🌬️Let's leave it to the wind
A little post on surrender
This podcast from the wonderful
and Tony Smith inspired me to write a short post about surrender. Feel free to watch this 14-minute video before reading my words, or you can watch it after reading, it’s up to you.Michael Singer wrote a whole book on it, but what is it?
To me, surrender is the act of refraining from trying to control life and making it go your way.
This is very different from being passive and indecisive which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. Surrender is courageous, bold, vulnerable and trusting. What I’m going to share today is one particular life event that I surrendered to. It’s a big one…
Buying our first home
‘They’ say buying a house, or moving house, is one of those big life events that are at the top of the ‘most stressful’ list. My wife and I have been decisive in renting houses in the past, both times we’ve rented we have viewed 2 houses before making our minds up. When we work on things together, we make a great team. A side note: We organised our wedding together and it was a breeze despite the popular opinion that it's stressful.
Overwhelmingly gratefully, we got to the stage where we could buy our first home. In my previous life, anxiety-fuelled irresponsibility drove me into debt by buying things that I thought would make me feel better and signing up for numerous money-making business courses (which were crap in hindsight). After watching part of my friendship group buy homes many years ago, and buying their 2nd and 3rd investment homes made me feel deeply inadequate. Saving a deposit and getting a mortgage was a moment to be celebrated! A huge personal achievement!
We proceeded to view homes, we looked at a couple of houses in the local neighbourhood but they were a little run down for our liking. If we had the skills, it wouldn’t been too much work, but with a baby daughter, we wanted to move somewhere that didn’t need any work. That said, I found myself getting very attached to one of those homes in particular, I felt anxious, I felt attached, and I wanted that house, despite it needing work. I was reading Florence Scovel Shinn at the time and she was talking about letting things go, I think the phrase was “I shall leave it in God’s hands, under grace in a perfect way”. I’m not religious but I am a spiritual person, so I just mentally and physically let go of the outcome of finding our first home to buy. I like the phrase “leaving it to the wind”, a slightly different context but the meaning for me is the same.
Soon after I let go of a particular outcome, my wife shared an apartment for sale, we love having a garden, albeit a small one, so we decided to view this place as a wild card option because it had no private garden, and then thought nothing else of it. The Saturday we went to view the house, we both had an overwhelming pull towards it, it was a light, airy, high-ceilinged duplex, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms within a stunning Victorian-listed building. Beautiful art was strewn across the living room wall, the widows beamed in the natural light that filled the whole apartment. I saw a photo of the couple living there and instantly recognised her, it was a fellow artist and studio member! It was a short walk from my wife’s workplace and close to my art studio. The ‘coincidences’ really made us feel like this was meant to be, without us forcing our will to find the right place. Although there is no private garden, there is a beautiful shared garden and space to plant herbs and flowers. Plus, a lovely park 2 minutes walk from the apartment.
We left the viewing feeling excited and both knew this was the right home for us, so we put in an offer straight away, at the asking price. It didn’t feel right to reduce the price, maybe it’s bad negotiating, but we just knew, it felt like the right thing to do!
This was only the 4th home we viewed.
Love to you all,
Let’s chat in the comments
Where have you found yourself surrendering? You may have used different terminology, you may have said “Oh well, I can’t control this, let’s see what happens”.
Where do you feel stuck? …and do you feel that letting go would help?
What stood out for you in Beth’s podcast?
Gosh, wow. I've read your words but not listened to the podcast yet - I'm looking forward to doing so.
Again this post of yours has come at an extraordinary time. Yesterday I eased off on something I've been working on, and pledged to do so for a whole week. I'm already feeling much better about that thing, and I hope that my approach - a little akin to surrender - will give me the space to find how to get to where I want to be. 🙂
SLART, thanks for doing what I didn't do--find a way to seek out responses to my podcast on Surrender! I love the image you've chosen, and what you two are DOING! I have never bought a home of my own and I love that together, you two make it easy. I feel the whole energy around your purchase is one of de-light and wonder. I even think you're entering potential community-building space with your duplex-mate. First a shared garden, and then maybe meals from the garden, and then who knows?? It made sense to me that you didn't negotiate, actually. That's part of being confident with money--knowing when and what feel right to you. This is so exciting!
You posted about leaving it to the wind on my YouTube podcast on Surrender: "I like to say: I’m leaving it to god or the wind when I surrender." And I replied how amazing it was that you'd said that because "In many traditions, breath/wind MEANS God." I love what you've given us about surrender in this post, SLART.
To answer your questions 1&2: first, let me say that I've kept your Florence Scovell Shinn quotation from an earlier newsletter of yours, SLART in my business planning calendar which is a simple document I update every time I get creative and design posts or offers for my business (or newsletters, or whatever) and where I keep a slush pile of ideas. I keep the old calendar from the week prior so I have a record of what I've created and offered the week prior). The quotation is resonant with what you and your wife have manifested through letting go/surrender: "We must prepare for the thing we have asked when there isn’t the slightest sign of it in sight." I've asked to double my income with ease. I don't keep asking because that = lack of trust; I do continually ask _myself_ how a person confident their income is doubling with ease right now would behave? And behave that way. This doesn't mean wasting money! It means living into the new reality now. I'm working on a small business development grant application now and one thing that just preparing the application has already done for me is show me the ways in which I was living too small, unconnected to people who could help me and my business, including but not limited to becoming clients, who live within an hour of my rural mountain in southwestern Virginia, USA. I have been so focused on serving people nationally and internationally that I really didn't even think about locally! So it's put me in a relationship of seeking out others, which is something that has always served me well. When folks meet me, they often want to work with me. As a natural hermit, however, I have to create opportunities for folks to work with me.
In closing, I wanted to share the interview I did with you with everyone here entitled, "Where's the Edge?" a delight we plan to repeat: https://youtu.be/wKm0ZAYbj2o?si=ejGG7WXU3fHO2y9p It's about an hour and I had fun creating a teeny highlights video of it here: https://youtu.be/JHAHeLQPv6o?si=_9m9-uSUIiDjSUB9