FROM STRESS TO SURRENDER

Sometimes we can let what was once a source of joy, become a source of stress. In my life, I let that happen with dance. But often, the thing, circumstance or person we believe is responsible for our stress is actually not to blame. What's to blame is our own non-acceptance and resistance to the thing, circumstance or person. In my case, it wasn’t dance itself that caused me stress, It was my perspective on it, association to it, attempted control of it, narrow idea as to what role it was to play in my life, and my rigid and needy attachment to it. As it turned out, only once I let dance and my understanding of it go, once I surrendered it completely, could dance and I fall in love again.

STRESS CAN FEEL LIKE:

  • Speculation

  • Fear

  • Rigid ideas as to who and what we are supposed to be and do

  • Control

  • Comparison

  • Jealousy

  • Perfectionism

  • Resistance

  • Struggle

  • Seriousness

  • The need for external validation

  • Busyness

  • Running

Surrender often gets a bad wrap, being associated with giving up, giving in, weakness or being taken advantage of. Yet over the years my understanding and experience of surrender has expanded immensely.

SURRENDER CAN FEEL LIKE:

  • Slowing down periodically

  • Stopping, looking and listening

  • Curiosity

  • Acceptance

  • Intuition over logic

  • Maintaining desire and preference, yet releasing rigid attachment to a particular outcome

  • Trust

  • Openess

  • Courage

  • Boldness

  • Leaping into the unknown

  • Flow

  • Experimentation

  • Play

  • Gratitude

All leading to the ever growing evidence that,

Life doesn’t happen to us, but for us.

Surrender does not mean we release effort, it means we release our addiction to struggle.

Aloha, Wade.

8/1/19

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