In last week’s article I introduced you to the concept of a Surrender Date. I promised this week that I would show you how to reach yours.
Your surrender date is merely a decision - a choice to embrace your natural born talent. It’s most likely one particular talent. A talent is a trait you are born with.
Examples of natural born talents:
When you read a document you have a unique ability to identify the mistakes. When driving a car you have great awareness of what is going on around you. When at a dinner party you are always a great conversationalist. When planning a two-day camping trip you naturally take care of all the logistics.
Your surrender date is the time in your life when you decide to use this above talent to earn a living. However, a talent is not enough to earn a living. You must spend hours and hours practicing your craft to convert it to a strength. A strength is a cashable talent.
I believe that one of your purposes in life is to develop a strength. Contrarily, if you do not honour your gift and use it, you are missing an incredible opportunity to add richness to yours and other peoples’ lives.
Surrendering does not mean you give up. It means you have faith that you are here for a reason and you do not have control over every thing. If you are addicted to control, you cannot surrender.
Can you have more than one?
Yes. But they are not all the same size. Think of a sailboat headed from New York to London. If the boat sails towards Africa it will need to make a big correction. If instead they have to divert their path to avoid a storm their correction will not be as large. Also, there are many small corrections needed on the way because a sailboat is never facing its destination.
It’s the same with you. Each correction a sailboat makes is like a surrender date for you. The further distance you have gone away from using your natural born talents the greater the significance of the surrender date. Ideally, you want to be having many mini surrender dates to stay on track.
How can you surrender?
Surrendering is an intuitive experience where you make a decision to pursue a gut feeling about what your natural born talent is. The way you develop your intuition is to make more decisions and make them on your own. If you have spent much of your life relying on others to make decisions or you are very afraid of making mistakes, your intuition is probably not very developed. You are an adult but your intuition is a child.
Be patient with yourself. Know that making more of your own choices will pay off no matter how old you are. Resist comparing yourself to others because many people have either naturally or intentionally committed to being independent decision makers.
Start small. Next time you buy groceries, choose a different type of ketchup. You might only choose Heinz because your mother used to buy it. Try to make another choice and notice what happens when you do.
This is step 1 in reaching your surrender date. The importance is not whether the other bottle is better or not-but rather the lessons you learn about your tastes along the way that are critical. The more choices you make the more lessons you learn and the more refined your intuition is.
