Surrender to reality and see what happens next

Greetings Fabulous Heroes

It’s been a while!  And do you know what? That’s okay. I could chastise and berate myself for not doing a blog yet in 2025 which would be my old behaviour making an appearance or I could show myself grace and compassion and admit that sometimes, despite my best intentions, life gets ‘lifey’ and time often appears to run away from me. So, this is where I find myself. The choice is quite simple and comes down to how I want to feel. Which action brings me positive versus negative energy? So, you guessed it, I’m good with the ‘slight delay’ and hope to be more consistent for you all in the future!

Once again, I am writing this as I find myself travelling alcohol free (this time in Bali) and I know I’ve said it before, but it is truly mind-blowing to me how much my life has changed just by letting go of one thing: alcohol. My world has expanded beyond anything I thought possible and continues to do so. Is every day a ‘bed of roses? No, of course not but there is now such learning in the days that aren’t. Truth be told, far more learning than during the days that run smoothly, and life seems to just work out. So, I suppose the general theme of this blog is the courage to surrender.

I had always associated surrender with giving in and no longer being ‘in charge’ or ‘in control’, which felt so uncomfortable for me that it was not a word I liked to consider within my vocabulary let alone dig into the deeper meaning behind it. How ironic this is to me now as I realise alcohol had taken over and been in control of my life for so long and not me!  Once I surrendered and fully embraced the idea of living alcohol free, I decided to train as a This Naked Mind coach which subsequently led to my next big surrender – to let go of the security I had known for 30 years of being employed as a registered mental health nurse and set up my own coaching business.

When I made the choice to quit my permanent nursing role as Clinical Lead of a residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre 15 months ago, I had all sorts of doubts and crazy thoughts swimming amongst my so say intelligent pre-frontal cortex (the thinking part of the brain that makes the decisions). I repeatedly questioned that decision asking myself what on earth I thought I was doing leaving my job which offered a guaranteed wage and was so familiar I could do it standing on my head. But that was part of the problem now I no longer drank alcohol.  Doing the familiar on a daily basis just because it was comfortable was no longer enough. I didn’t want each day to continue to just blend into the next, with that same shit different day’s adage being the narrative. I had done that gig for enough years when I was drinking.

It is often not an easy journey to let go of alcohol, either temporarily or permanently, but when I started along this path, becoming vulnerable was absolutely not part of my plan. Surrendering to the reality of what my life had become and the effects on not just me but those I loved more than anybody else in the world was bloody hard. However, only through the surrender was I able to start the journey and allow the healing to begin and what journey it has been so far. Even with all the painful parts, I wouldn’t change any of it because without all those past experiences, I would not be living the life I have now and for that I can never be more grateful.

So as scary as it feels to consider surrendering to ‘what is’ as opposed to what we want our reality to be, I cannot recommend it enough! As Byron Katie so beautifully puts it:

‘When you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time.’

I have recently started enjoying the writings of Sadghuru, a yogi who talks about how we are all just looking for pleasure but expect to find it ‘out there’ as opposed to the only place we can truly find it which is on the inside. For so long I was looking for something outside of me to be the thing that changed my life, made me happy, brought me joy. Newsflash - the only way this transformation was able to happen, was by me looking inside of myself. It might sound cliché, but it is completely true. Who’d have thought the power to change was inside little old me all along and I just had to stop, take a breath, surrender and be open to whatever happened next?!

I leave you now with an excerpt from the Inner Consciousness by Sadhguru and hope it may bring you just enough curiosity to consider what your life might look like if you start to surrender to the possibility that what you currently think and believe may not be true and there’s a whole other, more peaceful and exciting ‘reality’ out there you can choose to discover!

“We are all ultimately looking for a ‘state of well-being’ – a deep sense of pleasure within.

When the body feels pleasant, we call this Health

When the body feels very pleasant, we call it Pleasure

When the mind becomes pleasant, we call it Peace

When the mind becomes very pleasant, we call it Joy

When the emotions become pleasant, we call it Love

When the emotions become very pleasant, we call it Compassion

When the life energies become pleasant, we call it Bliss

When the life energies become very pleasant, we call it Ecstasy

Pleasantness within and pleasantness without is what we’re all seeking.”

Surrendering to the truth that alcohol no longer served me in any way in my life, was without doubt the start of me finding my way towards my state of deep pleasure within.

Maybe today, consider what small step of surrender would start you on your own journey towards a state of deep, inner well-being?

Wishing you all peace, presence and playfulness along the way

Sammie xox