How Letting Go Of Control Could Have You Singing In The Rain

I recently got back from a 2 week holiday in the south of France and despite the terrible weather forecast, I had an amazing time with loads of sun and blue sky.

Unfortunately, the three weeks preceding the holiday weren't as much fun... 

Call it the British in me but I can sometimes get a bit obsessed about the weather.

And even though I don’t really believe in weather forecast accuracy, I found myself regularly searching the web for long range weather forecasts.

I would click on all the weather websites until I found one with the best weather (Never once stopping to question why they were all so different from each other).

I checked pretty much every day, getting upset and thinking my holiday would be ruined every time it said the weather would be bad. 

The closer I got to the holiday, the more frequently I was checking, magically hoping every hour that the weather would suddenly change from rainy to sunny. 

When’s the last time you’ve been obsessed about something that was completely out of your control?

Maybe it was constantly checking to see if your flight was on time… maybe it was the amount of people showing up to your event… or maybe it was checking to see how much distance your UberEats courier had covered since you last checked 30 seconds ago…

A few days before my holiday and with the forecast still not looking great, I decided I had enough of putting myself through this emotional rollercoaster and simply stopped checking the weather forecast. 

I decided to surrender to whatever the weather would be and have fun regardless. I stopped trying to micromanage the universe and instead pictured myself as Gene Kelly in “Singin’ in the Rain”. 

This was a weirdly freeing experience and I suddenly felt more calm and peaceful about the whole situation. 

When we have an obsession about something that is out of our control, it generally stems from a desire to actually control the situation. 

The irony being that the more we obsess about this certain thing, the less in control we actually feel. 

So if you want to experience more freedom, more joy and more peace when it comes to situations that are out of your control, the best strategy is to practice the art of surrendering. 

Next time you are obsessing over an outcome that you have no power over, try letting go, try surrendering to whatever will happen.

Einstein once said: “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile Universe”.

Choose to believe in a friendly Universe and attempt to spend less time trying to micromanage it.  

What would you like to practice surrendering to this week?