I’ve been having lots of conversations lately about Trust. How do we loosen our grip on life? How do we release ourselves into uncertainty, especially when things feel hard and all we want to do is control, find the answers, and fix? How can we begin to embrace the mystery, that part of the journey that we only get to see and experience once we finally answer our callings, let go of the wheel, release our grip?
My default, or automatic response, when things feel uncertain is to constrict and fix. Constrict = holding it all together and controlling allllll the things. Fix = solving the problem, over-managing my self and others, and over achieving/reacting/worrying/and more. There is a hustling energy to the constriction, controlling, and fixing. It’s the opposite of trusting.
My forever ongoing practice – the antidote to my default – is to trust and embrace the Mystery.
I think we can strengthen our Trust muscles in tiny everyday ways, like trusting that the traffic we’re stuck in is protecting us from seeing / experiencing something further down the road.
Embracing the mystery.
Or trusting that the cancelled appointment wasn’t meant for us anyway, that perhaps it was meant for someone else and our time will come when it’s exactly, perfectly right.
Embracing the mystery.
Or trusting that the friendship that is coming to a close gifted us with exactly what we needed, at the exact right time, and now it’s time to release it, to make space for someone new on our path.
Embracing the mystery.
I think Trust is practiced mostly in these everyday ordinary moments so that when we arrive to those big extraordinary moments of our lives, our Trust muscles are stronger. And our hearts are more capable of softening so that we can loosen our grip just a little, and Trust that the mystery – the part of the experience we can’t yet see – will protect us, hold us, and guide us toward our next step.
I love living inside this practice.
Life becomes more unburdened, freer, liberated. You mean I don’t have to know? Or have the answers? Or fix and control? YES, please! I’ll take Trust and Mystery, please.