How Surrender Heals Your Nervous System

Have you noticed that surrender sounds easy when nothing important is at stake? But when it comes to your nervous system, your health, your future, letting go can feel reckless. Because some part of you believes that if you give up control, everything will fall apart. But what if that need for control is the very thing that's keeping you from healing. In this video, I want to share with you what surrendering actually means, how it rewires your nervous system, and how to know when to take action and when to finally let go. Let's get it started. Now, the first point I want to mention is that people mistakingly equate surrender to giving up. They think surrender is passive resignation. And if you were like me, some of your most proudest accomplishments came from working hard, from controlling the outcomes, from influencing the future. And surrender can often feel like you're being careless, like it doesn't matter to you. But I want to share with you that surrendering is not actually about giving up control. Surrendering is about controlling what's within your power and letting go of what's not within your power. And what made me realize that this form of surrender is actually a form of strength is that whenever we're trying to control, oftentimes we're trying to control because we're trying to prevent ourselves from feeling a certain way. Oftentimes that feeling is feeling helpless, feeling uncertain, feeling afraid, and controlling gives us the illusion that we can control those feelings and we can manipulate those feelings. Surrender is something very interesting because surrender removes that protection. And it asks you to face those feelings directly without running, without forcing, without collapsing. Have you ever noticed? Have you ever felt like the more you try to control something, the less control you feel, whether that's a situation or circumstance or a person. When I was going through the healing journey, I remember giving up on everything and just focusing on solving this nervous system problem. I was dealing with chronic symptoms and I told myself, I am going to figure this out. I'm going to control everything. I'm going to leave no stone untouched. I was taking supplements. I was signing up for all these different practitioners. I was doing anything and everything I could because I was committed to solving this problem. And what ended up happening was that I ironically began experiencing more symptoms because my nervous system was just stuck on protection mode. I felt less in control and I felt deeper into the cycle. I started developing habits that were keeping the cycle alive, but weirdly enough, whenever you let go of control, that's in many ways where you feel the most in control. The false sense of control is thinking I can only handle if this thing goes my way. If the symptoms go away or this situation happens exactly the way I want. But Surrender says, I may not control what happens, but I trust my ability to meet it. Do you notice how much more strength that takes? How much more vulnerability that takes? And that's why Surrender is a form of strength. And it's recognizing that when you surrender, you're surrendering with the idea that you don't know everything. That Surrendering is about giving up the notion that our expectations and reality might not be aligned. But recognizing that reality might have a better outcome than even our own expectations. And to give you an example of that, I want to share with you a story of what I mean by that because that can sound kind of abstract. When I was dealing with chronic symptoms, when the doctors were saying it's just anxiety, it's just panic or whatever it is, at that time I didn't know what even a nervous system was in this context. I just knew the nervous system was just something where the one part of the body talks to another and you know, it's how you engage with the environment. I didn't know that the nervous system was involved in, you know, these chronic symptoms at the time. And I remember going to doctors wishing that it was something medical. I was wishing that it was something wrong with me because at least if we had a name for it, if we had a diagnosis for it, then at least I can feel somewhat in control of resolving it. Now, I obviously know what it was. I was able to heal from it. We help people around the world healing from it. And I look back at that time and I say, I am so glad that it wasn't a medical issue. And I am so glad that it wasn't because it turned out to be anxiety, a hypersensitive nervous system. And that's that's fixable. That's solvable. But what I was trying to do in that moment was that I was trying so hard to control my situation. I was dealing with so much frustration. I was trying to find exactly what was going wrong with me because I wanted to have that sense of control. I wanted to have that sense of, you know, fixing this. And had I just surrendered early on, if I had just taken what the doctors had told me, I would have probably figured out the solution to this much quicker. I probably would have saved so much time, so much pain, so much anguish, so much suffering. If I just surrendered in that moment. And so it's about realizing that, you know, when things don't match your expectation and surrender feels scary, you don't know everything, right? In fact, what we know in life is much less like we know a small sliver of like what true reality is. The things that we don't know is orders of magnitude of what we do know. And so in these situations, you might not have the full picture. And so you might feel like you wanted to go a certain way, but that might not be the thing that serves you. In fact, the outcome might even be better than what you were expecting. That doesn't mean that you don't put in the work. That didn't mean that I didn't go to doctors. That didn't mean that you know, I had to focus on lifestyle adjustments and really evaluate, you know, what made me fall into this. That wasn't the thing that I avoided. I actually focused on that, but it was also learning to surrender in understanding what this was or trying to make this a medical problem, even though it wasn't one. Now, if this resonates with you, I want to break this down even deeper because there are levels to this, right? There are levels to surrendering and just healing your nervous system. I call this the three levels of nervous system mastery. The first level is survival mode. This is where most people are stuck. This is where they feel like no matter what they do, there are no control, no matter how much they try to fix this, no matter how much they try to solve this, everything they do, they just feel stuck. They feel like no matter what they do, they're helpless. This is in many ways where they feel like this is a, you know, they feel like a victim. They feel like this is happening to me. I have no control over this. When you feel like that, anxiety is a natural feeling, right? When you feel like you're not in control, well, you know, anxiety, depression, that's natural because you can't influence your future. You no matter how hard you try. So what's the point? So that's the first level. The second stage is agency. And if you watch this channel, you know, it's about learning how to respond to your symptoms. How do you show up to your symptoms? You know, what are you able to control? It focuses on your response because your response is something you can control. And what happens is that people kind of go into this response mode and they're able to respond and then they start feeling better. So what they start doing is that they try to control their response even more. So they start controlling, they start responding and they see progress because they're actually able to control the thing that is, you know, causing their symptom, which is, you know, how they're responding to the anxiety. But then there's a third stage. This is called nervous system mastery. Responding alone will only take you so far. It's also learning about how in this stage, nervous system mastery, it's learning to let things go and letting God the universe, Allah, whatever your relationship is to the divine source, letting those things come to you. Have you ever had situations where like, you know, you had a problem and you just happened to meet the right person to solve that problem? Or, you know, you were really ready for, you know, a relationship or you feel like, you know, I'm ready for the next chapter in your life. And serendipities and synchronicities just happened. There's no way you could have planned this. There's no way you could have controlled your way into this. So the third level of mastery is being able to respond to what you can, but also letting go to the universe and letting things come to you where you're able to take action from a place of ease, not from a place of tension, where, okay, I needed to go a certain way. I need to make a go a certain way or I need to fix this or it has to go this way. Otherwise, it's wrong. You do the best you can. You focus on the response and then you kind of move with the current. You see where things go. You know, you're not so committed to certainty. You learn to let go and sit with with the uncertainty at times. This third level of mastery is where surrendering comes in. Now notice in level three of mastery, they're not just like not putting in the work, they're not putting in the action, they are putting the action. They are focusing on what they can control. But they are also letting things happen to them, letting things happen on their own timeline. One of the things you'll learn about nervous system healing, about anxiety recovery, about all these things is that healing comes to you. You can put in all the action, you can put in all the work, but then there's a part of the healing journey that it comes to you. There's nothing more you can do. And you know, your nervous system is going to take as long as it needs to heal. The same way your leg will take as long as it takes is the needs to heal. All you can focus on is your response, staying committed, living your life, and healing comes to you. And this is where surrender is very important. Now again, this might all make sense, you know, abstractly from a concept, but when things feel uncertain, when things seem scary, when you know, you're really scared, how do you apply surrendering? And this is something that I don't find a lot of people talk about. So I want to give you a framework of how to surrender because you do have some control over this. I want you to look at surrendering in this way. Your job is just to hold the vision that you want in your nervous system without collapsing in fear, overthinking a resistance. So if you want to heal from that chronic symptom, if you want that job, if you want that life, that quality of life that you wanted, you hold that vision in your nervous system. And you don't collapse into fear overthinking or resistance. See, the problem is is that whenever you have that desire, you start kind of developing like an adversarial relationship to it because the brain starts thinking, oh, I'm not as far along as I should be, or hey, is the symptom still there? Oh, I've tried so many things and I haven't healed. So this might mean that I'm like this forever. So the brain kind of goes into why this doesn't work and why this is wrong. But when it comes to surrendering, when it comes to letting go, your only job is to hold the vision in the nervous system without collapsing into this. And I remember when I learned this principle when I was on my healing journey early on, once I understood what was going on, one of the things that I had a hard time with was going back to work every time I would go to work, I couldn't work for more than like a couple of days because my symptoms would come back. I would basically leave work. I would come home because I felt like if I pushed myself too hard, I thought I would die. And so the symptoms were so intense, I felt like my nerves were always on fire. I was dizzy. I was dealing with brain fog. I didn't look good. I felt dehydrated. I felt all these different things. I would just leave work and I would just come home and I decided after I understood what was happening and I was slightly getting better that, you know, what I'm going to work and I'm going to like not stop working no matter what. And I really made that commitment. I said, you know what? No matter what, I'm in control of not leaving and I'm just going to continue working no matter how I feel. And I remember I got this job at Best Buy where, you know, I was basically working minimum wage. And the reason why I was working at Best Buy was because I couldn't really handle a lot of responsibilities really. At that time, Best Buy was the only place I was willing to hire me, you know, because I was going through this. And so, you know, I'm really lucky that Best Buy gave me the opportunity at the time because it gave me a very valuable lesson. And that lesson was is that when I was working at Best Buy, I had one of the roughest setbacks I'd ever had in my life. And these symptoms, like I was experiencing such intense symptoms. I was dealing with heart palpitations. And I actually felt like my nervous system was on fire. It was the weirdest thing. I literally felt like I am going to die. And usually when this happened in the past, I would go home and I would quit. And I remember telling myself, I'm like, you know what, I'm not going to quit. I'm not going to do it this time. And I had just basically surrendered to the feeling. And, you know, when you're going through this, it's not just the physical symptoms that you're dealing with. It's not just the panic attacks that you get. It's also the thoughts that you experience. And I remember the thoughts that I was getting where, oh my god, I'm going to die. Okay. If I die in this Best Buy, where should I fall so that the ambulance can come pick me up in case, you know, somebody calls the ambulance? I was that convinced that, you know, these symptoms, you know, like we're so intense. And by the way, I'd gotten everything ruled out by my doctor. It wasn't like I was being reckless. Literally, I'd gone to the doctor so many times. They basically told me, Sean, stop coming here. I remember just allowing the feelings, not resisting them and just working. And I remember, I was working the evening shift. So I was working till really late at night. And what had happened at the time I didn't realize what was happening was that my body was just basically releasing all this adrenaline. And that's why I was experiencing all these intense sensations, right? And so my body was burning off that adrenaline because I wasn't resisting. And I wasn't running away from the situation. And what happened was is that my body burnt through all the adrenaline. And towards the end of my shift, I started feeling okay. And I started feeling normal. And I was like, oh my god, this went away on its own without me needing to control anything, without me trying to fix this, without me getting involved at all. And I remember that was such a wild night. I remember after work, I had eaten all day because like I was dealing with such intense anxiety. My appetite had disappeared. And I remember it was really late at night. I think it was almost maybe 10 or 11 o'clock, something like that. And I remember I was like, I need some food. And so I ended up going to like a Chick-fil-A drive-thru, just order some food and just ate in my car. And from the outside, you might look at me and you know, you might even feel sorry for me. You might just be like, dang man, this person's really going through a rough time. But believe it or not, that was the best day of my life. Honestly, like I look back at that date as like one of, if not the best day of my life because for the first time I realized, oh my god, this problem that I have is actually solvable. The only thing that was getting in the way was me. I was constantly needing to try to control things. I was trying to fix things. And if I could just step out of the way and you know, just let my body do what it needs to do, let my nervous system do what it needs to do, this is going to pass on its own. It was one of the most transformative days of my life. Now, to be quite honest with you, did I have difficult days after that? Yeah, there were some days I had setbacks. There were some days I questioned everything. There was days that I wondered, okay, was that enough for, you know, was I further along or, you know, am I not as far along as I thought? But that was a milestone in my healing journey. And the big part of it was just learning to surrender and, you know, just facing it head on. And it was such a transformative experience that I utilize and I think about that experience anytime I feel uncertain, anytime I feel fear or I'm worried about, you know, what's going to happen, you know, with my company or, you know, this or that or anything that, you know, it's just meaningful to me in my life right now that has nothing to do with anxiety. I always come back to that moment and I was like, you know, just let go. Whatever, you know, you believe it, it's more about the relationship to it and it's learning to trust and let go put in the work where you can and just learning to, you know, like have trust, have faith and recognize that what you want in life doesn't come from, you know, your imagination. There are things that you don't know and that what you want in life might actually be even better than what you were expecting. You know, for me, if I just recovered, if I just healed, that for me would have been a success. My measurement of success was, can I go back to living and nobody ever knows that I ever went through this because I was so ashamed of what I went through. But look what it's given me so much more. Not only can I live life even more profoundly than before, but it's given me purpose. It's given me meaning. It's giving me, you know, something which is to help you, you know, we have an amazing program. Like it's given me everything I wanted and more. All my desires, it's, you know, given me because of this experience, but at that time, I was hoping it wasn't that at that time I was trying to control. At that time, I was wishing it was something else. At that time, I was wondering, why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? Once I was able to surrender and let go, this gave me so much more. And I want you to realize that whatever experience you're going through, you might wonder why this is happening to you and, you know, will it be okay? But after going through this years ago and, you know, you know, just experiencing life, these kinds of situations might seem scary in the moment. They might seem, you know, you might not have an answer for it. But if you can just trust and if you can have faith and if you can go into the unknown, knowing that no matter what happens, things will be okay. That you don't need to feel a hundred percent certain before jumping in. You don't need to have proof before releasing control. If you can focus on what's in your control and just let go of the rest, where you're going to find that you don't need to chase recovery. You don't need to work so hard on healing in many ways will come to you and healing will come to you with more ease with less effort. And so that's what I want for you in the ceiling journey. Let me know what you think about this video and if you want more resources on the healing journey, there's a bunch in the description box below. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one.