Are you giving up on your dreams? Or do you need to learn how to surrender?
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For those struggling to figure out what you want to do with your life, you are not alone. For the past 3 years, I was working as an actress and stand up comedian in Los Angeles, CA. Nonstop I was working full blast when it came to auditions, going to open mics, and working 3–4 different jobs to afford the living expenses. But then the pandemic happened and my dreams were put on halt. I moved back home to Mississippi to be with my family and started my own spiritual life coaching business. My business wasn’t a complete fail but also not an amazing success story either. That’s when I started to doubt everything…
I am in a weird phase of my life, where I am unsure of where I am going in life. I thought I was working hard to make it in the entertainment industry as an Actress/Comedian and that I was supposed to do X, Y, and Z to win big. But with everything that’s been happening, I am met with resistance and constant failures. It took me some time to finally acknowledge my failures of becoming a successful artist, but I am learning to face my fears now rather than running away from them.
I didn’t want to admit that I was scared and told myself that I wasn’t working hard enough because of the pandemic or blamed it on my mental health. In truth, I was lying to myself and avoiding the part of “surrendering” to the Universe. I was mistaken surrendering as a sign of weakness rather than seeing it as a new way of trusting the process.
There is a massive difference between surrendering and giving up. One is an act of love and courage, while the other is an act of fear and bruising the ego. Can you guess which is which?
When you surrender and acknowledge that certain things are out of your control, you make space and room for the Universe to work its magic. When you give up, you quit trying altogether and admit defeat that you were not good enough. I struggled with how I treated myself when it came to surrendering. I thought surrender meant I was giving up my dreams and sense of self. But I know wallowing in self-pity and blame was not surrendering at all.
Self-deprecating can be easy to do when you are an expert perfectionist like myself. I wanted certain things to play out in my way. I thought I control…