When things don’t go our way- whether at home, work or with our health, it is natural to feel surprised and disappointed.  We begin to focus on everything we could have done differently to change the outcome or have this desperate need for our reality to be different than what it is.

This past week, I got the sad news of my grandfather who lives in India passing away.  Being an only child I wanted to be there by my dad’s side, but this was not possible because on the same week, I had surgery done. Although I was healing well, traveling across the world was not something I could do.

I felt an intense desire for things to be different, for it to go my way.

We all experience these moments in life where we crave for our reality to be different.  These moments might come in the extreme form of a loved one’s death, a divorce, an illness or in the milder form of not getting that promotion, having enough money or being able to lose the weight.

We become consumed by the desire to change our reality- feeling sad or depressed wishing if only it would be different.

Surrender to what is.

This was my mantra this past week- practicing non-resistance to what was happening in each moment.  This mantra is, by far, the greatest piece of wisdom I have gained from the past few years of meditation and is now an important part of my self-love practices.

Suffering in our perception of reality

As humans, we all have to encounter painful or unwanted events that are beyond our control.  There is a basic level of suffering all of us will experience that arises from these events.

However, most of us have created a habit of unconsciously giving more energy to this basic level of suffering.  This takes the basic level of suffering to a higher level where one feels paralyzed, hopeless or falls back to destructive habits.  This self-inflicted suffering is what makes the experience of our daily human lives more unbearable than it really needs to be.

For ex: we are running late to work.  We have two ways to deal with this.

1.  We let our minds wander and think: “I should have woke up early”, “it’s my kid’s fault”, “my boss is going to think less of me”, etc., and start yelling at our kids, spouse and everyone in traffic in front of us.

2. We pause to see that we are feeling stressed, and choose to take a few deep breaths.  We realize that we can make this morning we have been gifted with a terrible experience for ourselves and everyone around us just because of that one undesired outcome of being late.  We recognize that we can no longer control being late for work but we still have the power to give ourselves and those around us a wonderful morning experience before everyone heads out to begin their day.

The first choice leaves us feeling shameful, resentful and helpless. The second choice makes us feel empowered, in control and grateful.  Which one would you rather experience?  I prefer the latter.

These two choices exist in every scenario of our lives- whether we are about to get into a fight with our loved ones, failed an exam or did not lose any weight after one week of dieting.  It is a choice to respond unconsciously on autopilot or consciously with awareness.

When we ‘resist what is’, we wallow in thoughts of self-pity, self-criticism, resentment, anger, judgment or hopelessness.  This is a debilitating choice where we unconsciously play the victim role which makes our experience worse than it needs to be.

‘Surrendering to what is’ empowers us to make choices that can enhance the quality of our experiences.

Surrendering to what is as a Self-Love Habit

My practice last week was to surrender to my reality- my grandfather’s death and physical limitation to travel.

In order to choose impactful ways to show love and support that my dad needed at this time, I made a conscious choice of surrendering to what is.  In that practice, I felt compassion towards myself, freed myself of self-judgment and from the craving of wanting my reality to be different.  This freedom led me to focus on every possible way I could be of use to my dad.

No matter what your reality is in this moment, practice surrendering and allow self-compassion to arise.

Much love,

Simi

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