Posts tagged with “surrender”
Why Letting Go of What We Want Enables Us to Get What We Need
“The most exquisite paradox: as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can’t have it. The minute you don’t want power, you’ll have more than you ever dreamed possible.” ~Ram Dass
The first time I felt this paradox was in the middle of savasana after a challenging yoga class. I always say that yoga is a metaphor for life, and this is exactly why.
Savasana is the final resting pose in which you lay flat on your back, close your eyes, and do nothing. A super yummy savasana …
How to Change Your Life When It Feels Like Nothing is Going Your Way
“The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.” ~Timothy Gallwey
Have you ever wanted something so desperately that you became devastated after many failed attempts to get it?
Has the same pattern kept repeating itself no matter how you tried to change it?
Have you ever longed for something so deeply that you lost interest in …
Learn To Flourish When You Are Not In Control
“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.” ~Steve Maraboli
On December 31, 2011 I experienced something I will never be able to blink away. I watched as my twelve-year-old daughter convulsed, turned blue, and stopped breathing on the floor of our living room.
Time stood still. I heard my blood whoosh through my ears. I became a helpless observer. This simply couldn’t be happening to us; she was fine only a moment ago.
I remember the exact moment when I …
The Pain Won’t Stop Until You Accept What Is
“Accept what is, let go of what was, and have faith in what will be.” ~Sonia Ricotti
Life is sometimes ridiculously hard. It sucks. It rips out your heart and your entrails, spins them around the room, and stuffs them back in unceremoniously through the hole from which they were ripped.
And it expects you to smile and carry on. People expect you to carry on. Because that is what we think people do.
I felt like this a few years ago when my marriage ended. Luckily, I had good people around me. They didn’t expect that from me.
I, …
Why Slow is the Way to Go: 6 Reasons to Take Your Time
“Stop beating yourself up. You are a work in progress, which means you get there a little at a time, not all at once.” ~Unknown
I’ve been practicing yoga, on and off, for fifteen years.
It’s helped me through and out the other side of infertility, kept me company on the long and winding road of adoption, and helped walk me out of the shadows of depression.
It’s a big part of my life, part of who I am—a faithful friend, the kind that welcomes you back with open arms even after you’ve been inattentive.
In fact, I’d say …
Learning to Let Go and Trusting That We Will Be Okay
“You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.” ~Steve Maraboli
While going through some major life changes, I am finally learning to let go. I am learning to relinquish control. And I am learning that everything will be okay in the end.
I am in the middle of my first pregnancy. I thought I could control my body. I thought I could control my outcome.
Something I regularly preach to anyone who will listen is that we can’t control the outcome of any situation. We can only control our actions.
That means …
Surrendering to Things We Can’t Control or Change
“Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.” ~Joan Borysenko
I’ve always sped through life. I’ve always been ready to take on the next moment, that new place, make a new memory.
I’m an obsessive planner. I love control. Seriously, I love the feeling of researching and executing a plan flawlessly. It makes me feel like it’s all worth something, or it gives my life meaning. Nothing satisfies me more than being able to check that next “life goal” off the multiple checklists I create.
This idea of getting to the next place and achieving as …
Release Your Anger by Choosing to Lose
“Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.” ~Alice Miller
I was quietly watching a documentary with my wife when the phone rang. An icy voice informed me that I was supposed to be at work at 6:00; it was already 7:00 PM. It was my boss.
Great, that’s all I needed—an unexpected night shift with a resented supervisor.
In my worst mood, I jumped in my pants at quantum speed and then ran toward the train station on the other side of the street.
Although the road seemed clear, a car was approaching and the driver didn’t …
How Our Addiction to Struggle Holds Us Back
“Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.” ~Chuang Tzu
Do you feel, on some level, that your life is hard work? That you need to struggle in order to improve things in your world? Do you feel that you even need to struggle to reach a desired goal, to overcome adversity before achieving something worthy?
Our addiction to struggle is an impediment to us feeling the joy of quiet and the now, the place from which subtle and natural development can occur.
This addiction to struggling—the addiction to striving, always trying to achieve—used to hold me back from experiencing …
Letting Go of the Lies That Make Us Feel Bad About Ourselves
“Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.” ~Alice Duer Miller
The man who I thought was my soul mate walked out on me fourteen years ago. He immediately remarried a lovely, beautiful woman who was everything I was not.
I am desperate to fall in love. I’m thirty-eight. I want a baby. I want a relationship. I feel alone.
A year ago, I fell unexpectedly in love with my photographer. Yes, star-struck romantics, it was just like the movies. Shy, awkward woman gets pictures taken for her brand-building website, and she is completely unraveled by his boyish …
Stop Resisting: Surrender to Your Body to Transform It and Your Life
“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.” ~Eckhart Tolle
Most people don’t realize that your relationship with your body affects your entire life. Why? Because if you are fighting with your body, you are fighting with yourself. And if you are fighting with yourself, you are resisting what you truly desire in life.
I know too well what it feels like to fight with your body. I had the same fear as most people…
If I love my body as it is today, it will get worse. I will gain more weight. If I keep my constant …
Letting Go, Trusting, and Allowing Yourself to Be Happy and Free
“Letting go gives us freedom and freedom is the only condition for happiness.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
First, let’s be clear about something…
Surrender is not about giving up, handing power over, or failing. It is not waving the white flag of defeat.
We are so used to striving and trying so hard for an outcome that anything outside of that formula seems like self-sabotage.
It isn’t. In fact, surrender is the pinnacle of evolved and enlightened behavior.
Surrender is the beautiful soft space of acceptance. It is an allowing—allowing life to unfold and to be what it is, irrespective of …
The Power of Surrendering: Let Go of Control to Be Peaceful and Free
“The reality is that tomorrow is most certainly uncertain and no matter how many expectations we form, tomorrow will come, tomorrow will go, and it will be what it will be.” ~Lori Deschene
I have never known how to surrender to just about anything. Surrendering is giving up control, and this is something I have never been good at doing.
From an early age I coped with tension and negativity by trying to will things to be different. This caused me a great deal of anxiety because trying to will anything to go your way is not only exhausting, …
The One Thing You Need to Know to Overcome Perfectionism
“You’re imperfect and you’re wired for struggle but you are worthy of love and belonging.” ~Brene Brown
There’s nothing perfect about me, and I’m okay with that… now. This wasn’t the case for most of my life, though. In fact, I’ve been a perfectionist for almost thirty years. I’m not counting the first five years of my life when I was free to be as messy and magical as I wanted.
In third grade I asked my mom to buy me a stack of lined notebooks and colored pens. I spent hours neatly labeling each notebook by class, date, and …
How to Bounce Back from a Hard Time and Come Out Stronger
“How we remember, what we remember, and why we remember, form the most personal map of our individuality.” ~Christina Baldwin
Look in the mirror. Who returns your gaze?
Is the face looking back at you a fulfilled being, or a mere shell of longing for something better?
If you would’ve asked me these questions a year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you.
Fresh out of college and on a mission to convince my ego of its importance, I began down a path that, unbeknownst to me at the time, would teach me more about myself than I’d …
Control Less, Trust More: How I Learned to Relax and Let Go
“The closest to being in control we’ll ever be is in that moment when we realize we’re not.” ~Brian Kessler
My nine-year-old son said something so profoundly right that it kept me awake. He said that in order for him to be happier I would need to let go of controlling him all the time.
Now granted he is young, and believe me, if I didn’t tell him to get dressed he’d run outside in PJs, but I was struck by his wisdom because this is also my obstacle to becoming happier.
In the past, the more I felt out …
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