To be honest with someone outside of yourself is to trust someone with a piece of your soul. Opening up your heart willingly and letting someone peek inside? That somehow feels far scarier than taking a leap of faith in seemingly bigger and more brash ways. 

 

But I'm going to do it anyway with all of you. For science. 

 

Over the past year, I've worked hard to open my heart up in ways that run counter to my nature. As some of you long-time readers may recall, in an effort to keep myself emotionally and psychologically safe, I never allowed anyone in. For years, I made a lot of "safe" choices that resulted in me waking up one day in a life that didn't belong to me, looking in the mirror at someone who I didn't recognize ... but she looked scared. 

 

So, something had to change in a drastic way.

 

Through this process of breaking myself open, I've learned the things you want most in life will humble you. As I look back over the past 18 months, those moments where I've come face to face with what I truly desire most in this world, my total surrender was always the price of admission — no matter what it was.

You see, when what you want shows up and knocks on your door, it does so with the demand of absolute acceptance of what it is, as it is — you get no say over its size, its shape, its form, its timeline, its breadth, its depth, its scale. 

 

 

 

 

It feels like a final test of sorts. Do you really want what you say you want? Are you willing to humble yourself and be humbled by what it is you seek or the answers you've so desperately been hunting for? Are you willing to give away that control you're clutching so fiercely to your chest and say, "I accept you as you are, because you are what I want"?

 

Or will you choose safety and control over what it is you say you truly desire?

 

 

 

 

 

Humility, surrender, and relinquishing your need for control ... these are your only tools to bring what you want within reach. You must let go of your expectations and demands and requirements in order to receive. 

 

Not everything has to be a war. You don't need to battle and scrape and tear your way toward every victory, every moment in the light. Let it be soft. Let it be easy. You can simply leave your door cracked open a bit and let love and joy and inspiration and passion and purpose find you. And then don't turn it away when it shows up in a bigger, brighter, bolder form than you expected.

 

I wish I could say I learned this lesson without tears. I wish I could say I learned the art of humility and surrender and letting go without anguish. But I wouldn't trade away any of those experiences for anything in the world. Even those moments where I've lost in the end ... I have no regrets of finally opening up my heart and letting others in. 

 

OK, I am starting to feel my body turn inside out, so I'm going to end this here. (This was heavy, even for me.)