I want to share with you some thought practices I have been working on for the past week. I have felt such a huge positive response in myself that I’ve been dying to pass it on. This is by no means a new discovery but I feel that everything we learn and take in has to be practiced so it becomes our own truth, as opposed to someone else’s.
The practice is – SURRENDER
I believe the Universe looks after us, we have a path on which we are meant to follow, sometimes we go on and off it but there is a life purpose for everyone.
This is of course is dependent on if we allow this to happen, if we accept a sense of flow into our lives and be open to being guided. To allow the Universe to take the steering wheel we have to trust this to be true which can be the challenge for a lot of us. I believe fully in all of the above and totally trust the Universe has my back but I still struggle often to completely relinquish control.
Control
This is the challenge word, and our challenge – to ‘let go’, we hear it and see it everywhere. We tell ourselves or people tell us a number of things such as – ‘Let go of things’, ‘Let go of control’, ‘Stop obsessing’, ‘Don’t think about that’ and so on. It sounds so easy, hey sure let’s just let go, woo, great! but doesn’t the idea of ‘letting go of control’ associate with the opposite which would be being ‘out of control’ which sounds so negative to me, the idea of being out of control, like we have no power over our lives at all, or that we are making ‘crazy’ choices, woah ‘she’s so out of control!’
It’s not like that.
When I think of letting go to the Universe it is like making a pact with my higher self that I will be open to being guided and take opportunities that are given to me, say yes more often, be forgiving and forgive myself, it’s working WITH the Universe to agree to follow my path and enjoy the life I deserve.
So a a few weeks ago a great girlfriend of mine was in town and we were catching up on all things life, work, love. She felt she had a few things to overcome to do with past relationships and her attitude towards love. I decided that we would take the Sunday to work on making shifts in this area. I ended up conducting us in a six hour session focusing on letting go, un attaching energy from other people, and ultimately manifesting what we would like from now on. For each experience we wrote notes, talked and also picked affirmation/guidance cards from some of my decks.
On the final exercise, the one we did for me, the first card I picked up about the situation I wanted to move on from just said quite simply ‘Surrender’
Immediately I knew this was the word for me, this was the word to replace control. I’d of course heard it before, read about the surrendering a million times but it hadn’t resonated with me so strongly until this moment and suddenly seemed so simple.
So a week later I started to put this word into daily practice in a number of ways and found an instant shift in many of my thought processes.
Why controlling thoughts stop us from moving forward -
If we are in our own ‘flow’ and are listening to our intuition, life moves freely, we have less obstacles and our minds are clearer.
When we spend our time trying to control everything in our life it creates a blockage, we become static in our journey, we restrict our own flow!
Just writing that down rings so true to me, I can think of so many times where I have put so much energy into trying to control aspects of my life and the outcomes have never been what I ‘wanted’ or the experience even been at all positive.
Some examples of how we use controlling thoughts negatively in our lives -
- In relationships - How many times have you been having a ‘conversation’ in your head (hello ego mind!) with your friend / partner / current crush / person you haven’t even met yet and you are constructing the situation, what you might say, what they might say back, what might be the outcome and so forth. This is a great example of trying to control relationships and can take up SO much time and energy. When and if this conversation actually happens it’s never as we ‘planned’ anyway, the time we have put into these thoughts was completely pointless.
- Within the ‘what if’ situations - I have written about the ‘what if’ concept before in my post about procrastination. It can also become a controlling thought pattern, we think about a situation, perhaps at work and we start to get anxieties about it and a million ‘what if’s’ suddenly appear and one by one we begin to try and form a type of control for the situation.
- With our health - It’s a huge subject but the development of eating disorders (a post I am working on) can be largely down to control, because food is something we can control, it can’t talk back to us, we can always decide what we eat or don’t eat. Surrendering to my health and eating habits has been the most positive thing I have done in years and completely rid me of an eating disorder. I decided that instead of trying to control my weight I was going to instead CHOOSE my health. I used food as a thing to control when I felt like I was ‘out of control’ in other areas of my life and it only had negative consequences.
- In Love - Spending time obsessing over people who aren’t currently in our lives, obsessing over past lovers, putting restrictions on our idea of love, all of these restrict our ability and flow to let love into our lives. We become blinded by our controlling thoughts and then are unable to see wonderful people and opportunities around us.
There are so many more examples, we are open to trying to inflict negative control patterns in ALL aspects of our lives. I’m sure you can think of ways in which you do it? We even use controlling thoughts to be negative about ourselves which restricts our confidence in achieving our dreams.
So, why Surrender? -
When I say ‘I surrender’ my intent is that I am surrendering my anxieties, ego thoughts, obsessions, problems to the Universe, I am surrendering TO the thought and telling it that I am just not interested. I am trusting that there is a flow to my life and that by surrendering my control over things I am making way for positive change and opportunities. I am stepping back onto my path and not trying to force things into my life.
Surrendering frees me from the negative patterns that my ego mind creates.
(NOTE on manifesting and visualisation – I have to mention visualising and manifesting here (a practice I fully believe in) The art of manifesting is that we decide what we want and we acknowledge it and then we release it (let it go!) into the Universe and into our energy, ALLOWING it to be.
Manifesting isn’t us deciding what we want, acknowledging it and then OBSESSING over it and trying to coerce it into being.)
The practice of ‘Surrendering’ -
I am currently using the word in two ways to help me and these are the ideas that I would love you to try.
- As a simple mantra – I feel that a quick way to stop a negative or obsessive control pattern is to just simple say (aloud or in your thoughts) ‘I surrender’. By saying the words it is creating a simple shift in your thought pattern and allowing you to let go of the obsession and allow the situation to heal in it’s natural flow. I have been using this for the past week and it has completely changed my way of thinking.
- As part of an affirmation about a situation - Staring the affirmation with ‘I surrender’ apply it to some of your challenges. Create an affirmation that rings true to you, and is purely positive. State the affirmation as if it is already true.
Some affirmations using Surrender -
“I surrender this situation to the Universe and trust that I will be guided”
“I surrender my obsessive thoughts about X”
“I surrender my anxieties about relationships and allow love to come into my life”
“I surrender my fears and allow success into my endeavors”
“I surrender my day to the Universe”
“I surrender all negative thoughts about myself”
“I surrender to the flow of the Universe”
“I surrender to my fears and allow love to guide me”
“I surrender my resistance to move forwards”
“I surrender with confidence to my life’s path”
“To allow, I surrender”
“I surrender to sleep and am totally relaxed”
“I surrender my need for approval and I accept myself”
“I surrender to my creative flow”
Please let me know any experiences you have with surrendering, your experience with these exercises and of course any affirmations that you can pass on.
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