Should I Put on Boxing Gloves?

This week I read a wonderful article written by Srinivas Rao titled Everything You Fight Has Power Over You.  Everything You Accept Doesn't. 

I do not believe we should "surrender" with a defeated, apathetic, this life will never be better, woe-is-me attitude.  The surrender referred to in this article is one of acceptance with continued progress.  We benefit and are empowered by accepting the circumstances over which we have no control while also taking a position of graceful actions, continued progress, and alternative paths.  A quick example is my own personal experience with back pain over the past years and some of that time the pain being quite excruciating.  I accepted the fact that I had injury which must take a long time to heal, but I did not lie down and stop moving.  Instead, I found plenty of ways in which I could still have an active lifestyle and a fulfilling yoga practice that continued to strengthen and heal my mind, body, and soul, all within a pain free range of motion.  I chose the route of acceptance with continued progress.

The article is full of excellent life wisdom. In case you don't want to take the time to read the entire thing, I've included here some of my favorite excerpts.  

"We continuously seek answers outside of ourselves. We look for them in self-help books, podcasts, seminars, mentors, and spiritual teachers. But continually looking outside ourselves for answers isn’t exactly a vote of confidence in the expression of our soul’s calling. Eventually, to find our answers, we must turn inward. But going inward requires us to brave the wilderness, explore uncharted territory, and in the words of my friend AJ Leon, not follow well-lit paths, but grab a machete and hack our own."

"When we go inward, we can no longer avoid our pain. We have to confront it. But there’s a strange paradox to pain. The more we fight it, the more we empower it."

"When the longing, striving and pushing to get what you so desperately want finally come to an end you’re free. It’s only from that place of freedom and unapologetic, no-bullshit, self-expression that you can create ... your beautiful immortal work and live a meaningful life."

"When we surrender to the circumstances we’ve been fighting, they lose all of their power over us. But we have to be careful not to confuse surrender with resignation or apathy. When we surrender, all of our actions come from a place of peace and abundance. When desperately we fight a circumstance, we do so with the frenetic energy of chaos and scarcity."

"A focus on progress gives you power. A focus on perfection disempowers you. When we’re obsessed with perfection, we overlook progress and fail to appreciate our accomplishments."

"It’s likely we can find everything we crave from some external source within ourselves. However, it requires inner work. We can’t order it on Amazon Prime and have it show up at our doorstep the day after tomorrow."

"Surrender doesn’t mean that you won’t ever be disappointed and that everything will go your way...If you choose to live a full-color, full contact, and fully self-expressed life, you’re going to have setbacks and disappointments. The only way to avoid disappointments is not to take any chances at all. That’s an incredibly limited way to live your life. As I said in An Audience of One, 'Your circumstances can give you colors to paint with.'”

"When we honor the past, we create an open space for the future. When we cling to the past, we’re likely to repeat it."

"If you’re feeling behind the eight ball and you’re thinking you should have the bestseller or the marriage, or why did that happen, or why’d you get fired, if you’re in a dark place, just take one grain of what I’m saying now. Just believe me for a nanosecond, that really, there is a divine order to things. Every single disappointment and I’ve had some significant ones. Every failure, every heartbreak, everything that I went after so, you know, vigorously that didn’t turn out, thank God. I was spared some kinds of destiny. I just have a deeper level of trust now. Doesn’t mean it’s easy all the time. Doesn’t mean I don’t want what I want.” — Danielle LaPorte
There seems to be divine order to the events of the universe:
Every loss becomes an opening for a gain
Every setback becomes an opportunity for a comeback
But embracing the divine order of the Universe requires faith in forces beyond our control. It’s difficult to see the good that will come from something terrible in the moment that it happens."

"Surrender goes counter to nearly every one of our cultural instincts, in which we’re taught to, strive, hustle, grind, kick ass and take names. But when you surrender, the result is inspired action. It has a different kind of energy to it. What we know about energy is that like attracts like. Acting out of desperation results in more desperation. Acting out of inspiration results in more inspiration. The paradox of surrender is that it puts you in a position of power."

Read the full article at this link:  Everything You Fight Has Power Over you.  Everything You Accept Doesn't