This Is How You Change Your Story — You Surrender To It

This is about the relationship you have with yourself — and by virtue, the relationships you forge with everyone else, too.

You are the sole creator of your life — it is a direct reflection of who you are and what you think you deserve. Your life is not happening to you; it’s just happening haphazardly, and you’re simply defining it. The meaning is all yours, you are the company you keep and you seek what you know.

You get to distinguish whether circumstances will be lessons or blessings based on how you respond to them. You will continue to face the same conflicts until the lessons buried within them are cultivated, because you are facing the conflicts found within yourself. The quality of your relationships with others is directly related to the quality of your relationship with yourself.

The constant is you, and your stories won’t change until the stories you tell yourself change.

If your relationships are unhealthy, if your friendships are dramatic, if your finances are a mess, and if you’re perpetually dissatisfied with your job, then these are the choices you’re making (or not making). It is not every ex-boyfriend you’ve had that’s been crazy or your boss’ fault for your dissatisfaction at your work — you made the choice to date him and not someone else, or to work at this job and not somewhere else.

You may not be able to control if and when your Prince Charming comes along, but you sure as hell won’t meet him when you’re choosing to stay in a shitty relationship. He will see you, have his shit together (because real Prince Charmings do) and walk right on by because he sees that you don’t. Or, you’ll see him and think he’s too boring for you as you’re too busy being caught up with trying to fix Mr. Unavailable (because at least he’s exciting, right?).

When you care enough about yourself, you want to do better and you make choices that are aligned with what you want. It’s not that you didn’t seek happiness before, but you were too caught up in your own shit to see that the only thing standing in your way is you.

So — you start doing the work. You deconstruct the excuses you’ve interwoven to stay afloat, and you break down the arguments that keep you stagnant. You learn how to swim. You start growing and rebuilding. You dig deep into your wounds, clean out the infection, and let them heal. The antiseptic will sting and your flesh will take time to mend but I promise you, it can and it will. Because wounds only fester and ache when they’re not tended to or treated.

You look at your childhood and unearth the patterns that you blindly emulated. You disentangle yourself from your parents, your past and your pain. You do not look back in order to cast blame, but rather so that you can understand why you ended up attracting certain situations and people into your life. You learn about what you want, what works for you, and who you really are outside of the season you’re in. You begin to see your role in your conflicts, and you work on lowering your threshold for chaos.

This is how you change your story — you surrender to it.

Surrender happens when all other options fail. It is a response to having explored every other avenue and admitting that trying to fix or fight the toxic situations and relationships doesn’t work. If you look at the circumstances in your life as they are, you’ll soon recognize that there’s a reason you’re always trying to change them: they just don’t fit for you. Opposites may attract but they don’t sustain; you don’t have to change someone that you’re already compatible with.

Surrender happens from within. It means admitting that you’re tired of your own shit and you’re tired of the excuses for why you’re not choosing situations that honor you. It’s allowing yourself to admit that you want more for (and from) yourself. Surrender means taking responsibility and no longer blaming it on circumstances, external influences, or other people.

It is so much more empowering to own your shit, because then you can clean it up and create the life you want for yourself, not succumb to a life that’s always in response to someone or something else.