Let go and surrender

Making decisions can be hard – especially big, life-changing ones. It can seem like happiness depends on choosing correctly and that regret will knock on each door that we close behind us. There’s an underlying fear of failure, of having no one else to blame.

On many occasions, I’ve tried to predict how events might unfold before making a decision. I’ve thought endlessly about how I could optimise a situation. But my psychic powers have always fallen short and I’ve been left in a circling state of analysis, feeling overwhelmed and incapable of making the right call.

So a couple of years ago I decided to try something different: I would stop worrying about the outcome.

“Life has more to give us than we could ever take for ourselves. Only by dropping mental resistance can you have new rich experiences.” - MICHAEL SINGER

I was inspired by a book called The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer. His belief is that we hold ourselves back in life due to preferences, desires and fears. We allow these forces to guide our decision-making and this prevents us from stepping into the unknown.

This is because our ego – the chatterbox of our mind and the root of our sense of self – is primarily concerned with self-preservation, pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance. All it wants to know is whether a decision will satisfy our desires or help us avoid our fears. But its information is limited to past experiences, which makes it a poor guide to future decision-making because our personal history bends according to the stories we tell ourselves.

Away from the ego, at a deeper level of consciousness, what we’re really trying to work out is how to be happier, more peaceful and more joyful. But these qualities aren’t derived from the outcome of a decision – they come from within.

The process of surrender shakes up the traditional approach to decision-making. As Singer describes: “First, let go of personal reactions of like and dislike that form inside your mind and heart. Second, with the resultant sense of clarity, simply look to see what is being asked of you by the situation unfolding in front of you. What would you be doing if you weren’t influenced by reactions of like and dislike?”

What he’s recommending is that we let go of our ego-driven impulses and shift into intuitive action. We can remind ourselves that we are not in control of a situation. We are not the centre of the universe. We are merely walking on a tiny planet in the vastness of space and the universe has been growing all by itself for 13.8 billion years without us. Even within us, there are trillions of cells operating autonomously. In this sense, everything happening inside and outside of our world is in a constant state of change. We do not make things happen – we are the things happening.

This is the true nature of surrender. As Singer says: “start the wilful practice of accepting what the flow of life is presenting you. If life brings events in front of you, treat them as if they came to take you beyond yourself. If your personal self complains, use each opportunity to let go and surrender to what life is presenting you.”

“Instead of asking what is right or wrong, ask what is true and beautiful. What is the truest most beautiful life I can imagine? The building of it means the destruction of the ‘good enough‘“ - GLENON DOYLE

This doesn’t mean that we have to be passive and say yes to everything. It simply means that we ask ourselves whether we are making a decision based on a craving or a fear. We turn inwards, breathe deeply, and then choose what feels right, not what we think is right, because we know that our happiness is not dependent on it. We surrender to the unfolding process of life and celebrate the magic in change.