Mental Exercise 9 : Surrender to Your Universe

"God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference."
- The Serenity Prayer

Use a tape recorder and record down a few conversations you have with friends without making any effort to be different from how you'll normally talk. At the end of the day, play it back and count the number of times certain words like "I", "me", "my", etc appears.

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Surrendering to the universe doesn't mean giving up on your responsibilities, and just taking "whatever that comes". It doesn't mean that you have lost. It is recognizing that the world doesn't revolve around you, that while you can take charge of your actions, you cannot possibly control the outcomes. It is acknowledging the outcome in an objective and detached way. Things are not meant to be going your way all the time. People are not meant to be "fixed" by you. But while there are so many ways where the universe doesn't align with your expectations, the outcome is similar. You become frustrated. You punish yourself by being uptight, anxious, irritable and depressed. You also punish the people around you by losing your temper, withdrawing from them physically and emotionally, unappreciative and generally just being unhappy.

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(Excerpt from pages 119, 120)

The process of surrender has four steps. It is important that you do them all:
1. Take all actions with a clear understanding of what you would like to have happen. Be unambiguous about what it is that you would like to accomplish as a result of them.

2. Consciously wish all outcomes be beneficial for all parties concerned. This is important. Our competitive society trains us in terms of "winning" at the expense of others. It does not have to be so. Instead, actively and sincerely wish that there are no losers.

3. Recognize that your actions are simply one possible way of achieving the outcome you want. Remember that you have a limited understanding if all the forces at play and from that limited viewpoint have selected your course of actions as the "best".

4. Detach yourself frm the outcome. Accept whatever outcome the Universe provides. Surrender to the Universe. It's better for you if you cheerfully accept whatever comes your way. If you actually welcome the results wholeheartedly, your perspective on them will be transformed.

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"The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also." -- Thoreau, Chapter 7 of Walden, "The Bean-Field"