Surrender

By my nature I'm a fighter.  When things get tough, my first reaction is to dig in my heels and tough it out.  But I am learning that there is strength in surrender, and that sometimes giving in is exactly what you need to move forward.  And surrendering isn't always the easy way out!

Surrender comes in many forms.  It could be as simple as acceptance of what is.  It could be allowing your sense of self to step back for a minute, surrendering to the flow.  It can be trusting in other people, and allowing them to do things that you would normally do.  It can be faith...your belief that there is something out there greater than you that will guide you if you only let it.

One of the most obvious ways I see the power of surrender is physically.  I just started a new workout challenge, and my legs are pretty tight today.  I was doing some stretching (which I love, and for me is one way in which I access a deep breathing meditative state), and my leg muscles were fighting the stretch.  My first response was to tighten everything up and muscle my way into the stretch.  But then I made the conscious effort to do the opposite.  To relax the muscles of my leg, to breath into the stretch and to continue to focus on keeping the muscles loose and relaxed.  It feels like a step backwards at first, but then with each breath I end up moving slightly further into my stretch.

I think this is very representative of what happens when we fight other aspects of our growth.  When we are breaking through a new boundary, we are working ourselves in new ways.  We might end up over-extended and need to settle into our new perspective.  It can be scary and feel uncomfortable, so we want to struggle against it.  This might mean we are resisting the new experience or we are trying to force our way deeper into it.  Either way, this creates a lot of unnecessary tension in our self. 


This is where trust comes in.  We trust in our own path, in our own progress, and we trust that we have laid in the proper foundations to let us climb to where we want to be.  When you are climbing up a ladder, you keep your eyes focused on the top, on where you want to go.  You don't look down at the base of the ladder, to make sure it's secure.  You set that up ahead of time!  You just keep your eyes on the prize and put one foot after another on the rungs of the ladder and climb.

Surrender is also a key skill when we are getting swept away.  Life has this way of putting you in the middle of the storm sometimes.  We all have those days where everything you do seems to go wrong.  Murphy days, where everything that can go wrong will...in the worst possible way!  We get frustrated and angry and start to snap at everything.  Our actions get less focused and refined and we may start slamming doors or using way more force than is necessary, because we just want things to turn our right!

It's much like getting caught in a current.  The water is dragging you somewhere you don't want to go, and the natural reaction is to turn around and start swimming in the opposite direction.  But fighting the current will only tire you out, and depending on how fast the water is moving, you might not be able to make any progress at all!  What you need to do is try to guide yourself instead, swim across the current, or look to see where the current is taking you and if there is a safe place you can shelter from it.

What this equates to is taking a step out of the situation.  When I start to feel this kind of situation brewing, I will close my eyes (to cut out as much stimuli as I can) and take a deep breath (or ten!) and try to bring myself into a state of calm and then project that calm outward.  Even if the world around me is still crazy, just trying to remain calm helps me to remain afloat and to not continue to feed into that destructive energy.

Trusting other people to do things for you can be very challenging for some of us, especially if you are very particular about how you like things done.  But sometimes we all need a little help, and you have to surrender and place yourself in someone else's hands.  This may mean letting go of having things exactly as you might like them.  My husband and I have very different ways of looking at some things.  I like to plan things out ahead of time, while he tends to play things more by ear.  We both compromise a little and meet in the middle.

This can be especially difficult when we are unable to do something for ourselves, for whatever reason.  Then, we have no choice but to trust someone else, and that can make us fight the help, even if the only way we can struggle against it is verbally.  Society has sort of trained us to pretend everything is okay, when it isn't, to be strong and to push through when we are ill, or injured or exhausted.  Asking for help is seen as a sign of weakness, and it really isn't!  There is nothing wrong with turning to other people and getting assistance. 

Recognizing how hard this is can be part of the process of allowing other people in.  Acknowledge that letting people help you is hard for you, even if you only admit it to yourself.  Perhaps consider journaling about why you feel getting help diminishes you as a person.  Or why you don't want to let other people do things for you (even just nice things like giving you a gift or a compliment).  It can also be helpful (and really nice!) to ask other people why they want to do things for you....realizing that they are acting out of love or caring and not pity may help you be more open to accepting.

And finally, I think that we can sometimes struggle with great anxiety about our choices.  Whether they are big or little, life changing or superficial, we may have times where we find ourselves unsure of which way to go.  In these times, we can tap into that divine spark within, to the part of us that is something more than our thoughts and our sense of self.  You may think of this as God, a particular deity, your higher self, instincts, guardian angel...however you comprehend it, you can ask for guidance.  You are stepping out of your self in a way, and allowing this other energy to influence your choice.  For me, it's like creating a space within myself.  I don't do anything besides create this space, almost like stepping out of my own mind for a minute.  But when I do I am always filled with a sense of peace.  I may not know for certain what choice is right, but I am reassured that whatever choice I make, I will be okay.

Surrender is hard, it isn't just rolling over and letting other people trample all over you.  It is about trust and faith and acceptance.  It is about knowing when to fight and when to go with the flow.  Practicing surrender will create peace in your life and allow you to face difficult situations with a clear mind and confidence!