As business owners and entrepreneurs, we know how to make things happen. Our will is strong. Our drive and passion aligned. We can multitask like pros, balancing web design, accounting, and marketing.  We write copious amounts of copy. We post religiously on Facebook, Instagram, and twitter. We take master classes and follow marketing trends regarding our best demographics and niche. We are doers, which is certainly important, but so much “doing” can create an imbalance with “being.” So much output can create an imbalance with input. 

Life itself is a dance of action and surrender. It is an ebb and flow between energy out and energy back in. It is a balance between the arrow-like focus of our will and the openness to allow all possibilities to emerge.  Business is no different. There are times to act, drive, push, and create, and times to allow, receive, and just be. If that balance gets off, we can suffer burnout, frustration, confusion, exhaustion, overwhelm, and a lack of success and abundance.

We need both the exhale and the inhale.

Surrender itself is not passive or impotent. It is a misnomer to think surrender is a lack of caring or latent disregard of passion.  Surrender takes trust. It takes a supreme act of courage to embrace what is unseen, unproven, or unknown. It is often more challenging to surrender than to control because control seduces us into a feeling of safety. We can get so stuck in survival, in conquest, in following our desire, that we are blind to new patterns, possibilities, and insights that are meant to arrive through the open channel of receptivity we call surrender. Surrender is giving up that we are solely responsible for everything. It is the reminder the universe really does have our back.

How do you know it is time to surrender?

Your life will tell you. If you are experiencing resistance, that is often a sign surrender is needed. If you are feeling burned out, physically unwell, passionless, and exhausted it is time to surrender. If that e-program just isn’t filling up, that website design isn’t working, or your marketing strategy isn’t bringing in the numbers you want, it is time to surrender to what your life is really trying to tell you. Surrender means understanding that rules of form (i.e. marketing, business, finances, etc.) only go so far in achieving success. There is another force working diligently behind the scenes and in your favor and it doesn’t follow business rules, marketing strategies, and demographics. Surrender is opening the door to that force. 

What are we surrendering?

To surrender means we let go of something to make room for something else. It implies life is a symphony of fate and destiny, free will and divinity, ego and soul. Surrendering means acceptance, awareness, accountability, and letting go of our ego’s expectation and control of the outcome. We can surrender past pain, trauma, limiting beliefs and thought patterns. Surrendering cracks the door to unseen possibilities, intuition, and grace. Often, we are asked to release our ego’s  plan of expectation and control to make room for our soul’s purpose revealing itself.

How do we surrender?

Surrender looks different to everyone. It can be prayer, mantra, or just a few days off.  It can be meditation, massage, or talking with a friend or confidant.

What releases you from expectation and brings you to a state of flow?

What wakes you up to the present moment?

Do those things more.

Surrender also means we allow our life to teach us by seeing through our soul’s eyes and not just our ego. That blog post that disappeared or the e-program you spent months to create that has only a few people signed up are important messages. What the ego deems a failure the soul see as a favor. Surrendering is a practice of remembering that.

Being in balance means we set an inspired goal, and we take inspired action working with the ebb and flow of our life. It means we are not fixated on the outcome but committed to the process. Often, surrendering the outcome increases the chance of a goal being achieved because we allow the space for the wobble of change to happen, for grace to emerge and for the flow to push us toward our purpose.