The Ultimate Surrender
This is it, my most intentional thought, my most purposeful post. This is the culmination of the knowledge and understanding I have gained over the last few years.
It is to surrender.
Surrender to all that life has to offer – the love, the laughter and the beauty. Surrender to the sorrow, the loss and the pain. I didn’t realize it when I titled my blog “accept-ability” or when I wrote one of my first posts Swimming Upstream, but I’ve been trying to communicate and succumb to my own surrender from the very beginning.
I’m not talking about the white flag or about giving up. I’m talking about surrendering to our circumstances. I’m talking about getting on the big river of life and letting go of the bank. To surrender is not to give up – not at all. Instead, it is to stand up and to lie down, at the very same time. It is both peace and excitement. It is forgiveness and accountability. Surrendering is the acceptance of that which we cannot control.
Surrendering is the ultimate state of mind.
But there’s a catch and it’s not easy: in order to live a surrendered life, we must first adopt these important traits:
- vulnerability
- courage
- authenticity
- loss of ego
- faith
- humility
Vulnerability
Surrendering is the ultimate relinquishment of control, which is necessary in order to face all of your emotions. Vulnerability is the willingness to uncover the unknown by revealing your true self. It is accepting whatever comes your way as you open yourself to the joy and pain that may result.
Vulnerability is the ability to share your deepest, sometimes darkest thoughts in order to let them go and surrender to the human experience. It is to reveal your true self knowing that you may be rejected and criticized – or that you may be loved and embraced.
If vulnerability is the ability to communicate your feelings, surrendering is vulnerability plus having the willingness to accept the consequence of your vulnerability – the consequence that others may be uncomfortable with it.
Not only does vulnerability expose your true self, it can trigger those who want to sweep everything under the rug. Vulnerability doesn’t come naturally to everyone and it can make some people worry that you’re walking into the lion’s den by sharing your feelings. Revealing your true self can reveal the same in others and that can create discomfort in them.
Surrendering is “next-level” vulnerability.
Courage
Courage is important to make the decisions that allow us to surrender. It takes courage to expose the ugly and even the beautiful parts of ourselves. It takes courage to leave a relationship or a job. It takes courage to be honest with ourselves and accountable for our actions.
A person must be brave enough to reveal their deepest fears and failures – and even more brave to share those thoughts and stories with others. It’s not easy to face loss and sorrow, knowing that it can take you to your knees. It’s not easy to feel all the feelings and experience all of life. Even joy is hard for some, because it can trigger guilt and fear.
Courage is necessary to speak your truth and speaking your truth is necessary to live a surrendered life. Knowing that the consequence of speaking up may be rejection, is a hard pill to swallow for a sensitive person, especially. We must remain true to ourselves even when others are uncomfortable with our truth. We must learn to make our own peace a priority.
When you live a surrendered life, courage becomes necessary to stand up in the face of criticism. For those of us who were born people-pleasers, knowing that others may be unhappy with us is the ultimate lesson in courage. Surrendering is being unaffected by the discomfort and insults of others by remembering this: insulting people are unhappy people.
Authenticity
Authenticity is absolutely necessary to surrender. Surrendering is the ultimate peeling back of the layers to expose our beautiful, but broken core. When we surrender, we accept that our authentic self is not perfect.
Admitting our shortcomings as well as appreciating our strengths is how we reveal our authenticity in a world that sets unrealistic expectations for us. Being authentic is to stop playing social status games and to stop prioritizing superficial characteristics.
Authenticity is not saying “this is just how I am.” It is not being unapologetic for our flaws. To be authentic is to say “we are similarly flawed.” Being authentic is to create connection through the revelation of our imperfections, not separation through an unwillingness to change.
To learn authenticity is to truly accept ourselves for who we are, knowing that we can and will grow with time and effort. More than that, it is revealing to others our imperfections so that we can embrace them as shared characteristics and a shared human experience.
Loss of Ego
Loss of ego, as Eckhart Tolle teaches us, is the concept of surrendering in a nutshell. Surrendering is acknowledgement of ego and the ability to let it pass by not allowing it to consume our thought process. It is giving up the power that ego has over us. Surrendering requires a present state of mind in order to make the deliberate decision to objectively face all of life’s challenges with grace.
Surrendering without ego is difficult, especially for those of us who are naturally argumentative. Loss of ego is facing difficult situations without having to be right. It is to sit in discomfort without pouting or becoming defensive. Loss of ego is necessary in order to give up control; and giving up control is necessary in order to surrender.
Surrendering is contrary to the old idea that we learned as kids, which made us believe we can control our own destiny. Egotistical teachings make it difficult to accept when a relationship has run its course or that its toxicity will never change. Sometimes we think we can control others – that we can make people be reasonable and kind by just explaining what they need to do. Loss of ego is necessary in order to surrender to the fact that sometimes people cannot change. And that it’s not our responsibility or our place to change them.
Faith
There is an element of faith in surrendering. Surrendering requires that we have faith in the Universe. It is knowing that something greater than us has our backs. To surrender is to have faith that everything is as it should be. Faith is the acceptance of loss, failure and rejection, knowing that surrendering and sharing ourselves with the world will not result in the loss of love.
Humility
Humility is the most important component of surrendering, because it is the ultimate ability to self-reflect. You cannot surrender to life until you have learned how to see yourself for who you really are – and it is one of the hardest lessons to learn.
Humility requires accountability, integrity and the ability to be honest with ourselves. It is a personal agreement to keep our own importance in check. It may not be evident on the outside, but it doesn’t matter, because humility is solely an internal effort. It gets no recognition whatsoever, and that’s the point. Humility is the ability for self-growth without ever getting a pat on the back for it.
Unfortunately for most people, humility is only learned after we’ve been kicked in the face a few times. It is the gift that trauma gives us and it usually takes someone else or something else to show us that our feelings and experiences are not the most important. Many people miss the opportunity to learn humility by denying accountability and forgiveness. We cannot surrender to the greater life experience until we understand that our story and our opinions are only part of the bigger picture of life. And it is knowing that our actions affect others regardless of intention.
If I have learned nothing from my divorce, it is humility.
Will You Surrender With Me?
By surrendering, we lie down to allow life to go on after loss. We lie down to allow others to disagree with us and to reject us. By surrendering, we wave the white flag on shame and internal conflict.
And by surrendering we stand up to say, “this is me.” We don’t budge on our beliefs because someone else disagrees. Instead, we surrender to the fact that some people will disagree with us and judge us regardless of our intention and consideration. To surrender is having the ability to remain true to ourselves no matter how others respond. Surrendering is not allowing ourselves to be gaslighted and manipulated. It is setting boundaries with those who attempt to threaten our happiness and to harm our own peaceful surrender. Surrendering is not taking the easy way out. Instead, it is in part, living by the Serenity Prayer.
Surrendering is the ultimate human experience. It is knowing that we are all on the same life raft, on the same big river. It is the emotional surrender to a hard-lived, beautiful life. Join me on my raft as we feel all the feels, learn all the lessons, and love all the life we’ve been given.
But what do I know? There’s a lot more suffering in this world than I have experienced.