Why I’m Finally Giving Up Control

You know how some people like to choose a word for the new year? Something empowering, something inspiring that they can grow into for the year ahead? I think a lot of people choose a word that represents something they like, or would like to embody over the coming months.

Me, I don’t necessarily like my word for this year. Don’t get me wrong — I don’t not like it, but I’m not historically great at practicing it, either.

I’m pretty sure my word this year is surrender. I want it to be grace, because that’s one of my favourite words and it’s a touchstone for what I need to practice having in life — for others, yes, but especially for myself.

I’m finally giving up control because I’ve finally come to realize it was an illusion anyway.

I can console myself knowing that surrender and grace go hand in hand, though. And this year, THIS YEAR, I’m being asked to really lean out onto the skinniest branches of letting go. The part of me that is young and small and fearful and has lots of evidence to prove stories I’d really rather not read myself at night? She doesn’t like surrender and she hasn’t traditionally had a lot of access to grace.

Surrender has always felt too much like giving up, giving in and admitting defeat. And that’s not something I relish. I’ve always been more of a where-there’s-a-will-there’s-a-way kind of person. And I have PLENTY of will.

Traditionally, that part of me has been consistently employed in using sheer grit and determination to try to force life to go the way I want it to go, attempting to control every potentially unknown variable to make life show up in an acceptable, reasonable and predictable pattern.

It hasn’t worked out so well. I mean, actually, it sort of did for a really long time, which is why I leaned so hard into controlling the everliving daylights out of life. But the only reason I could ever control life is because I was constricted by fear and anxiety, which had me play small in a life I made even smaller with my need to control it.

I don’t know if you know this, but Life is very unpredictable. It just does whatever it wants, willy nilly. You probably do know this, because you are very clever, but I clearly did not understand this for most of my life. In my defense, a lot of the life that happened to me when I was young would be stressful for a grown up who has options and choices that children do not get to exercise. So I’ll grant myself some amnesty here. This is also new — look at me, giving myself space to be human.

By the time I was three years old, I’d moved from Nova Scotia, where I was born, to British Columbia, and then back to Nova Scotia again. In case you’re unfamiliar with Canadian geography, this is about as far as you can go, from Atlantic to Pacific coast.

I went to three different schools between the beginning of kindergarten and the end of first grade, with the last school being in British Columbia, because — you guessed it — we moved back out again when I was six. Before I moved out on my own, I can recall at least 20 different apartments. We moved a lot. Eventually, you just stop unpacking some of the boxes, though we always kept them, which is why stuff is both a security blanket for me and also an albatross. That’s a blog for another day, though…

I could continue to show you All The Reasons for my Type A tendencies — there is plenty more where that came from — , but I think you’ve got the gist. Apart from my circumstances, I’m also a very driven person by nature (I’m proof that it’s nature AND nurture, not an either/or). My factory settings are mostly “Try” and “Try Harder”.

This year, I have a lot going on. Some of it is already hard and most of it will get harder. I know some of the things that will happen, give or take, and certainly not counting any surprising plot twists that may well come my way (as they do). Traditionally, when I have a lot going on, I buckle up and muscle down into the face of what comes my way. It has worked, but not without a cost: anxiety, frustration, dissatisfaction, self-annihilation, exhaustion, injury. My old way comes with a high interest rate and it takes years to pay off.

No thank you.

As my journey into healing my heart has been showing me loud and clear, though, just because I CAN fight for things doesn’t mean I necessarily HAVE to fight my way through life. Rest and recovery and actually ENJOYING my experience of life are the game I’m playing these days, rather than only enjoying the results I’ve fixated on at the expense of everything else, because I’ve historically used results as an indicator of my “good-ness” and worthiness as a human.

I live on the west coast. It’s important to understand currents and rip tides if you’re going into the ocean. Swimming against a strong current is a great way to drown. For the first time, instead of trying to swim against the current of life, I’m learning to swim with it or across it, instead of wearing myself out fighting the way life is showing up. When I’m tired, or when I notice I’ve unconsciously started to push and control life, I’m going to flip on my back and float. Instead of refusing to wear a life jacket because “I’m a strong swimmer” and shouldn’t need a PFD, I’m going to let myself rely on things that help.

Right now, it looks like taking long deep breaths, relaxing my shoulders and making my daily rituals and routines things that I can count on. The consistency for which I yearn can be found in myself, in my commitment to learning better how to love myself, in building the discipline that shows me that I can trust myself, in taking action to move my projects forward, not against life, but with the flow of it.

So, this year, I’m surrendering, in no small part because my attempting to control life has mostly been an illusion that made me feel safer. Safer because even though trying to force life to meet my demands has left me exhausted and frustrated, that has always been my comfort zone. And remember, a comfort zone isn’t necessarily comfortable, but it is always familiar, and humans will often choose a familiar suffering over an unfamiliar freedom.

But I’m not giving up and admitting defeat. I’m giving up making myself miserable in an attempt to control something that’s never been within my control anyway. I’m more interested in living the true experience of my life, which includes the downs and not just the ups. I’m more interested in feeling what needs to be felt, rather than using my fixation and frustration to bypass experiences and emotions I’d rather not have but are actually happening, whether I like it or not.

May I have the grace to practice surrender, because I think going with the flow of life might just be one of the most important lessons for me to learn. Pass me the pool noodle, please.