Today I came across a quote on IG, by @elizabeth_gilbert_writer, who wrote the famous Eat Pray Love book. 

You are afraid of surrender because you don’t want to lose control. But you never had control; all you had was anxiety.

Bam! That hit me like a truck. It was a deep introspection-stirring moment.

I think as a Type A personality, I was always that annoying, over-achieving, strong-willed friend or colleague; always unsatisfied, always needing control and autonomy, and hard-working to the point of killing myself. All because of I didn’t want to lose control on how I run my life.

Because surrender is scary.

For me at least. Looking back, I had at least wrote about #surrender three times already, and this theme had surfaced repeatedly in my life recently. 

I always thought if I can have more control, then I won’t have to surrender. I will have things done in a way that’s beneficial to myself, and I won’t get hurt or damaged, in any way. 

But looks like Miss Gilbert was right. All I had in the end was not more control, but mounting anxiety. All from harbouring expectations of control on circumstances and people where I really had none to speak of. In fact, the harder I gripped, the worse blowback I received, on my health especially. 

It’s the natural law of inversion, right smack in my face. I got to—have to—”gently loosen my white-knuckled grip on life”, it seems.

Relax, nothing is under control.