Surrender to Win?
If you've ever been involved with a 12 step recovery program you've probably heard the phrase "Surrender to Win''. While this may seem like a contradiction in terms, it is a proven workable strategy for success in recovery. "How?" You may ask. The idea behind it is that by surrendering to a Higher Power (a power greater than ourselves) we are gaining that powers strength to overcome our fight and beat our addiction (one day at a time).
This idea holds true for those who are not in a 12 step program as well. It can be applied to overcoming life's problems and situations. There are those things we can control and those things that we cannot control. Once this distinction is drawn we can take the things we can't control (most things) and surrender our control (which we have realized we don't really have any way) to the universe and become willing to accept the outcome. Since the outcome is going to be the outcome anyway (without our control), what we are really accepting is reality.
Accepting reality is the only sane way to go through life. Isn't it? All this really means is that we are surrendering the self-will of the ego to the reality of the universe. What could be healthier?
Although this may seem like a self-evident, logical way of living...it is not easy to practice. The big problem here is that we are human.
Since we are human, we have developed ego, a sense of separateness, a sense of self above all else. This is where problems arise. The universe, a higher power, God, or whatever you would like to call that which is our vast reality is so much bigger than any one of us that we really can control very little. This scares us.
The ego lives off of fear, so it makes sense that we want to rebel against the reality of the truth about our lack of control. But there is a way out!
Surrender to win.
Surrender our egoistic fear of our lack of control and have faith that the universe (or God, etc.) will take care of us. We fear that it won't. Every day we hear stories of tragedy and disaster and fear that something like that will happen to us...and it might, but we have to have faith that we will make our way through it some how. We can believe that our Higher Power will carry us through the tragedy if it does happen to us. Otherwise we live in fear our entire life of something that may never actually be. (Not living in reality.)
The next time you experience the fear and anxiety of something that may happen and is beyond your control, take a breath, and surrender to win.
