Breaking Down My SURRENDER Experiment
Warm and sunny greetings from the El Nido Islands in the Philippines! I hope you visit this place one day and if you already visited, I hope you remember warm memories right now!
I want to devote this blog to Brikena from Munich, she emailed me one day asking for a blog post related to books I read. I replied her that instead of sharing list of books, I share the books that inspired my journey related to topic and I want to keep my promise and send you lots of love for your kind feedback!
As promised this week I want to talk about my forced SURRENDER Experiment and how I ended up in The Philippines with no plans. I had a flight ticket to Indonesia for Wed 29th Jan to start my sabbatical. From Indonesia I was flying to an island, spending 1 week there and then flying to Cambodia and spend 2 weeks there. All local flights, hotels were paid, non-refundable (lesson learned).
I said goodbye to my friends on the weekend, had a final goodbye dinner on Monday night on 27th where I was feeling super tired and cold with increasing cough and on Tuesday, 1 day before my flight I woke up with a 40 degree fever! My boyfriend took me to the ER in Luxembourg and we spent 5 hours there with tests and doctors.
The final decision was my immune system collapsed, my lungs were seriously infected. The doctor actually said ‘There are no soldiers left in your blood to fight with any diseases, 2 international flights is out of question, you can’t even take bus to go home without picking up any diseases’. They prescribed me with official home sick report, and told me to do NOTHING for 1 week, just take the medicine and sleep! I had another appointment booked for 1 week after to decide on my immune system and lungs. To be honest, my body was in pain, my fever was serious, and all I could do before crashing in my bed was to cancel my main flight to Indonesia (with a fine of course), which was less than 12 hours away!
As I mentioned in my blog related to influenza/cold flu, FEAR resonates with FEAR and viruses are a form of fear… What happened was :
I spent all of January in a tough recovery, I was not 100% well.
In the meantime, Coronavirus was spreading with horror stories all-over South-East Asia. I tried to ignore the deadly virus news; I was just recovering from influenza and could not realize the fear of getting another virus.
With all those fears, on that Friday I had to get 3 vaccines before my travel, Hepatitis- A, Polio and Typhoid… all nice viruses in my system, the doctor also gave me a cortisone-based medicine for my cough…
All those get together to bring my immune system down…I was forced to accept and sleep. After 4 days of sleep, I started to think about the concept of SURRENDER…
Surrender means to give up and to accept the situation even if you don’t like it. In spirituality, surrender meanssurrendering to life as it is. As a concept it is a nice thought, easy to share motivational quotes, super easy to tell your friends “Don’t worry, there is a reason for everything, this is for the best. Lean in.”
However, it is really hard to really pull yourself together when all your plans and control mechanisms are taken away. Especially for corporate employees; you build your career through planning, trying to change the expected outcome for better. There, you are spending 8 hours a day on actions, plans, how to get to A, B, C… and in your personal life you need to accept whatever comes and surrender 🙂
It’s not that easy to let go, we try to control everything in our daily lives. Due to a recent study, the majority of people who have control disorders (‘control freaks’) do not accept that they have a disorder…It is even harder for women, the more we try to control, the less feminine we are.
What I realised is to be able to surrender is a habit and like each habit you need to learn about it, practice and you will be able to do it more often and for more serious topics… Here are my top 3 tips to build the habit of SURRENDER…
The Book: The Surrender Experiment
As I shared before, Rumi helped me to stay positive when I had struggles. I understand the spiritual concept behind it, however I was not able to practice it in my daily life until this book.
Books helped my journey and this one especially helped me to feel the idea of surrender in my bones.
Actually, I never thought that it would have this effect in the first 50 pages… then it took me in. Maybe it was the right time, and maybe it was the right book. If you are reading this newsletter, my sincere advise it to get a copy and read it! When you read I know you would say ‘come on, it is not that easy or my life is not the same’. I hear you, I felt the same, in some parts I even got angry with the writer.
However, remember if it makes you angry it triggers the right spots 😉Keep the faith and keep reading. Remind yourself you do not have to act like the writer, however you can start practicing the beautiful ‘Surrender Experiment’ in your daily life for easy decisions and observe the outcome.
The Mindset: Take the experiment, see miracles, be grateful
As I mentioned, you can start experimenting your own surrender story and start with what that feels like. It could be anything; it helps to believe in the process when you try with small actions. Maybe a colleague asked you for coffee, instead of saying you are super busy, simply say Yes and see where it will take you. Especially when you find yourself in uncomfortable situations just say “I accept and I surrender”.
When I was flying back from New York, I wanted to book a direct flight to Istanbul. First the agency said ok and then they called me to say that they miscalculated the price and it was way too expensive, so they booked a flight with a Frankfurt connection. My initial reaction was to tell them it was their mistake, I can’t bear the consequences, convince them why I need a direct flight. Then, I remembered the experiment and just said Yes. On the way to the airport, I just kept repeating the mantra. “I accept, I surrender, thank you universe I accept your solution.” No need to say, I was upgraded to business class on both flights and had an amazing journey! 😀 For me it was a sign from the universe for my tests, for many it could be just an upgrade, but life is better when you see the miracles.
The Energy: Everything is ENERGY and SURRENDER mode helps to feel your feminine energy
I reminded myself to work on my sacral chakra - simply with meditation or Reiki on myself. It helps me to be in Surrender mode. I know… it sounds weird. Here is WHY…
We are all energy and we both have masculine and feminine energy. In super simple words, Masculine energy is the one that helps you to get things done – Solar Chakra, whereas Feminine energy is the creative energy- Sacral Chakra. The famous Ying and Yang diagram below explains the perfect balance.
I always remind myself, Surrender is an act of feminine energy. It reminds me of my WATER element. Water is pure and fluid. It is so soft, it can take the shape of any form, however it is so strong, it can bring the mountains down if needed. We all need feminine energy, yes even if you are a man you need your feminine qualities and for women there is no other way! (oh boy, feminine energy is a topic I can talk on for hours, how society shapes it as evil, how confused we are in terms of being sexy and being feminine - they are different!, why we have to work on our sacral chakra for a happier life…) For today, I just want to remind you, that the more you surrender, the more it will help you to activate your feminine energy.
After 4 days of rest, my temperature came back down to normality, and I just realised the need to surrender for a bigger experiment, and basically did nothing with the trip… No flight, no bookings, no emails trying to get the money back… Just sleep and rest. 1 week later, on 5th Feb, I went back to hospital to check if I can fly. They made another blood test and lung x-ray and told me my immune system was better, I was free to fly.
We sat in the hospital and checked the possible flights for next week; the flights were obviously super expensive. There was only one option with the same budget; 10th Feb to the Philippines, the ticket price was unbelievably cheap.
What was the miracle here;
My initial plan was to start with the Philippines however due to eruptions on Taal Volcano in the Philippines, we booked Indonesia and said we would go there another year, one day. During my sick leave, they announced that it was safe with the volcano 😀
I had to postpone my official dates for sabbatical and my long sick leave was paid by the government (the doctor said it was their mistake to do 3 vaccines and gave a me a special report) the money I lost on bookings compensated itself.
I had limited time due to work, I realized even my luggage was not correct. I spend 5th Feb-9th Feb getting ready with ease and said proper goodbyes to my friends.
For me, the biggest benefit of sick leave was to realise the importance of BALANCE and REST. To be honest, I do not recall doing nothing for a very long time in my life, even in my sick days, I do something… laundry, email, reading a book… Just sleeping and resting helped me to boost all the energy I needed for sabbatical and for some crazy island hopping 😏
