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40: Stressed Out to Peaced Out: Let Go of Control Without Giving Up · The Everyday Awesome Project

• 0:25
  Polly Mertens: hey, superstars, welcome back polly here, and, uh, we don't have miss samantha today, so you just get a little lesson or some sharing from me, and at the time of this recording, my wonderful co-host, samantha pruitt, is across the pond in beautiful Nice, france, working at the Ironman World Championship.
• 0:47
  Polly Mertens: Go, ladies.
• 0:48
  Polly Mertens: So today, though, what I wanted to share with you is a little bit of a you know, everyday awesome project is a project.
• 0:58
  Polly Mertens: You know, when Samantha and I created this, we really knew that.
• 1:01
  Polly Mertens: You know what.
• 1:01
  Polly Mertens: Nobody's got it all figured out.
• 1:03
  Polly Mertens: Nobody's life is perfect.
• 1:04
  Polly Mertens: Nothing is, you know, and it's not meant to be right.
• 1:07
  Polly Mertens: Two of my words this year are expand and elevate, because I know that I'm continually expanding, evolving, growing and elevating.
• 1:17
  Polly Mertens: I'm, you know, as Maya Angelou said, when you know better, do better right.
• 1:22
  Polly Mertens: So what I wanted to share with you today our title is From Stressed Out to Peaced Out, the Practice or the Path of Surrender, and I'll tell you a little bit of what's going on for me so that we can dive into this and what this means.
• 1:38
  Polly Mertens: But basically, I've taken on a project, and it's a bit of construction project, because that's some background that I've had and helping coming midway into the project and things are delayed and behind and a little bit of, you know, clients upset, and so I'm, you know, smoothing the waters, getting the project back on track, but in the meantime, just getting up to speed very quickly midway in a project that's behind schedule and over budget and things like that.
• 2:04
  Polly Mertens: I find myself a little stressed out lately and one of the things that I notice about myself when the area of stress that shows up for me.
• 2:16
  Polly Mertens: So one of the things we'll talk about is the path of surrender.
• 2:19
  Polly Mertens: The practice of surrendering is just that, it's a practice.
• 2:24
  Polly Mertens: We get better at it, it's a muscle, it's an evolution, it's, you know, until you're Buddha or, you know, a Gandhi or whatnot.
• 2:32
  Polly Mertens: We continue to evolve and grow who we are.
• 2:36
  Polly Mertens: And so I'm, on this project, finding myself stressed out because the project has been delayed, clients been upset.
• 2:44
  Polly Mertens: You know there's digging out, if you will, and I feel the weight of the world or the weight of this project and getting things back on track and schedules and things like that and deliverables and things are arriving at the wrong time and what have you?
• 2:59
  Polly Mertens: So?
• 3:00
  Polly Mertens: A little bit of disorganization, a lot of bit of disorganization if I were real and I just noticed myself carrying the stress, and so, as I tell you this story, I want you to think about like, where in your life are you Maybe in a small way or in a big way, are you carrying some stress, or do you have a pattern of being stressed or allowing something in your life to stress you out?
• 3:22
  Polly Mertens: Right?
• 3:23
  Polly Mertens: So what is a trigger for you, whether it's, you know, someone criticizes you or cuts you off in traffic, or things don't go as planned, or the weather or travel, you know, delays what is stress for you or what is stressful in your life.
• 3:38
  Polly Mertens: So, as I'm noticing this state in my body, I just know it's not healthy to be carrying around this stress, and so I've been on a little journey, trying to do that inner work of, okay, what needs to happen here?
• 3:53
  Polly Mertens: Where is the growth in going from stressed out to pieced out?
• 3:57
  Polly Mertens: Because peace is my desired state, you know happy, peaceful, joyful, everyday, awesome, right?
• 4:04
  Polly Mertens: So stress has no place in this.
• 4:06
  Polly Mertens: It's huge damage to, I know, my nervous system and my body and immunity and all sorts of things Emotional body, physical body, spiritual body all are in a state of suffering and resistance when I am, quote, stressed out.
• 4:22
  Polly Mertens: So how do I go from stressed out to peaced out, right.
• 4:27
  Polly Mertens: And so I've been listening to a lot of people talk and reading and whatnot, and I just wanted to share with you what's coming more clear for me is, you know, I'm doing that inner work and noticing where the stress is being created in my own mind and a story I'm telling myself, right.
• 4:46
  Polly Mertens: So it's either, you know, stresses can be old expectations, sometimes they can be trauma, but they're always a story we're telling ourself.
• 4:56
  Polly Mertens: Right, this shouldn't happen.
• 4:58
  Polly Mertens: I'm running late, this person's a jerk, why is this plane, this company, always delayed?
• 5:05
  Polly Mertens: Whatever, it is right.
• 5:07
  Polly Mertens: And you know, it's that old adage of you know, taking the poison and expecting the situation to change or the other person to die, right is the classic metaphor.
• 5:19
  Polly Mertens: So stress is something that we I am taking on and have taken on, but not up to now.
• 5:26
  Polly Mertens: But I'm making a change.
• 5:28
  Polly Mertens: You know, I'm becoming more aware of where I'm creating stress.
• 5:33
  Polly Mertens: Or you know, if I look at the definition of surrender I just wanted to share this with you Two wonderful things helped me gain clarity.
• 5:44
  Polly Mertens: One is surrender is not weakness, right?
• 5:49
  Polly Mertens: And we think of oh, I give, I give, I surrender.
• 5:52
  Polly Mertens: Well, in a modern world of surrender.
• 5:55
  Polly Mertens: What we're talking about is it's actually a willful act, it is a choosing that you do, right.
• 6:02
  Polly Mertens: So the resistance almost comes up immediately.
• 6:06
  Polly Mertens: Or you know the body, the chemicals of the body, it spontaneously creates resistance because we have old trauma or expectations, or the story we're telling our ourselves that shouldn't happen, whatever it is.
• 6:20
  Polly Mertens: So surrendering is the definition, is ceasing resistance also giving over control, right?
• 6:30
  Polly Mertens: And so what am I trying to control in this situation?
• 6:35
  Polly Mertens: That is mine to control, and if it's mine to control, then great, do something about it.
• 6:41
  Polly Mertens: But it's also.
• 6:42
  Polly Mertens: I have resistance in my body and my emotional body, because I'm thinking that I should be able to control this, and there's things that I can't control.
• 6:52
  Polly Mertens: And so what I'm reminded of is an old phrase from a workshop I did called the Landmark Forum.
• 7:00
  Polly Mertens: And they say there's what's so, and then so what?
• 7:05
  Polly Mertens: Right, because what's so is what's so.
• 7:09
  Polly Mertens: And then there's the story we tell ourself about what's so right?
• 7:13
  Polly Mertens: So a person drives in front of you.
• 7:15
  Polly Mertens: You have to slam on your brakes because they, you know, cut you off if you will.
• 7:21
  Polly Mertens: That's the way you're looking at it.
• 7:23
  Polly Mertens: What a jerk, what an asshole.
• 7:25
  Polly Mertens: I'm going to be late.
• 7:26
  Polly Mertens: You know that's the story we tell ourself.
• 7:28
  Polly Mertens: Boom, that's where all the stress comes from, right.
• 7:31
  Polly Mertens: So the example for me is I look at this project and all these deliverables and a client who's been upset and things are not organized, and I'm just telling myself this story.
• 7:42
  Polly Mertens: I'm not going to get caught up, they're going to be disappointed in me, we're not looking good, we're doing a bad job.
• 7:50
  Polly Mertens: This isn't my standard of excellence.
• 7:52
  Polly Mertens: You know all these things and instead I can give over control of the things that I have no control over the vendors who deliver things, the contractors who do work for us, the schedule it's been behind, it is what it is and we're going to move forward.
• 8:10
  Polly Mertens: But the added stress and the story I tell myself is creating resistance in my body, and so surrendering is I'm giving over control of the things that are out of my control to the place where they belong to, whether it's the universe or other people, the situation, time, whatever I can allow, and in that act I find greater peace, right?
• 8:36
  Polly Mertens: So, as I reminded, if you haven't heard the serenity prayer, this is something that's very common.
• 8:42
  Polly Mertens: I think it's from Alcoholics Anonymous, but I'm not sure if that's where it originated, but you may have heard it before and it goes something like this this is my version, and you could add God or the universe or whatever, but grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
• 9:05
  Polly Mertens: So many good things in there.
• 9:08
  Polly Mertens: So grant me the serenity, grant me the peace, the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
• 9:16
  Polly Mertens: I am creating resistance in my body, I am removing myself from my natural state of peace or harmony inside and granting myself, grant me power, external power like help me remember these moments when the thoughts go awry, the old story, the old traumas.
• 9:38
  Polly Mertens: Allow me to grow through, go through and grow through this moment of resistance, but in that moment, have the wherewithal, the acceptance, the willfulness to let it go, to tell a new story, to accept the things I cannot change.
• 9:58
  Polly Mertens: I cannot change, and if I could, I have, I should act.
• 10:02
  Polly Mertens: I have the courage, I have the fortitude, I have the resourcefulness to act and the wisdom to know the difference right.
• 10:10
  Polly Mertens: And so sometimes we look at things in the world and we unfortunately think that we are in control of that and sometimes we're not.
• 10:21
  Polly Mertens: So it's making sure we know the difference and we have the wisdom to let go of those things that are out of our control, and defining that line.
• 10:31
  Polly Mertens: If there's something I can do, great, I'll take action on it, but it's finding that peace inside and trusting that peace is my natural state.
• 10:42
  Polly Mertens: And when I find myself in a state of stress, hold up.
• 10:45
  Polly Mertens: What is that?
• 10:47
  Polly Mertens: Where is it coming from?
• 10:48
  Polly Mertens: What is the story I'm telling myself?
• 10:50
  Polly Mertens: What is the old scar?
• 10:52
  Polly Mertens: What is the old wound?
• 10:53
  Polly Mertens: What's the trauma?
• 10:54
  Polly Mertens: What's the?
• 10:55
  Polly Mertens: I'm not good enough, I'm not enough.
• 10:57
  Polly Mertens: Whatever it is, people won't like me.
• 11:00
  Polly Mertens: Whatever you know, whatever the old inherent language that I've stored about myself or I've made true, that really isn't true, that I can let go right.
• 11:11
  Polly Mertens: And so I would ask you you know, as I've been asking myself as I look at the stress these last couple of weeks since I've taken on this project, how it feels in my body is just too high of a price to pay, way too high of a price to pay.
• 11:28
  Polly Mertens: So, instead of going day in, day out, going forward, I'm asking myself how can I practice surrendering, how can I practice reframing, retelling the story, allowing myself to relax and release in that moment what it is I think I need to control.
• 11:53
  Polly Mertens: That's truly out of my control and sometimes it's just being aware of like, oh, I can't control that.
• 11:59
  Polly Mertens: Okay, I used to have this job right after college and it's probably the most stressed out I've ever been, because I was a young person working in a job and we had deadlines and my boss used to listen to all my phone calls and critique me afterward.
• 12:17
  Polly Mertens: And there's this very deadline driven and it was.
• 12:19
  Polly Mertens: You know, I'm, I'm, I'm got a job, it's my first job and I just want to really understand, um, what is what?
• 12:28
  Polly Mertens: You know how to do this job in a way that provides good customer service?
• 12:34
  Polly Mertens: I want to do a good job, but I was so stressed out and then one day I said to myself and this, this job was, uh, we manufactured, um, uh, window curtains, some window curtains.
• 12:48
  Polly Mertens: They were very nice, very high end, um, but that's all we did.
• 12:52
  Polly Mertens: And I realized, my gosh, you know we're not doing brain surgery here.
• 12:59
  Polly Mertens: You know we're not keeping people alive, we're not life or death, emergency room stuff.
• 13:06
  Polly Mertens: And boy oh boy, after I started reframing the way I looked at things, the things I looked at changed.
• 13:13
  Polly Mertens: It started not to stress me out.
• 13:14
  Polly Mertens: It was like, okay, this is due this date.
• 13:17
  Polly Mertens: Oh it's late, okay, that's what's so.
• 13:19
  Polly Mertens: Okay, so what?
• 13:20
  Polly Mertens: Very sorry, client, here's the new date.
• 13:23
  Polly Mertens: Et cetera, et cetera.
• 13:24
  Polly Mertens: And do whatever you can to, you know, make amends, appease people, provide good quality service, et cetera, but not take it on like it was my fault or it was a problem that I had to solve because it was out of my hands.
• 13:37
  Polly Mertens: None of the dates of this production I had anything to do with.
• 13:40
  Polly Mertens: I just reported the news to someone and I could do that with compassion, but I didn't have to take on the stress of, oh, it's late, or oh, my gosh, what will they think?
• 13:52
  Polly Mertens: Or oh, they're so disappointed, or all this stuff.
• 13:54
  Polly Mertens: So I just wanted to share these things with you because if there's anything in your life and we all have it, and I'm sure you have stresses, whether they're, you know, with a capital S or a lowercase s, and sometimes they're small and they're happenstance right, so this practice of surrender, the path of surrender, you can use it anywhere in your life.
• 14:18
  Polly Mertens: So I would say there's a wonderful book that I absolutely love.
• 14:22
  Polly Mertens: One of my top three books of all time is called the Untethered Soul.
• 14:26
  Polly Mertens: The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer, and he does a lot of sharing and he's got classes and online materials about something he calls the surrender experiment, and I've never taken that course.
• 14:41
  Polly Mertens: I've taken some of his courses.
• 14:42
  Polly Mertens: I've read his book multiple times.
• 14:43
  Polly Mertens: I highly recommend it, but it's a lot of what he shares.
• 14:48
  Polly Mertens: So he talks about his life.
• 14:50
  Polly Mertens: He began doing quote the surrender experiment right, which was surrendering the ego, the ego self, to what's trying to happen.
• 15:00
  Polly Mertens: And it's it's.
• 15:01
  Polly Mertens: You know, it's very higher consciousness reading, a little too much to go into here.
• 15:08
  Polly Mertens: But I want to engage you and challenge you to look at any area of your life, any stresses that are ongoing, like mine the last few weeks, this project, that project that are creating stress.
• 15:22
  Polly Mertens: You're creating the stress, I'm creating the stress.
• 15:25
  Polly Mertens: Where can we let go of that stress, that resistance?
• 15:29
  Polly Mertens: Cease the resistance, give over control, allow things to unfold naturally One of my dear friends would say in divine timing right, divine timing right and just recognize that the price of stress, the cost of stress to your body, to your immunity, to your emotional body, it has no benefit, it's futile and it is out of your control what these things are that you're creating stress about, because if you could do something about it, you wouldn't be stressed about it.
• 16:04
  Polly Mertens: You just get about doing it right.
• 16:06
  Polly Mertens: So it's recognizing when things are out of our control is where we put ourselves back into a state of peace.
• 16:16
  Polly Mertens: So I invite you, as I'm taking on a bit of my own personal surrender experiment, to consider what in your life and by gosh, if you listen to any of the material from Michael Singer, he does a lot of wonderful interviews and there's something he's famous for saying and that is you know people have asked him.
• 16:33
  Polly Mertens: So you know I want to get better at the practice of surrender and you know the path of surrender.
• 16:39
  Polly Mertens: You know how do I find something to work on or what do I start, and he's like you know what Life is?
• 16:46
  Polly Mertens: Just one big surrender experiment.
• 16:47
  Polly Mertens: So he's like you know, really notice in your day and in your life where you're feeling good and then, in that moment when you don't feel good, you create resistance, you create a stressful moment.
• 17:04
  Polly Mertens: What are you giving over your power to?
• 17:07
  Polly Mertens: What are you making more valuable than your inner state of peace?
• 17:11
  Polly Mertens: What is the thing, the stressor, the old story that if you're willing and ready to release resistance, give over control, release it, work through maybe some old trauma or some old storytelling or some old conditioning that you're living with.
• 17:28
  Polly Mertens: That's not serving you, that's not serving me.
• 17:32
  Polly Mertens: And so, for me, as I take on this surrender experiment, I encourage you to join me if any of this has resonated.
• 17:40
  Polly Mertens: You know finding your biggest stressor, your triggers, what have you?
• 17:44
  Polly Mertens: Don't worry.
• 17:45
  Polly Mertens: If you can't think of one, just wait.
• 17:48
  Polly Mertens: Life is one big classroom.
• 17:50
  Polly Mertens: Something in your day, in this coming moment, is going to create some resistance in your body, in your psyche, in your consciousness.
• 17:59
  Polly Mertens: And in that moment can we rest with a breath, relax our nervous system so that we can get back to our highest state, our state of you know, peace and consciousness, and then act.
• 18:14
  Polly Mertens: And if there's something in that moment that is out of our control, giving it back to you know, the serenity, the peace within and letting go of that resistance.
• 18:25
  Polly Mertens: And I find that one of my fastest ways of doing that is telling a new story, and, as I explained about when I had that job after college, and I just would tell myself you know what?
• 18:39
  Polly Mertens: We're not the ER, we're not saving people's lives, people are not dying for these window shades, and so this project that I'm on and this construction and someone's house, you know what, nobody's going to die if it's another day or another week.
• 18:54
  Polly Mertens: Right In my mind it seems absolutely critical, but I'm into the surrender experiment, I'm taking this on and I invite you into the experiment with me.
• 19:06
  Polly Mertens: So what in your life could you begin the practice of surrender to and allowing you to go from stressed out to pieced out, because the price of your peace is not worth any amount of stress on your body, your psyche, your emotional body.
• 19:25
  Polly Mertens: You deserve to feel peace, I deserve to feel peace.
• 19:28
  Polly Mertens: I wish that for you.
• 19:31
  Polly Mertens: Okay, so if we had one thing in a wrap up here, as we love to do at Everyday Awesome Project, what is the one thing is?
• 19:39
  Polly Mertens: I just want to remind you, you know the serenity prayer.
• 19:44
  Polly Mertens: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can.
• 19:51
  Polly Mertens: Take action, do what you can and do all the things that you can, but have the wisdom to know the difference and recognize that the story you're telling yourself is likely, where the beginning of the change can come about.
• 20:05
  Polly Mertens: All right, inner warriors, everyday awesome project warriors, that's it.
• 20:12
  Polly Mertens: So, as we want to remind you as we close out, or as I close out, sending lots of love to my dear cohort, samantha Pruitt, I welcome you back so we can have episodes here together very soon.
• 20:25
  Polly Mertens: And you beautiful humans listening, remember how your life feels is more important than how it looks, and every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.