How and Why Surrender Leads to Victory Not Loss

Issue 36. August 18, 2023 ✨ Higher Power Coaching & Consulting ✨

photo credit: Gursimrat Ganda

Surrender doesn’t mean you lose, it means you give up the battle.

If you were in an actual battle with live enemies, that might seem like a loss. But when you’re in a battle with addiction, compulsion, chaos, and drama, it’s a victory.

Here are some things I’ve surrendered through the process of recovery

• addiction to chaos, dysfunction, and drama
• my sense of urgency 24/7
• my very strong compulsion to fix, rescue and save others, bend over backward, and be super accommodating of other people (then be absolutely fucking drained physically, emotionally, and mentally)
• my impulse to control other people and the world
• living into the wreckage of the future where I’d catastrophize about every shitty thing that could possibly happen
• the conversations in my head with people about how shitty they were going to treat me, as well as the emotional impact of those made-up conversations
• my compulsion/obsession/addiction for other people’s approval, food, drug, and alcohol
• trying to control what other people thought of me
• the need to numb me
• my dishonesty, self-centeredness, self-hatred, self-abandonment
• my decades-long pattern of chasing people (especially friendships), and dysfunctional romantic relationships
• my need to have an answer for everything and to be right
• my people-pleasing ways and rigid self-sufficiency
• the physical tension everywhere in my body for decades
• my inability to admit when I was wrong
• my desire to isolate to fend off the world
• my fight against reality and WHAT IS

I surrendered my will and my life to the care of God.

I gave up the battle with all those things. What I got was not loss or shame or walking away with my tail between my legs and having some other army, nation, or ruler dictate how my life would go in actual war.

What I got was the ability to go along with the rhythm and flow of life. To be in alignment (or at least try my best to be) with the divine right order of the universe.

Instead of deciding that *I* knew what was best, I gave up the fight to make things come out the way I wanted them to. And that feels like a victory to me.