Surrender means letting go of resistance to what is, to accept inner experiences, life, and others as they are. It means to stop fighting with reality and letting go of trying to control the uncontrollable. Doing the opposite only leads to suffering.
How does surrender relate to anxiety sufferers?
I, like many other anxiety sufferers, used to be a chronic worrier who always wanted life to go as I thought it should and that others should behave as I wanted them to. I worried about how things would pan out in the present and the future. I was constantly at odds with reality, and so I suffered. Then, when anxiety hit, I refused to accept my current state (one that I had created) and went to war with it. This never-ending war to escape how I was feeling while worrying about it only led to more suffering, and so I went to war with this also, falling into a cycle from which I couldn’t escape.
Rather than detail my whole experience, here is a brief correspondence from someone I was helping to put my point across.
Paul, I am a successful businessman with a lovely family, but I am at my wits’ end. I had no idea what anxiety was until it hit me a few months back. I have tried everything to overcome it and spent a small fortune, but nothing is working. I am reaching out to you as I am desperate, my family need me, and I can’t put them through this. I can’t stand feeling this way; please tell me how to get rid of this damn thing.
I explained to him that it wasn’t a case of getting rid of this damn thing but accepting his current state while no longer adding more stress to the mix. His not being at peace with his non-peace only added another layer of suffering to how he was feeling.
His next message, a few weeks later, was even more frantic. He was now worried he would lose his business, as he was struggling to function; he feared his wife would leave, as he was getting snappy and distant. He also worried that his children weren’t getting the dad they deserved, and had many other fears and worries. He was barely sleeping as he mentally tried to find a way out of his current predicament. Every day, he tried everything he could to feel better while stressing and worrying about how he felt and what it meant for the future.
At this point, I could see nothing but someone who was creating more suffering himself, and yet he stayed on this path through his sheer desperation to feel better. Not for one minute was he going to surrender to how he felt and end this war with himself that was creating so much extra stress and mental torment.
I explained to him once again that the more he fought to feel better, the further he would sink and that trying to get out of suffering only creates more suffering. His anxiety was not the reason for the majority of his suffering; his non-acceptance of his current state was. I also explained to him that his anxious feelings were a result of what he had been putting himself through. That if he allowed these anxious feelings to be present without seeing them as wrong, this anxious energy would release itself; it was not something to go to war with.
It took quite a while for him to see this, but he finally got the message and sent me this message a few months later.
Paul, it’s been a while since we spoke, but I just wanted to thank you for not giving up on me and helping me see that I was the creator of my suffering. I also wanted to let you know how much better I am doing due to your guidance.
Firstly, I did as you said, gave up the battle with myself, and allowed myself to feel as I did. This had an immediate effect on me and helped me see what I was doing to myself. My mind and body were utterly spent, and by trying to fight it while at the same time worrying about my current state, I was only thrashing myself further, leading to more exhaustion and anxiety. Also, by trying to get out of my predicament, I was overthinking and living in my head. I was never present towards life or those around me, and felt mentally shot. Finally, you were right about allowing this anxious energy to arise within me instead of trying to suppress it; the more I allowed its presence, the freer I became of it.
I have reassessed my work situation by seeking extra help, which will enable me to reduce my workload. Previously, I had to be in charge of everything and took on far more than I could cope with while doing a 60-hour week. I now see why I ended up an anxious mess, putting so much pressure on myself to succeed while ignoring my mental and physical health. I am not out of the woods yet, but I feel so much better than when we first spoke. I can now see that my suffering was not a curse, but rather a guiding force that led me to make changes in my life. That was the only way out of my suffering, to deal with the root cause and not wage war upon it while hoping someone or something could fix me.
The above is something I did in my early days until an increase in my suffering was telling me I was on the wrong path, it’s a path so many unfortunately take.
The above is something I did in my early days until an increase in my suffering was telling me I was on the wrong path, it’s a path so many unfortunately take.
Suffering is guiding you towards change
I look back and see how my anxiety was a blessing and not a curse; it was an alarm call for change. These changes resulted in far less worrying, less stress, less overthinking and far less suffering. Yet when anxiety hits, for many, the worrying, overthinking and stress only increase, adding another layer of suffering on top of their suffering, and this is why people find themselves in a never-ending cycle from which they struggle to escape.
So many people approach anxiety or any form of suffering with a need to get rid of it, and this is why they always fail, as you can never find peace this way. If you have a constant upset stomach due to eating rotten food, you won’t get rid of it by going to war with the pain; you do so by no longer eating bad food. Going to war with how you feel is the same as eating rotten food with an upset stomach; it only creates more pain. The true meaning of surrender is when you stop being at war with yourself.
When you allow yourself to feel however you do, be it negative emotions or thoughts, this war with yourself ends. When you allow any negative emotion to be as it is, you allow these energies to free themselves from your inner space. When you allow any mood to be as it is without labelling it as wrong or bad, you will find it doesn’t touch you the same; it doesn’t have the same energy to disturb you. There is nothing more damaging and counterproductive than trying to deny, change or resist your current experience.
How to surrender to how you are feeling?
As the war with your internal state is the cause of so much suffering, it is vital to understand what surrendering to how you feel truly means.
When you find yourself in an uncomfortable state, you will sense that your instinct is to try to escape it, as you don’t want to feel uncomfortable. However, the more you try not to feel uncomfortable, the more uncomfortable you feel, as an internal war is now underway. This internal war is not only full of resistance that creates more suffering, but it also wears you out mentally and doesn’t allow the emotion to free itself. Some people spend a lifetime using this approach without understanding why their efforts are not yielding results.
So, the answer to less suffering is to ‘Do Nothing’. Allow your mind and body to do as they wish. Just leave your thoughts, feelings and emotions to their own devices without trying to interfere in any way. Allow everything to be as it is without trying to change it, no matter how you feel, and the negative mood/thought/emotion will pass all by itself.
It’s essential not to try to ‘Do Nothing’ in the hope that you will feel better; otherwise, control has returned, which is the opposite of what this approach is about. It is the end of all the mental gymnastics and techniques you may have been using to manage your inner state; no more of that.
This may seem counterintuitive at first, as we are so accustomed to trying to control or suppress our feelings, thinking this is the answer to freedom from any form of suffering, yet the answer is the opposite. It is all the ‘Doing’ that creates the majority of your suffering, keeps you stuck in your head and doesn’t allow the emotion to free itself.
The result of not surrendering to how you feel
Living in your head
Overthinking/Obsessing
Self-Pity
Suppression of emotions
Detachment from your surroundings
Poor mental health
Depression
Worrying/Increased anxiety
Racing mind
Irritability/restlessness
Feeling mentally worn out
Lack of motivation or enjoyment in life
Narrowing of vision
Isolation
Increased anxiety
Lack of sleep
This is just a short list to show that nothing good comes out of trying to fight or think your way out of how you feel, and that surrendering is not to be used as another technique, but as an end to all the extra suffering you are putting yourself through. This concept is also true when we apply it towards life, as not only do we need to heal from the past suffering we have created, but also no longer create it going forward.
Allowing everything to be as it is
I mention in my first book, “At Last a Life”, that someone once said to me, “You will never get better until you stop trying to get better”. These words meant nothing to me at first. How can I improve if I stop trying to? At the time, I did not realise that trying to get out of suffering was the very reason my suffering was getting worse.
As I have said previously, just like the gentleman mentioned above, when I first suffered, I was always at war with how I was feeling. My continued suffering was trying to tell me to stop, but I refused to listen until I was brought to my knees and had no other option than to surrender. This is when the statement “You will never get better until you stop trying to get better” made complete sense to me.
Yet, even after I recovered from anxiety, I would have days where I felt down or crappy and would once again try a bunch of techniques in an attempt to manipulate my inner state to feel better. If my mind became noisy or unsettled, I would try to quieten it in some way. If I felt down, I would attempt to feel better, which only led to me feeling worse again.
I then concluded that, just like my anxiety, I was still trying to control and manipulate my inner experience. I then realised it wasn’t my mood or the frantic mind that was causing me to suffer; it was my non-acceptance of it. I was wasting so much mental energy trying to control the uncontrollable. I was living in my head, constantly trying to manage how I felt and was constantly resisting my current experience, so of course, I was going to suffer more. I started to see on a deep level that the more I fought to feel different, the worse I felt.
I then asked myself, “What if I allowed my moods to shift as they wished? What if I allowed any emotional state to be exactly as it is? What if I allowed my mind to be busy and frantic? What would happen then?”. Well, when I took this approach, my negative moods and mind states changed of their own accord far sooner, and due to my non-resistance, I found I suffered far less. Also, by doing this, I found that my mind began to settle over time, and my overall mood improved.
The peace I was looking for came when the war with myself ended, yet for years, I believed it would happen the other way around. This is why so many people fail on the self-help route, as they are continually looking for some technique to feel better, or, even more damaging, they become obsessed with trying to fix themselves, leading to being overly self-absorbed.
The paradoxical nature of suffering is that the more we try to get out of it, the more we suffer. When we give up the whole war with it all and go back to living our lives, we begin to feel better. When we do this, the suffering may or may not still be there, but the war with it is now over. The very war that had us sinking deeper into what we were trying to be free of.
Allowing others to be who they are
As I began to see the benefits of accepting things as they are, I applied this concept in practice to others as well. I stopped thinking people should be different from how they are and that they can behave how they wish. We all have different personalities, beliefs and perceptions due to how we were brought up or our past experiences, and see and act out life through these filters, so it made no sense to think others could act or be any different from who they are.
The best relationships/friendships are built around allowing the other person to be how they are instead of trying to change them. Trying to change someone only leads to friction, frustration and conflict. I am not saying that if someone is abusive or unkind, we should accept their behaviour. We have the choice to remove ourselves from them, while understanding that something brought them to be who they are and that they are most likely suffering in some way. Only those who suffer, hurt others or say unkind things, and although we may not like their behaviour or wish to be around them, we can still have compassion for them.
Many wars and pointless arguments stem from people trying to impose their beliefs on others, believing they are right and the other person is wrong. You only have to go on social media for proof of this. I may not agree with someone on a subject, but I accept that they may think differently than I do, and I refrain from trying to force my opinion on them, leading to more peace in my life and better friendships and interactions.
I know someone who has an adult son and recently found out that he had started smoking. When this person discovered this, she went into a total meltdown and was in constant conflict with her son about it, resulting in frequent arguments between them. The son was doing nothing illegal and had made his own choice, yet she couldn’t deal with it because her model of how he should behave didn’t align with reality, and so she suffered as a result.
It’s like a parent who has a child and gets frustrated and angry because their child didn’t make the grades to go to university or wants to follow a different career path than their parents want for them. The reality is that they don’t have the required intelligence to pass their exams and attend university, or their career path differs from what their parents want them to follow. Accepting them for who they are and what they are capable of achieving would save a great deal of suffering and conflict. As long as the person isn’t doing anything to hurt you or others, accept them for who they are and see how your relationship with them changes. If you have a fixed model around how life should unfold, how you should feel or how other people should behave, then you are in for a lifetime of stress.
At one point, I always thought life had to go the way I wanted: people should drive at a certain speed, it shouldn’t rain when I was due on holiday, my car should never break down, relationships shouldn’t end, and nothing bad should ever happen. Again, we go back to the concept of arguing with reality, and the reality is that negative things do happen, and things do go wrong. It’s not the event that makes us suffer; it’s our response to that event that does. The more accepting I became of things going wrong, the more peace I had in my life, as I was now in tune with reality and not in resistance to it. It is the resistance that causes suffering and not the event itself. This is why two people can have the same experience happen to them, and while one gets stressed about it, the other stays calm. One accepts it while the other does not; which one suffers?
The reason many people suffer is because they have a mental model of how life should unfold; the ones who don’t and are open to life unfolding as it does are the ones who don’t. You can have one person stuck behind a slow driver, who thinks the person should be driving faster, and so they react by getting angry and maybe even remonstrating with them. Then you can have another person who doesn’t think the driver should be driving at any speed other than the one they choose. With this attitude, they don’t feel any anger and have a peaceful drive. Again, the outside was not the cause of the person’s anger but their mental model of how life should be and how others should behave.
It’s like worrying about a future event or scenario that may or may not happen. Worrying about it will have no bearing on whether it will happen or not. All worrying does is make you feel like crap, and if it doesn’t happen (which is often the case), you will have made yourself feel like crap for no reason. Even if it does happen, the worrying makes no difference to the outcome, so again, you will have made yourself suffer for no reason.
An example of surrendering to reality
I have told this story before, but for those who haven’t read it, here is an example of allowing life to be as it is. I was once out cycling, and when I returned to my vehicle, I found that someone had broken into it and that my wallet and phone had been stolen. In the past, this would have sent me into a complete frenzy, but with my new attitude, I had no stress or anger over the event. I realised it had happened, and there was nothing I could do about it but sort it out. I was incredibly calm and accepting of the situation. I took the hit on the money stolen, rang the bank to cancel my cards and ordered a new phone. As you can see, accepting the situation doesn’t mean you don’t take action; it simply means there is no stress or suffering surrounding the event. Also, when you are coming from a calmer place, you tend to make far better decisions on what to do about it.
Of course, some events have a significant impact on us, such as the death of a loved one, losing our job or the end of a relationship, and each one of us will experience one or all of these situations at some point in our lives. Yet, the more you see the reality of life and that nothing is permanent, the better you can deal with the tougher challenges of life. I have also seen many cases where something good can emerge from what seemed like a disaster at the time. Someone lost their job only to find a better one later on. Someone got divorced only to meet someone far more suitable.
Another example of non-acceptance that led to suffering came from a famous Hollywood actress. When she moved into later life, she lost her youthful looks and went for numerous surgeries in an attempt to beat ageing. This became a losing battle and, unfortunately, she made a mess of her face. This made her even more depressed, and eventually she became a recluse. If only she had accepted the reality of getting older and that we can’t hold onto our looks forever, she wouldn’t have suffered. The same scenario plays out when people lose their wealth or their fame. They can’t accept the reality of their life as it now is and often turn to drink or drugs to fill the loss they now feel, instead of accepting the reality of the situation.
Surrender should become a way of life
When you see surrender for what it is, then you realise it’s not to be used as a technique to deal with life but as a way of no longer conflicting with it. This is what is meant by the popular saying “Nothing will be OK until everything is OK”. The more OK you are with everything, the less suffering you will experience and the less OK you are with the reality of life, the more you will suffer. Even if you find yourself in a tough place due to certain events, you can still accept where you are and look towards making the changes necessary. Not doing so doesn’t change anything and will only create more suffering.
This concept of surrender can take a while to truly sink in and even longer to apply as a way of life. As we are wired to resist and complain about what we don’t want or like, it’s only when our suffering reaches a threshold that we realise it’s time for change. Your suffering is asking you to align with life as it is and not your mental model of how it should be. The reason people don’t suffer when life is going well is that there is no resistance around it. Can we not adopt the same attitude when things don’t go our way?
It’s the same as when we feel in a good mood; there is no resistance around it, yet when we feel in a crappy mood, we condemn, complain and try to change it. Yet it is not our current state that causes the majority of our suffering, but our resistance to it
This concept of surrender can take a while to truly sink in and even longer to apply as a way of life, as we are wired to resist and complain about what we don’t want or like, but when our suffering hits a threshold, then we realise it’s time for change. Your suffering is asking you to align with life as it is and not your mental model of how it should be. The reason people don’t suffer when life is going well is that there is no resistance around it. Can we not have the same attitude when it doesn’t go our way?
It’s the same as when we feel in a good mood; there is no resistance around it, yet when we feel in a crappy mood, we condemn, complain and try to change it. Yet it is not our current state that is causing the majority of our suffering, but our resistance towards it. This is how so many get into a never-ending loop of suffering as they are in constant resistance to how they feel, which only creates more suffering, which creates more resistance, which leads to more suffering, and so it goes on.
Find the root of your suffering and make the changes needed
Suffering is always a guide towards change, and one I had to take on board. I now allow life to unfold how it does, I allow others to be who they are, and I allow myself to feel how I do, all three of which I had no control over in the first place. For this reason, I have far less stress and more peace in my life, and yet nothing on the outside has changed; it was just a shift in perception and attitude that did, a shift that no longer creates stress and anxiety within me. Previously, I thought it was life and others that were making me feel anxious and stressed.
That is why I was constantly trying to change the outside and never looked at changing the inside. I had no idea I was the cause of how I felt; I thought suffering was something to fight against, to get rid of, and to complain about. When this didn’t work, I realised that the only way out was to find the root cause of what was making me suffer and make changes there.
To finish, we can’t think, fight or worry our way back to our natural state. When we surrender to how we are feeling, our mind and body will naturally fall back into it. We can’t complain or fight against life and expect to feel peace. When we realign with the reality of life and become more accepting of it and others, there is no longer resistance, and we no longer suffer as we once did.
When you stop trying to control your inner and outer world and accept and allow things to be as they are, you will find far more peace in your life.
This is the true meaning of surrender.
You can read the full story of how I recovered from anxiety in my best-selling book on the subject, ‘At Last a Life’