I have been blessed to discover the gift of surrendering, and just like all gifts, they re-emerge in my life when I am resisting and need that reminder the most.  Moments before I sat down to write this post, I watched my newly groomed dog, Nora, with her beautiful pink and black bow tied around her neck, rolling in the compost that has just been spread on my lawn.  I love that not an ounce of me was frustrated or angry.  I giggled as I watched her.  She is a dog.  That is what dogs do, particularly when they are trying to get rid of the smell left from the “Sugar Cookie” shampoo. (Really, what dog wants to smell like a sugar cookie?).  I am also giggling because I am giddy.  Why?  Because I am not resisting and trying to control the situation, even though I intended that she smell pretty and sweet when my family descends upon me in a few days from around the country.  Best of intentions, yes?  But if I got attached, it would only make her and me unhappy.  That is lose/lose.  How often do we create lose/lose for ourselves and others with our businesses and lives because of our attachment to outcome?

Have you ever noticed that when we get attached to outcome, and things don’t happen as we intended, that we get our knickers twisted in a knot?  How often have you planned and plotted, intending an outcome, and inevitably life shows up different than you planned?  Has anything ever come out exactly as we planned?  Then, why, as humans, do we get so attached to outcome?  It has been a personal mission of mine to explore this – both for my clients and for myself.  One of my greatest mentors – Henry Kimsey-House – taught me about “abundant expectancy”.  This is when we are clear with our intention, we put all our energy there and for our highest good, but don’t get attached to outcome.  When we get attached to outcome, that is when we are disappointed or even limit ourselves.  Disappointment happens because we expect things to happen “just so” and the reality is, very little happens exactly as we plan.  The purity of intent can get warped when we attach it to outcome.  As an example, sometimes The Universe/God/Our Higher Power/Our Higher Self (insert your version of that here!) knows better than we do.  Sometimes what they want for us is bigger than what we even expect of ourselves.  So, when we have expectations, we either get disappointed (which is a horrible feeling to have) OR we miss the opportunity for something GREATER because we aren’t willing to surrender to the fact that more may be possible for us.  Abundant expectancy is about holding strong intention and not being attached to outcome.

I have begun to realize that sometimes I have unintentionally created expectations of my business that limit me.  When I do this, and when I have witnessed my clients doing this, we limit our ability to expand and grow.  Sometimes our saboteurs get in our way from fully stepping into to our vision and our highest selves.  When I see resistance happening – whether with myself or a client – I get really curious because it is an indication that energy wants to move.  It could be that we are stuck because we are heading in the wrong direction and it also could be that we are really ON to something and the saboteurs within us want to keep us in status quo (because status quo is “safe”).  When we surrender to what is, shift happens.  When we try to control outcome or, at our worst, others, contraction happens.  What if the resistance was there to teach us something?  What is possible when we allow ourselves to surrender to what is?

When we are able to allow ourselves to be in a place of surrender, it increases our capacity to grow.  We are humbled and we are gracious.  When I have witnessed surrender, I have seen shifts that have caused quantum leaps and change because surrender allows energy to flow through us that was stuck, and when energy flows, we flow.  I am reminded of the term “what I resist, persists”.  When things aren’t working for us, holding on to control only continues that cycle.  Surrender allows that energy to start to flow again.

Before I began coaching entrepreneurs, I had “the call”to do so for years and I resisted it.  “I have lots of good clients in the corporate world.  I am making a good living.  I know I am having an impact.  Why switch it up now?” The enemy of great, is good.  I had a good life, a good career and I was very aware that “great” was calling me.  I felt the call to help entrepreneurs express their gift in the world in a way that was spiritually aligned and resonant with their deepest desire.  Why would I resist that?  Because it required me to reinvent myself (again!);  It required me to be vulnerable in a new and deeper way (which opened me to more critics); And it meant that I would have to blaze a new trail in uncharted territory because when I started on this journey there weren’t a whole lot of role models for me.  When I finally surrendered to the call, however, the mentors appeared; the model became evident; and the clients showed up hungry for a new paradigm.  In other words, the flow begin to happen and my business had quantum leaps.  What if your divine ideal clients were waiting for you to surrender to the call?  They are patient, but they long for you as much as you long for them.  Not someone like you, but for YOU.  They are waiting for you to heed the call so they can find you.

It takes courage to heed the call and charter the unknown.  We often think that courage is about being fearless.  However, my experience is that you have the fear and you do it anyway, because what is on the other side of the fear is more important.  In order to have quantum leaps in your business, you need to be courageous, but you needn’t be fearless.  You need to channel your fear and realize that sometimes fear is really excitement (it truly is the same sensation in the body).  What if we surrendered to the fear and included it?  What is possible from that place?  What if all that we needed lay within us and it was simply about surrendering to our innate knowing and wisdom?  What would your world be like if you surrendered to the power within you?

Sometimes at night, I sit outside and take in the night sky, which is vast in my country sky.   I ponder a world where fear no longer represented chains that bind us, but represented fuel for the truth our souls long to explore.  I revel in the possibility for a world beyond expectations, beyond right and wrong, and beyond the boundaries we impose on ourselves.  It is a world of infinite possibilities and abundant expectancy.  That is the world that we can create together, my friend.  And it begins by each of us surrendering to the call within us.  Are you ready to heed your call?