Years ago, I watched a show that discussed a man who survived being sucked into a tornado and then thrown onto the ground. This clip briefly mentions that his body was limp at the time of impact; this was because he was knocked unconscious before the tornado picked him up, meaning that he wasn’t able to tense up or brace for impact. As a result, the impact was more evenly distributed over his body, which allowed him to survive and even walk away from that rough landing with no broken bones.
This same approach also works in difficult life situations. Whenever I put up a great deal of resistance to whatever is happening, I always feel worse and tend to make the situation worse as well. I become fixated on arriving at a certain outcome and get upset if things go in a different direction. In contrast, relaxing and surrendering makes me feel at ease and often produces a better outcome. This applies regardless of the type of situation I’m in or whether or not I’ve been in that position before.
As much as I’ve talked about the value of surrendering, I still struggle with putting it into practice. I can easily surrender to certain things at almost any time. With other things, though, I have trouble surrendering even when I’m feeling great, and it becomes almost impossible when I’m feeling bad. I’ve noticed this pattern for a long time now and it may tie into what I’ve heard about how we repeat lessons until we learn them. If that’s what is happening, then I hope I can learn this lesson soon so that I can move on to other things in life.