I like to set a theme for each new year so that I have a goal to stretch toward. This year the word is SURRENDER.

It seems that every piece of literature I pick up has been calling me to surrender. I just finished reading The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer, a book I stumbled upon in the library while browsing. In the book, Singer describes the journey he embarked on as a young man to surrender his choices to whatever life brings him - to say yes to new opportunities even when he felt like saying no. He asked himself, “what would happen if we respected the flow of life and used our free will to participate in what’s unfolding, instead of fighting it?” He said yes to building a house for friend, even though he had no training, which eventually led to a profitable construction company. He said yes to allowing people to share his space in the woods - a space he built for solitude and meditation - which grew into a 900 plus acre complex housing the Temple of the Universe. He said yes to programming an application for a couple doctors’ offices which led to a software company that would become valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. Every “yes” did not become a success. But participating with the flow of life instead of trying to manipulate it or resisting it when life threw changes at him, took him on an amazing journey. “Challenging situations create the force needed to bring about change,” Singer writes. “The problem is that we generally use all the stirred-up energy intended to bring about change, to resist change. I was learning to sit quietly in the midst of the howling winds and wait to see what constructive action was being asked of me” (Singer, 2015).

Other literature has jumped out at me. Words calling me to let go of the tight control I try to keep on my life. “Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track. Don’t assume that you know it all” (Proverbs 3, The Message). “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes” (Matthew 6:34, The Message)

For someone who feels great responsibility toward my business, toward my family, toward my students, these words punched me in the gut. Am I doing more harm than good by my constant planning?

Looking back on my life most of what I have accomplished has been by saying “yes” while having no real idea of what I was getting into. I tried to become a non-profit manager but ended up serving as CIO of a startup tech company. The job market was bleak in the mid nineties and admittedly I had no idea how to find a job, so I had accepted a temp job to help a local company with marketing. They hired me full-time to help with customer management and reporting. When I got tired of faxing reports to clients I created a web application from a free disk I got in the mail (Microsoft IIS) that would let them retrieve the reports themselves. That software eventually became the flagship product of the business which grew for 15 years until we were purchased by a Fortune 500 company. Today, that software brings in millions of dollars in revenue for the company.

When my family and I founded a coffee shop, my vision was for it to be a small counter selling coffee beans, making lattes, and brewing coffee. Today, it occupies an 11,000 square foot building and has expanded to include ecommerce and coworking.

My plans are usually wrong and instead, life happens. Is surrender the key to a life well-lived? Does God bring order to the universe much better than I ever could with all my planning, my MBA, and the business classes I teach? After writing that sentence I laughed. Of course God would create better order than me. The question is - do I truly believe He is at work?

Surrender does not mean accepting others bad behavior. It means letting go of my manipulation of life and instead accepting challenges as opportunities for growth.

This year is my year of living dangerously. It is my year to say yes to the life force of the universe and surrender my plans to what life brings me, to what God brings me.