April 2012

2012

Last month, my message focused on how our brain protects change until the bitter end. In order to be different, or to effect change, you must surrender. This month, I would like to dig a little deeper into surrender. In order to do that, I’ll assume that you agree with my last message that you have to be willing to change.

Surrender is giving up but not in the sense our ultra-competitive world suggests. It means to stop hoping for something that is not going to happen. For example, at your job, you’ve been putting in extra energy into a work relationship in hopes that it will lead to a new opportunity. Then, a coworker gets a promotion while you sit there wondering what happened. You think, well, maybe that wasn’t the job for me; maybe next time. Then, more changes happen that don’t involve you. At some point, you must surrender that your current approach is not working. You need to lose all hope that nothing will change and then you need to get over it. Dr. Henry Cloud, author of Necessary Endings instructs “Get hopeless. It can lead to everything you want.”

Sounds easy but it can be so hard to do. I have held onto hope far too long in many things, causing setbacks. You will read about some of them in The Competitor in Me II: Conquer Fear. But what happens once you have your ah-ha moment that your way is hopeless? There are a thousand different paths to take away from where you are. In order to make your new path stick, take baby steps. This way, you’re going slow enough to see the road before you and if you do stumble, it will not be a bad fall. So, here’s to surrender…so you can get what you really want.