 Lately, I've been thinking about why some goals just happen without you really trying to kill yourself or really trying to go far out of your way to make them happen. You know, it's like the feeling sometimes of when you fall in love with someone and it just flows and it's just easy versus the feeling that so many people complain of which is having a strong arm love or make someone fall in love with you. So lately I've been reflecting the past few weeks on some of the biggest goals in my life and what actually was correlated with the success of those goals. You know, was the biggest factor really the grind? Was the biggest factor something else? And after looking at eight of my biggest goals that were the hardest, there were a few interesting things that I found out that I wanted to share with you here today. The most surprising correlation for my eight biggest goals was just one thing. It was my ability to recognize gut hunches and then chase those things that excited me. There was no correlation with my grinding and some of my wildest goals happening. There was no correlation with the hustle specifically by itself and me reaching those goals because we all know someone who has worked really hard towards a goal and despite their best efforts it never comes true. So I want to share some of those realizations here today and my first week of my year of surrender. First thing that I noticed I would say is that you know what I'm really tracking day to day is essentially how much excitement or resistance I feel to doing things. Right, that's my first thing. Do I want to do this or does this on tiring? And I'm trusting that things are going to work out. I'm not letting myself be scarcity minded with money or if I stop doing that my business will fail, anything like that. But one thing that pops up to me is that for people that begin doing this exercise of if I surrender and if I trust my gut well what do I work on that's exciting me and then the natural question is well how do you even really know what's exciting you because nothing feels exciting and I think this is a big problem that is specifically related to the fact that in our culture we don't train or ingrain this faculty which is really we don't train people to recognize how they actually feel internally. So if you don't know how you feel internally it's very difficult to recognize when you're on a date with someone. Do you feel like there's a special spark there or not? Most likely you're gonna reply I don't know or if you're going to some job and you're like is this really what excites me what I'm passionate about or I don't know. Ideally you feel a hell yes or no like people talk about on the internet but realistically what happens for most people is it's an I don't know it's not the worst thing in the world it's not the best thing and so we end up dating people we're not that into we end up taking jobs we don't really like when we build a life that our whole perspective about our own life is I don't really know is this just fine right but is that what you really want? Now the next thing I've been thinking about is you often cannot predict the best things in your life or the worst things in your life and this is the principle of non-linearity where that illness you probably could not have predicted whether it was your parents or your own and maybe meeting that person you end up dating or marrying for a long time was at a chance encounter at the coffee shop the laundromat at some kind of dinner party and so what do you do and how do you live your life if some of the best things in your life and the worst things in your life you cannot predict and therefore cannot control in the short run how do you live like that right because a goal-based mindset doesn't work for that and I was thinking about this a lot because you know for me the way I found the work that I'm the most passionate about which is you know Chinese medicine the way I found that was pure coincidence because I was actually reading Robert Green's book mastery and in his book as I was reading it I started getting these impressions basically I started feeling and remembering things almost and it was clear as day to me after reading that book now I had been killing myself for a decade to try to find out what I was passionate about and what my darned our purpose was I was really killing myself and guess what the goal-based approach didn't work and it was purely coincidental that I was reading this book and it came to me in a flash now I don't know if that's gonna be you or anybody else but the very fact that it came unplanned is the next aspect of this year of surrender for me I shared the story here of the last long-term relationship I was in I met the girl in Craigslist you know I posted an ad for a photographer and I got a good feeling from her email think about how crunchy new age that sounds and yet that was a really strong connection and a great relationship as long as it lasted and so in the same way I could not have predicted that and if I could I would have tried to control that but I couldn't and so the next thing for me I'm realizing in this year of surrender is that you don't have to plan out everything for great things to happen you know some of those things will just happen on their own and you can achieve those things without stress or without anxiety or without having to basically kill yourself to try to make everything happen now the last thing I wanted to point out that I've been learning is that you can often let go of the reins of it in life for the exact same outcome you know I'll give you an example a lot of people when they start dating somebody and they're really excited and they feel like that person is maybe not as committed or is maybe one foot in one foot out what do they do they double down they try to close the gap they text more they call more they try to get the other person to hang out more right because they feel that person going away and they try to increase the tension like the rubber band bring them back the problem is that often repulses people and the irony is that if a relationship to be honest is gonna work out it's probably gonna work out no matter what you do whether you're embarrassed it's weird you're nervous you're insecure the relationship is probably still gonna work out because the person is that person and you are this person and the little quirks and the little weird things and the things that you're insecure about probably are not gonna be the thing that really turns the tide for better or worse you know of course a miracle says those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait without anxiety and also says infinite patients produces immediate results and this is one of those examples where if you just let go of the reins a little bit that relationship still gonna work out what's still not gonna work out but it's you're still gonna get what you want without the anxiety and the frustration and things will just be fine regardless of what you do they're gonna be fine in many scenarios no matter how tight you hold on with a death grip or how loosely you let go so that is my week one update of my year-long surrender experiment I'm tracking it for a year I'll update you guys weekly check out that link right below this