could have predicted. I've lived overseas, built businesses, worked for large companies, raised children, fallen in love, made mistakes, started over more than once, lost people I loved, and discovered that many of the things I was certain about at thirty look very different at sixty. For many years I focused on building a career and supporting a family. Today, I find myself increasingly interested in understanding the lessons hidden inside those experiences. Real Efforts is my attempt to do that. This isn't a business website. It's not a memoir. It's not a collection of answers. It's a collection of observations, stories, questions, lessons, and reflections gathered over a lifetime of trying to figure things out. Some of these thoughts are about family. Some are about work. Some are about friendship, purpose, aging, reinvention, and the strange ways life unfolds despite our plans. Many of them are simply attempts to make sense of experiences that felt confusing while I was living them. The older I get, the more I realize that life is less about arriving somewhere and more about paying attention while you're traveling. I've learned that relationships matter more than accomplishments. That starting over is never as easy as people pretend. That success and happiness are not always the same thing. And that some of the most important lessons don't become visible until years after the experience itself. I originally created this site for my children. I wanted them to have more than photographs and dates. I wanted them to understand how I thought, what I struggled with, what I learned, and what I hoped for them. Over time, I realized these thoughts might be useful to others as well. So this site became something larger. A place to collect life chapters. A place to preserve family stories. A place to explore purpose. A place to ask questions that don't always have answers. Most of all, it's a place to leave behind a little context. Because someday, when we're all gone, the stories disappear unless someone takes the time to tell them. This is my effort to tell them.

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