Lines In The Sand offers many valuable tools to help you create a life that you love. One of the best exercises we do is featured in Line Four: Embrace + Practice Surrender. In this exercise, we tidy up many areas of our lives where we have collected people, places or things that don’t serve us. Here are a few examples.
Email: Is your email box packed with emails that are sucking the energy out of you or that are adding to the overwhelm in your life? If so, I suggest that you carve out thirty minutes to an hour to go through your mailbox and delete emails that are no longer relevant. Next, take the time to unsubscribe from the lists that you are on. You are probably already deleting most of these unwanted emails and they are clogging your inbox and wasting your time. You can use a service like Unroll Me to instantly see a list of all your subscription emails and easily unsubscribe from whatever you don’t want. Once you have your inbox nice and tidy, make it a habit to clean it up at least once a week.
People: At some point in your life you have likely experienced having a person in your life that is an energy drainer, an abuser or user, a drama queen or king or a control freak. Consider this your junk drawer of personal relationships. If you have a person or people in your life that are not respectful of you or who do not bring you joy, break-up with them. Figure out an appropriate way to remove them from your life so that you have time and energy to spend with people who appreciate and inspire you. Life is short, soar with the eagles.
Circumstances: Do you spend time comparing yourself to others? Do you have a need to control? Or, how about this, do you keep telling a story about your life that keeps you stuck? These are all conditions that add absolutely NO value to your life and they keep you from creating a life that you love. Stop comparing yourself to others. You have one life to manage—yours. Focusing on other people’s lives is a waste of time and the best that can come from it is usually resentment. Instead of comparing yourself to someone else, be grateful for you and what you have. For you control freaks out there I suggest that you focus on your behavior, not anyone else’s. The need to control others generally comes from a lack of self-esteem, wanting to be a “perfectionist”, or needing to be right; none of which are attractive or easy behaviors to be around. Start by being more accepting of yourself and others. And for those of you who have a current story that is filled with struggle and strife or blame and victimhood, surrender to a story of gratitude, appreciation, and possibility. A bright future is never built on a foundation of a unfulfilling past.
Embracing and practicing surrender is all about letting go of anything, including thoughts that don’t provide excitement and adventure as well as peace and contentment to your life. Freedom based living comes from your willingness to examine what is right for your life, doing those things and surrendering everything else.
Stay true and be you —
Annie