This week in Radical Wellbeing we have been exploring Spiritual Wellbeing. I shared a number of ideas and practices to support participants in nurturing their own spiritual awareness and wellbeing.
Often times, I find that when clients are working on the spiritual side of their vision, practice and wellbeing, surrender becomes a hot topic. So whether you have been engaging with Radical Wellbeing or not, I want to share with you some perspectives for navigating this part of the spiritual path and some affirmations or activations for supporting you to embrace the practice of surrender.
What is surrender anyway and how does it help?
Perhaps it’s easiest to start with what surrender isn’t! Eckart Tolle puts it very succinctly:
“To some people, surrender may have negative connotations, implying defeat, giving up, failing to rise to the challenges of life, becoming lethargic, and so on. True surrender, however, is something entirely different. It does not mean to passively put up with whatever situation you find yourself in and to do nothing about it. Nor does it mean to cease making plans or initiating positive action. Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life”.
Surrender means not fighting against the reality of your current situation. It means that you accept the truth of it as it is in that moment. You are able to acknowledge and be with the reality of it: ‘It is what it is’.
This is so important because it is the starting point from which your whole experience can change. When I was feeling deeply frustrated some years ago with how long it seemed to be taking to grow my business, my coach encouraged me to stop fighting my experience and to not make it wrong to be feeling how I was feeling. It’s another way to say that what we need to do is accept it. It was an absolute game changer. My relationship to what was happening in my business completely shifted and, of course, so too did the outer experience of it change quite quickly.
Many of the teachers and mentors I’ve experienced tell us that our life experiences and all the people we meet with on our life journey have all come to teach us something. My great mentor Mary Morrissey puts it this way:
“The circumstances of our lives are the curriculum of our growth”.
In this context too, our job is to stop resisting any of it and trust that there is something bigger happening here, that there is Infinite Intelligence at work in our lives and that it is all in service of our growth.
Some affirmations or activations for working with acceptance:
- This is just what it looks like while it’s all working out.
- My God (Spirit/Source/Life) and I have got this.
As we grow in faith and trust that there is nothing going wrong here and we accept the current moment reality of our situation, we experience surrender and everything starts to shift. Again, to quote from Tolle:
“Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you”.
We are now in a different relationship with what is happening. From that place of presence and openness to what is, we are also now more connected with our heart wisdom and we are more open to the voice of intuition or the voice of God, Goddess, Spirit, Life, speaking to us. New ideas rise up, more creative responses to the situation emerge, we realize we are more powerful than we thought and everything starts to shift.
Some affirmations or activations for working with your expanded awareness:
- I want everything this experience has brought to teach me.
- I am more powerful than I have known myself to be.
So how does one actually achieve this surrender?
In my experience, surrender can be accessed through coming into presence by using the breath. As soon as you notice that you are in resistance, felt as contraction, take a conscious breath. That brings you into presence. If you’re feeling very agitated and contracted, you might need to take a few conscious breaths to really feel like you’ve calmed the nervous system sufficiently to feel present.
Then acknowledge what’s there – the thoughts you’re having and the feelings you’re emoting, acknowledge them and accept them as they are.
It’s important to just accept them as they are in this moment. Don’t add any story to the thoughts and feelings. You don’t want to get sucked into thoughts like: ‘this always happens to me’ or ‘she/he is such a ….’.
When we simply accept and acknowledge what’s there, without adding a story, those thoughts and feelings can be processed and released in just 90 seconds! Set a timer if you need to, just 90 seconds, to acceptance and surrender.
In the peace that ensues, that feeling of being connected to the core of who we really are arises. In my coaching work, I talk about how we are spiritual beings having a human experience. When we come into presence, we remember that Truth. We can bear witness to the human side of our nature and all that’s been triggered AND we can remember that we are more than that.
You and I are more than our thoughts. We are more than our feelings. Remember that. And from that awareness we know that all is ok. We can surrender our resistance, striving and need for things to be different and we can know that we are held.
Some affirmations or activations for working with connection to knowing you are more:
- All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.
- I surrender to my greatest, highest good. I release any fear that blocks my way.
- I allow, I surrender, I say yes to life.
I wish you great ease in all your endeavors and the awareness that all is well. No matter where you are at in your journey, know that you’ve got this! You are bigger than any circumstance or condition that you are currently experiencing.
If you would love to learn more about what it would be like to work together be sure and reach out. Book a complimentary strategy session here. Together we’ll spend an hour exploring your vision for your best life, your next steps to take you in that direction and how coaching together could help you get there with more ease, speed and grace.