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Most people wouldn’t guess this now, but I  am a recovering perfectionist-control freak. More than 25 years ago I learned that the more you try to control a situation or a person, the more out of control YOU actually become.

Surrender doesn’t come easily.  It’s when your finger tips are raw and bloody from hanging on to the edge for so damned long that you realize falling into the pit of the unknown might actually feel good.

No one surrenders willingly the first time.

Because it feels like losing.

Because it feels like you’re giving up.

Even good, ol’ Webster defines surrender as to “cease resistance to an enemy or opponent and submit to their authority” with a whole bunch of other defeatist words like “relent” and “crumble.”  No one wants to look or feel like a quitter.

I challenge you to throw that definition out the window.  Try this one on instead…surrender is not being attached to the outcome.   It’s not about giving up.  It’s about NOT controlling.

“True power arises in knowing what you want, knowing what you don’t want, expressing it clearly and lovingly without attachment to the outcome.” – Leonard Jacobson

This kind of surrender is empowering.

This kind of surrender says “I love you and I honor you.”

This kind of surrender frees you from the madness of manufacturing an outcome.  It allows others to choose.  More importantly, it allows others to FAIL and in doing so, GROW.

So here’s to surrendering to grandma’s choice to drink unbearably cheap-ass wine after three doctors told her to stop drinking all together for her health.

Namaste Chardonnay.