The Art of Surrendering: How to Embrace the Unknown and Call in Your Deepest Desires
As humans, we love to have a plan and a path. We love to know what’s coming next. Certainty is comforting. Can you blame us? Our entire lives are outlined—supposedly. We learn from the start that the plan is to go to school, play sports, head to college, get a job, save money, get married, start a family, retire—and then eventually die, leaving our descents to follow the same cycle.
Anyone that strays outside of this alleged path is considered an outlier. There’s this unspoken yet uncomfortably suffocating pressure that if you do not follow this path, you will fail. You are not safe. You’ll never find financial stability or security. You are judged for not keeping up with the norm. No kids by 32? Failure. Not engaged to and moved in with your life partner by your late 20’s? How dare you. Not spending eight to 10 hours a day in an ice-cold cubicle, giving your time and energy to a corporate entity that sees you as a replaceable set of skills rather than an individual person with value? Might as well not work at all.
Ever since I was a young girl, I was obsessed with reading books about magic. I had this burning curiosity about how life worked. “Daddy, what’s heaven?” a five-year-old me asked my father as I crawled onto his lap. “It’s a place where you can eat ice cream every single day,” he replied. I smiled as I thought about how nice that sounded, but it was quickly followed by thoughts about why I wasn’t allowed to eat ice cream every day right now. Why did I have to wait?
Recognize that magic exists
High school is really when I dove deeply into self-help books—and books about magic. I loved reading about people beating the impossible to come out on top and reach wild amounts of success. I was obsessed with stories about how, despite the odds and/or intense trauma, certain humans were able to rise up from the ashes and turn their lives completely around. And how these people seemed to be supported by the universe at all times throughout their journeys, even if they couldn’t tell at first.
All it took was a little bit of magic—and a whole lot of trust—for their lives to turn completely around. And then the success poured in.
In December of 2017, I was working as a magazine editor in New York City when I began to develop chronic ovarian cysts. I was as stressed as anyone could ever be, working 10 hours a day, running miles on end, and failing to fuel my body or get adequate sleep. With each new cyst that would explode (this happened once every few months), not only would I be in agony, but I was so angry. Angry at God. Angry at my body. Angry at this stupid fucking thing that developed that was preventing me from working even more.
But then I surrendered. With every new cyst that developed and ruptured, I turned more and more into myself. I was terrified about my health and future fertility, but something deep inside me whispered to trust and let go of all control. When your health is threatened, you truly realize what little control we really have in the world. Instead of continuing to throw a fit and suppress what was happening to my body, I let go of all future outcomes and vowed to do whatever my body needs to find healing.
At first, this looked like small things (they felt earth-shattering) to me at the time, like working less, meditating more, eating more consistently, pausing my fitness routine, and slowing down in general. But then, after nearly 4 years of ovarian cyst ruptures, a surgery, and a whole lot of frustration, I surrendered to what I knew deep down—I would have to leave NYC after 7 years, quit my job, and move to an island to find true healing.
I resisted this for so long. After all, I had spent years building my career as a magazine editor. Despite my health, I loved my job and the crazy lifestyle of New York City. I had manifested everything I thought I wanted for myself and my career. But the universe had other plans—and my body had been screaming at me in the form of ovarian cysts for years until I finally listened.
And I’m so happy I did.
Get comfortable with the unknown
It was scary as fuck to trust in the unknown. I had safety and security in the form of a stable paycheck, a nice apartment, close friends, health insurance, a retirement fund, and a path for growth at my company. But life had other plans for me.
I had been feeling called to move to Hawai’i ever since I had vacationed there with my then boyfriend a few years back. Seeing the lifestyle and the beauty of the sacred land sparked something within me that never had quite left since I had first stepped foot on O’ahu. She was calling me to come and heal. To come find myself. To do something risky. To trust. So, I answered. In March of 2021 I quit my job in NYC without a job or a plan. I didn’t even have a place to live. It crushed me—and scared the hell out of me—to say goodbye to the career I’d worked so hard to build.
But instead of disappointment, my bosses were so happy for me. In fact, my editor-in-chief ended up dedicating the January 2022 of our magazine to my decision. And even more so, one the very same day I gave my leave, I had 3 weeks until my flight to the islands with no place to live and no job. 30 minutes after I gave my resignation, I received a job offer and a place to live on O’ahu all in the same conversation. This is why I’m obsessed with magic.
You see, the unknown can be compared to a womb. The Great Cosmic Womb is thought to be a dark space at the center of the universe where infinite possibility exists. When things are unknown, they feel dark. Scary. Black. We simply can’t see where we are headed. But guess what? That’s where all of the magic exists. Within the unknown exists infinite possibilities to call in whatever we want. After all, we have free will and are the creators of our lives. We hold the paint brushes. It is truly up to us.
But if we can relinquish control over what we believe is best for us and instead flow with the changes of life, we start to change our perspective and see closed doors and severed relationships as opportunities to pivot and call in more abundance, pleasure, success, and happiness into our lives. All we have to do is trust where we are being led.
Become an Alchemist
I like to think of myself as an alchemist now. Of course the common theme of all of the self-help books and books about magic was that there was often a ton of pain involved. The truth is, we live in a dualistic universe comprised of pleasure and pain. Both exist and neither are good or bad. Pain is always an opportunity to grow and to peel back the layers of inauthenticity from our beings and emerge, like blossoming butterflies, as the best versions of ourselves.
Alchemizing pain into pleasure is done by trusting how life is unfolding and reframing our perception to deep trust and surrender. The most successful entrepreneurs—whom I like to think of as alchemists and magicians, too—can never see the path laid out in front of them. Any of them will tell you that all of the magic is in the JOURNEY, woven within the unknown, uncertainty, risk, and failures along the way.
It is so fucking scary to surrender into the unknown, especially when crucial things rest on the line, such as finances, health insurance, relationships, and food in some cases. But I cannot emphasize enough that this is where all of the magic exists.
From the moment my dad told the 5-year-old version of me that heaven is where you can eat ice cream every day, I not for one second believed that I would wait until after death to live a life that abundant, pleasurable, and happy. Not to say that it is without pain, but I decided to choose the risky path, the path of the unknown. Just putting one foot in front of the other and going from there. With my heart as the compass. I am guided by something way greater than me. All I have to do is surrender and trust. And to show up for myself. And to show everyone that there is a better way than the societal death trap outlined by our capitalistic system.
It is your right to live the life of your dreams
Magic is right here, right now. You can call it in. In fact, you can call in anything you want—so long as it’s God’s plan for you, which is the plan for your highest happiness. The art of surrendering is your path to bringing all of the abundance, pleasure, health, and happiness into your life, quite simply because it is your birthright to do so. Your path won’t be the same as mine or the next person’s. Your path is yours and yours alone.
Surrender to knowing that the special magic that you dream up by just being you will inspire those around you to do the same. Surrender to knowing that you are held and supported always, even through those moments of pain and uncertainty. Surrender to knowing that you’re here to live out all of your desires, and it should be fun. It should be orgasmic, in fact.
If you’ve never believed in magic, I suggest opening up to possibilities that seem extraordinary or impossible. I suggest opening up to the crazy, wild idea that your dream life is available to you right now. All you have to do is surrender and trust.