“When I find myself in trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be…”
Famous lines. I certainly heard them over and over again and yet, it is only when I fully embraced my spiritual journey that I started to understand their true meaning. I guess the first way that this was put in motion is when I learnt about karma. If the Big U was in charge of keeping scores, then it was no longer my job. What a relief! I no longer had to get outraged every time I thought someone did something wrong.
Mel Robbins reminded me of the importance of letting go as I was listening to her being interviewed on the Diary of a CEO. She shared that one of the pivotal moment for her was when her daughter had said those three simple words “let it be”, as Mel was getting all worked up about the details of her son’s prom.
This led me to remember the Serenity Prayer “God Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference”. What a profound prayer.
In my experience, the only thing you can change is YOU. You can’t change other people. You can’t control the economy. You can’t control the climate. You can’t control outcomes. You can’t control how people react to you and what you do. Lean into the wisdom that the only person you can change is yourself and start doing something about this now.
This, of course, has to be balanced with the fact that we need to get things done, so how do we do that? First by knowing that is down to you and what isn’t. I have been listening to the audio of Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets and one thing that stayed with me from her book, is the idea that you cannot measure whether a decision is right or wrong by its outcome. It has to be measured by the process that led you to make that decision. For me, that was a revolution. I had beaten myself up with all my failures in life and in business, but if I used Annie’s lens to analyse my decisions, I have a pretty sound decision making process. What I failed to understand is that I was never in control of the outcome. And that is my biggest learning curve right now.
Letting go of control was not easy for me. As a former lawyer, I guess I have been used to see an equation that went like this: I want A, so if I do B then C will happen – C being, I get what I want. It worked during my studies and for most of my career. It involved hard work. Once I was serious about embracing my spiritual path, it was like the whole system was put on its head. What I wanted no longer matter. I got what I needed. And believe me, there is a massive difference between the two.
I lose my job whilst pregnant from a boyfriend who did not want a child, and I was already a single mum of two. I had no chance of finding another job as a lawyer where I lived because I was pregnant (although apparently there are a few enlightened employers who do hire pregnant women) but more importantly I was not qualified to practice law in the country I lived in. I might have had a small chance in London but I had moved to Bristol, where there is not much international recruitment going on. In addition to that, I was going through a constructive dismissal process. If you don’t know, don’t bother finding out. It will stress you out. My entire family and my friends lived in another country and I had no friends in Bristol because I had recently moved there. I don’t know about you, but that’s a pretty serious stacking of odds against me. Call it a massive spiritual exam.
I had to let go. I had no other options. I had no answers. No certainty. I had to learn to control the only thing I could: my own thoughts. Talk about being thrown into the deep end of the pool. I love what my second spiritual mentor told me almost ten years later: “You were not tested. You were trusted.” Which is another way to say that the Universe never presents you any challenge that you cannot deal with. Thank you for trusting me so much Universe.
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