Surrender Your Agenda

Have you seen a young tree growing amongst a dense area of trees? It has a long thin trunk and sparse branches. It needs light to survive so it’s doing absolutely everything it can to get upward to the light, giving very little energy to trunk girth or expansive branches that produce leaves for photosynthesis.

A tree inherently knows its greatest potential is when it can reach the open canopy in the sun, giving it access to the food and energy it needs to survive. But in a dense growing space, what it takes to get there results in it being scrawny and susceptible. It gave up everything for that light, most importantly the thick, strong and sturdy trunk.

If you see a young tree starting out like this and you clear away the older neighboring trees, you’ve now given this tree an opportunity to grow to its fullest potential. Instead of sending all its growth energy upward, it will put effort into a thicker, more stable truck. It will branch out into its TRUE form. I will likely live longer and it will FLOURISH in the time that it is alive.

If you’ve been a reader for a while, you know I’m head over heels for symbolism and specifically, I am enamored with nature and what it has to teach me. Living at White Sky Woods Homestead and immersing myself into the garden and wild spaces has raised my personal intuition and gifted me a lot of personal growth. (Read my past ramblings about learning from nature here).

Over the past years I’ve been learning about letting go to grow. This year I turned it into a mantra – give space and give grace. Through life I was conditioned to believe that the more I did (to prove something, to make money, to be successful, to be engaged, to get an A, and on and on) the more I would grow. We made the intentional move to White Sky Woods to jump off the hamster wheel and live a more simple life focusing on family, community, and supporting ourselves through growing our own food and reducing stress through debt-free living. Well, we did that, but there was still one hitch for me. That darn conditioning that told me that success looked a certain way and that in order to grow I had to have an agenda and push it. And, before I knew it I was jumping back into the hamster wheel. It looked different than the one before. Instead of the hamster wheel being my career, my education, my extracurriculars, my goals, my <fill in the blank> it became an unending list of excessive planting, harvesting, and food production, heavily scheduled activities for the kids, tackling every project that needed doing in a unnecessarily limited period of time, going places, doing things for other people, and more <fill in the blank>. I hopped right back in that hamster wheel…and it was a squeaky one!

It. Was. Detrimental.

Something had to change. I didn’t lay out a plan or set any crazy agenda to it. In fact, I did the opposite. I surrendered the agenda. I trusted myself. I knew that in a lifetime of building my dependable character I would not “fail” myself. I already had the proof I needed. Like that aforementioned tree in the forest seeking light, I thought I was growing, seeking exacty what I needed. But these behaviors left me in a less than ideal state of wellness. It was time to clear the trees around me. It was time to surrender my agenda. Not to make a plan to surrender my agenda, rather just surrender. Let go. Trust myself.

When we surrender the agenda and trust ourselves, it is actually an act of allowing. Allowing ourselves permission to be and to flow. All this control we assert into our lives (via lists, impossible personal expectations, over scheduling) impedes our true nature. When we surrender our agenda, we now leave an opening to see what comes into view. When I surrendered my agenda I was fearful I would be lazy and not get the things I needed to done – but somehow everything I needed to do still happened. And it got done without anxiety, stress, and negative feelings. Surprisingly, even more got done! I found myself finding more time for creative expression, meaningful conversations with friends and family (because I could actually be present rather than agenda focused), and filling in space with things that feed my soul, which in turn gave me the fuel to live a full life – but full in a non-agenda way. There is no list to cross things off of.

I am becoming the tree in its true form (I don’t use the word “became” because I believe it’s an ongoing journey). I have cleared the space to create the most abundant life, and that creation took very little effort from me because once the space was cleared, I started growing just the way I should in my environment, just like the tree. What a liberating feeling to release my own contrived (well-intentioned but detrimental) agenda from my life. To release the agenda I thought was benefiting me, but what was actually holding me back. To just allow.

For all you perfectionist, goal-setting, driven to succeed people out there that think this blog is silly-business….I am one of you (still!). Letting go is possible. It doesn’t need a plan or a chart or anything…..those are completely counterintuitive to surrendering the agenda. If there was a step-by-step process to this, I am definitely the type of person who would have written it down because I love process (nerd). But I believe there is only one step to this – GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION. It all opens up from there, in the way it is meant to be and on the timeline it should. Assert nothing. Be Patient. Observe. Allow.

If you clear space, how will you (the tree) flourish? What’s just one thing you think may come your way when you surrender your agenda? Creativity? Forgiveness? Contemplation? Progress? Rest? I would love to hear! If you have cleared space – what happened? Tell me!

-L

P.S. Several years back a friend shared this poem with me – She Let Go, by Safire Rose. I read and listened to the poem many times and it began to take new meaning overtime. First, seeming completely unattainable – or even false and impossible. Now, it is fully relateable. It is a great partner to my blog post here, I encourage you to check it out!