To surrender doesn’t mean to give up. It just means to concede to the idea that purpose, joy, abundance, creativity, health and love stem from having to try so hard. It means surrendering to the idea that everything you want is “out there”– outside of yourself, at all.

When we surrender we give up, but not in the way we think giving up means. We don’t give up to or on the situation, but rather, we give up the notion that we should be able to or can manage the situation, that we can control any of it.

“Giving up” means one has resigned themselves to failure, whereas “surrender” indicates one is submitting control to something perceived as an enemy/opponent. With this in mind, I would like you to consider the value of exercising surrender instead of seeing yourself as a failure for giving up.

Surrendering is the act of giving up something. For our purposes, surrender means giving up on efforts to control your life or ensure specific outcomes in your life. But why surrender? Trying too hard to control our lives is stressful and ultimately fruitless (Cole & Pargament, 1999).