Claim Your Awesome

How Surrender Leads to a Life of Joy, Fulfillment and Abundance

• Jessica Hook • Episode 23

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Have you ever wondered what might unfold if you loosened your grip on life's reins? Today I'm guiding you through the liberating journey of surrendering to your truest self and the surprising joy that comes with it. This episode is not just about releasing control but also about discovering the boundless abundance that awaits when you authentically align with your highest purpose. We'll navigate the often-overlooked pathways to fulfillment that are available to each of us, breaking through the invisible barriers holding us back from living a life teeming with joy and possibility.

Through personal anecdotes and moments of profound insight, I'll share the unexpectedly beautiful outcomes that arise when we stop clinging to specific desires and start flowing with life's unpredictable nature. From the freedom that comes with detachment to the collective benefits of prioritizing well-being, we'll explore the practical aspects of surrender and the magic it can bring to our daily experiences. Join me as we learn the art of letting go, and embrace a way of living that is not only more joyful but also immensely satisfying. This isn't about giving up on dreams—it's about trusting the process and finding happiness in the journey toward them.

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Speaker 1:

Hello, welcome back to Claim, your Awesome. I'm your host, jess, and if you're new here, I am your guide in supporting you in manifesting a life that feels truly joyful and expansive and fulfilling and abundant, because that's available to each and every one of you, and getting there is really so much simpler than we've been led to believe, right, we've been led to think that these magical lives, these deeply joyful lives, are only for, you know, select few people, right? Or you know people who just seem to have it all figured out, and that couldn't be further from the truth. And really, it's truly about coming back to who you are meant to be in this lifetime and really showing up in your most fullest, truest, most authentic version of who you are. That will start to attract all of the things that you want into your life, and I really don't like to always get so into attracting some of these really big, physical, tangible manifestations, even though I know that is what so many people want, right? They want to be shown how to manifest the money. They want to be shown how to manifest. You know the partner, the thing, but the truth is it's when you feel so freaking good about who you are and how you're showing up and how you're living. Right, you're embodying the very things that you want. Right, you're embodying abundance. You're so grateful for everything you have in this moment. You're seeing the joy everywhere. Right, it's when you are living as that person that everything comes. And however, you also then realize like, oh, it's never about the thing anyway, right, it feels so good to just be in this place and this is really the real magic, right, and then it's like everything is possible and it's just, it's so fulfilling, it's so exciting, so expansive, it feels really good.

Speaker 1:

So today we are really diving into, in my opinion, one of the hardest aspects about manifestation. So, with manifestation, it's really about getting crystal clear on exactly what it is that you want and then coming back into, right, like, your authentic self, showing up as a person that has that, taking action, letting go of any resistance you may have around the thing that you desire. Right, and I know you may be listening to this, depending on where you are in your own manifestation journey, your own manifestation practices. So often we're like well, I don't have any resistance around wanting more money in my bank account, right, like it seems so illogical, but it's unfortunately just not true because we're mainly operating from the subconscious, and if there is anything in the subconscious that fears getting the thing that we want, that thing will not show up in our lives until we work through the fear, the resistance, the limiting beliefs, whatever that may be. And then it's all about surrendering. It's all about letting go, to letting go of the very thing that you want in the first place, and this is the hardest part, in my opinion. This is the hardest part because if we want something, it doesn't even make sense that we should let it go right.

Speaker 1:

So often people think well, if I let it go, does that mean that God, the universe, doesn't think I want it anymore, doesn't think I care about anymore? And it's not that at all. It's truly, when we let go of the very thing that we want, we release any remaining resistance around it, and then just magically, it just appears right, in the most maybe surprising way, in the most delightful way, in the most random way, right, whatever it may be. It shows up when you're least expecting it, and it always comes when you've just let it go, when you've just not worried about it. So I want you to even start to reflect on this in your own life and again, depending on where you are in your own journey around this, your own journey around things that you want, maybe you can say well, I've never received something by letting it go. Well, you can dive into that a little bit more, right, is that true? Have you truly let it go right?

Speaker 1:

I can tell you for certain that simply saying, ok, I'm just going to surrender to this, I'm just going to let it go right, that's not enough, right? You can't trick the way that your body feels, right? So you can, mentally, logically in your mind, you can declare or say I'm letting it go, I'm surrendering it. But if you truly aren't surrendered, it doesn't matter, right? Because then there's still this level of resistance, or we're trying to force it, we're trying to force, I'm just going to surrender, I'm just going to let it go so that it shows up. Right, we are doing it to then receive the very thing that we want. And it just doesn't work that way. Unfortunately, it doesn't work because, again, you're not truly surrendered, right? It's like, ok, I'm just going to surrender, I'm just going to let it go, and then in a week, the thing that you want still hasn't shown up and you're like but I've surrendered when is it right. And that's exactly how you know that you're not fully surrendered. When you're still looking for it to then show up, you're still wondering OK, I'm surrendered, but where is it right? The second you start to get into the questioning of where it is or why it hasn't shown up yet. You haven't fully surrendered.

Speaker 1:

So, really, truly, it is about surrendering, it's about letting it go and for me, it's really just allowing yourself to be in the flow of life. And I'm bringing this up today because this has just been really a huge thing for me personally in my life lately, where I would say over the last few weeks, I have just really felt so surrendered. And what is so different about these last few weeks is in the past it's been OK, I'm just going to surrender, I just need to surrender. Right, there has been a pressure that I've put on myself to surrender. But the difference with this is I have just felt a state of surrender. I have not tried to surrender, I just feel surrendered, I just feel in the flow, I just feel a sense of ease and peace and a detachment from the goal, a detachment from how I'm going to get to the goal. And this is freaking lovely, right, and I have definitely had moments like this, moments where I feel super aligned with my purpose and I feel super aligned with how I'm showing up and I'm sure you have too and it feels really good and really expansive.

Speaker 1:

But this level of flow, this level of ease, this level of detachment, for me personally feels bigger, it feels different, and I say that I wanna be super transparent, right, like I'm on this journey too. I am not some sage that has it all figured out right, I don't know, but I love this journey. The journey, for me, feels so freaking fun and good. That doesn't mean that I don't have a bad day, right, I'm actually kind of having a crummy week this week and I was debating showing up, but that's part of it, right, like that's part of being in the flow of life. That's part of just embracing whatever wants to be presented to you, right, and then not being attached to it, right, so we can choose to not be attached to goals, right, we can choose to not be attached to how we're going to get to a goal, right. That's one way to really be in flow.

Speaker 1:

And then the second part of that is not being attached to life circumstances, to life situations, to things that happen to you, to something that someone says to you or says about you. Right, this doesn't mean that we don't have healthy boundaries and we don't stand up for ourselves or that there shouldn't be some level of like quote, unquote justice in the world. This is not what I'm saying. I don't mean that we let things go that shouldn't have some sort of circumstance or repercussion around it. It's not like that. It's not about bypassing it. This is knowing that you, and only you and only you, get to choose how you feel. Right, you get to choose how you observe life. You get to choose. You know, when something comes at you, you can recognize it for what it is, but not get lost in the story of it.

Speaker 1:

Not get lost in I think on the last episode I was talking about, you know, being really in this victim mindset. Right, it's like you don't have to get absorbed into the thing. Right, you just really can take a step back and observe it as it's happening. Right, take it for what it is. Right, being here in this moment is the most powerful thing that you can do for yourself, because in this moment we don't need to judge it, we just see it as it is right, something has happened. Someone said something about you. Right, that has already happened. We don't need to get like, lost in that story. What you can do, you know what is really healthy, especially like, if you're you know, I'm not gonna get lost in this story. We're not bypassing, like, are you triggered by that? What is triggering about it? Right? What is it bringing up in you? Right?

Speaker 1:

That's where really being in this moment and again detaching yourself from it, but then just going inward and seeing what wants to, you know, present itself to you in this moment, is super helpful, because that's always wisdom, right, that's always inner wisdom guiding you to the next evolution of you and you can't ever go wrong. I don't want to go necessarily on a long diatribe about that, because that could be a whole another episode about how we don't really need to get caught up into again the stories and the situations and make them mean anything about us. But again, we'll save that for another day. But it truly is about just living completely detached. And it's so interesting because on a spiritual perspective or on a spiritual standpoint, there's no separation, we are all connected, and it's something so beautiful when you can allow yourself to feel that, and we feel that again by always going inward, to feeling connected to something bigger than ourselves, feeling connected to the whole of everything. It feels so good when you can, whether in meditation or maybe just getting out on a walk in nature. However, you can connect to that. That is such a powerful thing in practice to do.

Speaker 1:

And then, on the flip side, it's about being detached from the meanings of things, being detached again from goals and outcomes, and truly allowing life to be lived through you trusting that everything is exactly as it's meant to be. And this can be so hard, I know. I know that we can definitely see how life sometimes doesn't seem fair and life can be really challenging and really hard. But the more you can cultivate this inside of you, the more you can again surrender to the flow of it all, surrender to the highest purpose, surrender to really taking this to more of maybe like a career standpoint or an abundance, like a financial well, financial abundance standpoint, to an entrepreneurial standpoint. Really, when you can just surrender to like what am I meant to do? How am I supposed to get there? This is what I want, but how do I get there?

Speaker 1:

We get caught up in needing to know the answers, we get caught up in the how, but it's so much more beautiful when we're just like. I don't need to know right now. I don't need to know what feels alive to me in this moment. What is the next thing? Sometimes, the next thing is allowing yourself to slow down, giving yourself permission to stop forcing things, to stop forcing that next right step, and instead slow down and see what wants to come up. This is truly like about you. Your whole life is about you. Right?

Speaker 1:

It sounds maybe super selfish as I say this, especially for women, especially for mothers, right, but when you can live from this place where you are doing what is for your highest good, it naturally is for the highest good of everyone else around you, and not even everyone else like in your immediate sphere, your family and your friends, but truly for the greatest good of humanity. I don't talk about that enough, but that is what we're all here for, right? We're all connected. It is like us needing to be selfish, us needing to live as our truest selves for the greatest good of humanity. Right, and the more each of us can do that it will raise everyone else up. The world will become a different place. Who knows? I feel like there's a ton of fast growth and expansion and raise in consciousness happening right now. I would love to see how this works out in my lifetime. But who knows? Right, we can't fully predict what that looks like.

Speaker 1:

But, truly, if you're listening to this and you're thinking that that feels very selfish to you, that's your work, right. Start there. What feels selfish about that? Where are you not giving yourself permission? Why are you not giving yourself permission? Right, you are inherently worthy of anything and everything you want, and it starts within. It starts with you doing the self mastery. It starts with you releasing the resistance. It starts with you coming back to who you truly are here to be and how you're here to show up and your greater purpose in the world, because you have one right and the second. You allow yourself to explore that, and again from a place of surrender right, from a place of.

Speaker 1:

I don't need to know all the answers. I know life has a bigger mission for me. I know life has a bigger purpose for me and I just want to be in the movement of that. I just wanna be in the flow of that. I just want to allow that to pour through me in whatever way is meant to be, and the second, you can really do that. Oh my gosh, it is like a high. There is something so good about that. There's something that feels so freeing about that. Right, it's so freeing when we stop trying to control everything in our life. It is so freeing when we just surrender to what is meant to be right, because, think about it, even when you're trying to control everything, there are still highs and lows in life.

Speaker 1:

Right, it is human nature. It is the nature of our mind, the nature of our ego, to want to keep us safe, right, so we want to be in control. If we are in control, we're safe. It's just like when me and my husband are driving down the road and I'm sitting in the passenger seat and I'm so tired but I'm afraid to let myself fall asleep because I think by somehow, if I'm awake, I can make sure my husband, who is 42 years old, can drive this car safely for us. Right, it's like my need to control and be aware of everything and make sure everything is okay to keep us safe, right, to keep me safe. Again, it's human nature. But you can start small, right, where can you start to let go of? Maybe it's simply, you can see, where am I really holding on so tightly and it's not serving me? Where am I constantly trying to control but it's not giving me the outcome that I want? Right, because, again, it doesn't matter if we're controlling every single aspect of the day. Life happens right. Life freaking happens, and really the beauty lies in just embracing all of it, trusting that it's always for your greatest good, right, trusting that sometimes the lesson that we learn in this lifetime might not even be for this lifetime but for the next one or the next one after that. Right, we don't know. Right, none of us know. But I do know for certain that life gets to feel so much easier and so much lighter and so much more joyful when I am not so stuck in how I'm gonna make something happen when something needs to happen by right. I.

Speaker 1:

A couple of years back I guess this is the second year of the pandemic I had wanted to purchase, with my husband, an investment property. I had been a stay-at-home mom. The pandemic turned me into a stay-at-home mom and I was really just like. I love to create, I love to have ideas and bring them to fruition, like. Hence why I am obsessed with manifestation and why I'm obsessed with helping other women figure out how they can manifest the things that they want in their life, like. I am so lit up about ideas and insights that come to me and I am obsessed with figuring out if that's something I wanna pursue and that's just who I am, and I love being in the flow of all of that. It's so fun.

Speaker 1:

So during the pandemic, I felt very stifled creatively. I, you know, I just I had all this energy and I couldn't figure out where it wanted to go. Right. Was it a business? Was it this? I didn't have a ton of clarity, but I was starting to kind of get excited about this idea of purchasing an investment property. At the time it was specifically something for a long-term rental, maybe a duplex or a triplex, something like that. And I was really like gung-ho about this idea and my husband, you know he was getting on board with me but he, you know, had some hesitations and but he was really letting me kind of like lead this a little bit. I was on meeting with the realtor, I was going and looking at properties and I really, really, really really wanted to make it happen and it just didn't seem like it was right. It like some of the properties that I was seeing, I had a decent feeling about them, but there was always just something tugging at me where it was just like it wasn't right.

Speaker 1:

And finally, you know, this had been going on for about six months through the summer and then, finally, the school year was starting and I was just basically thinking I'm going to take a break from this, I'm not going to force this anymore. If it's meant to work out, it will. We're not going to worry about it, right? So then school starts and then, as you know, the holidays are here, right? You just get swept up in all the things with your kids and the timing of everything. And come the new year, my husband had started watching someone on YouTube who does Airbnb's as investment properties, and also I am in human design. My strategy is responding right. So I need to respond to different things. See how I feel lit up by them, and that is basically what I need to do to grow and make decisions and how I need to be going through life. So, just to kind of throw that little piece in here and I was like, okay, well, maybe an Airbnb sounds interesting, and the second that I get even remotely excited about something. I'm on it, I'm researching, I'm doing the thing. I kid you, not within three weeks probably.

Speaker 1:

We were under contract on an Airbnb. We ended up, very long story short, we ended up getting it for under asking, which this was in 2022, when the housing market was insane and interest rates were starting to like rise. So quickly it was. It just all happened so quickly. All came to fruition so quickly. We got an incredible property and we are currently in the process of completing a second floor renovation. The property didn't have a second floor. When the owner had had the house built, his wife passed away and he decided that he only needed to live on the first floor. So we basically bought a Cape Cod style house with this unfinished second floor. So not only did we get the house under asking, but once the second floor is finished, we will probably have over $200,000 in equity, or a little bit more than that, in the house, right, so it has worked out even better than imagined.

Speaker 1:

When I was doing the math and doing the calculation on some of these longer term rental properties that we were considering, we wouldn't have had this sort of return on our investment and it just happened so much easier and so much quicker when I wasn't trying to force it, when I was just like, again, whenever it's meant to happen, it'll happen. And, as always, like, how can it be easier? How can we have more fun with this? Right, I always go back to the story that I want to tell, the story when I'm 80, when I'm 90, when I'm 110, what is the story I want to tell? And I ditched the how right I'm so surrendered. I know the big picture, what I want and I want to be just enjoying the adventure. I want to be along for the ride, because I know it's so beautiful when you allow yourself to do that.

Speaker 1:

So, again, think of what are you holding on to right now, especially as we have a huge eclipse coming up in April this time? This so much of healing and letting go and just doing that in our work to see what isn't serving me. Where is my highest self calling? What is my highest potential? Am I allowing myself to live as that person? Which do I need to let go of to live more as that? Now, right, staying super clear on again, that bigger vision for your life, maybe even giving yourself permission to say yes to that bigger vision, to the biggest vision, right.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes that alone can feel really hard, depending on where you are, again, in your own journey and what you have going on. So use all of this again as knowledge and insight in your own practices. Just see what doesn't look the way I want it to look in my physical reality, in my external reality. It's always an inside game. It's always about going in, releasing the resistance and surrendering to the rest, and it really gets to be that simple. It really gets to be that easy, right. Something that I'm constantly working on is letting go of the idea that it isn't that easy, right. So maybe even for you, feel into that right.

Speaker 1:

Again, we've been conditioned for a really long time that we have to work really hard for everything in life, right. But play this little game, right, like, how does it get to be easier? What would it look like if I allowed it to be easier? Right, these little mind games and these little fun ways that you can talk to yourself will start to bring so much insight, will start to bring more and new creative thoughts, right. Will start to ultimately reprogram your mind so that you can freaking love your life, right. It's not about necessarily creating this life that looks so different than how it does now and then we'll be happy. It's like figuring out where you can feel so good now and letting that then create the life right.

Speaker 1:

It's always an inside approach, it's always an inner journey, it's always self-mastery and it's so fun, right, it doesn't have to be as heavy and it doesn't have to be as scary and, again, even just surrendering to that right. So I invite you to give this a try, practice it. See if there's one little thing today you can truly let go of. See if there's one thing today that you can surrender to. Sometimes it's something small, sometimes it's something big, sometimes it's an emotion, right, there's, you know, sometimes there's this, I don't know, maybe resentment or guilt or something deep down that we've held onto for so long. Sometimes it's surrendering to those big emotions and those big heavy things that we carry right, just again, allowing whatever wants to come up and then just trusting that.

Speaker 1:

Oh, the second. I let go of this. Everything gets easier, everything gets more joyful, everything gets more fulfilling, right, Everything gets more magical and, as you know, that is what I'm here for. I am here for the magic. I know that we have barely scratched the surface on our potential as humans and I am so excited to see what we are all capable of. So give this a try. Reach out to me as always, you know, I love to hear from you. Send me a DM on Instagram, send me a note in the comments, let me know how you're doing. And, yeah, just give this a practice.

Speaker 1:

Okay, give this a try. Journal on it. You know, maybe over the next two weeks, just say every day I'm gonna do something that feels very surrendered, right, or I'm going to let go of something that I've been holding on to, right, even if it's something so little, right, something so little, just practicing that muscle, right, practicing the art of that and it will get easier. And again, just trusting that it's so much better on the other side of this and it's such a more pleasant way to live, and then you know, we attract the very things that we want into our life. So I hope this is what you needed to hear today.

Speaker 1:

I hope that you know, even just hearing that it's okay to surrender, that it's okay to let go, I hope that even gives you like a little bit of breathing space, like, yes, I needed to hear that. I needed to hear that I don't need to carry this anymore, I don't need to hold on to this for so long anymore, right, like, just let yourself breathe, okay, sometimes it's so simple, right? Sometimes it's really just giving ourselves some space, right, just coming back to our own truth, coming back to what's true in this moment, because this moment is the only one that matters, this is the only moment that we can truly live in. So, therefore, it's where everything happens, right? So, again, I hope you enjoyed this and I look forward to seeing you next time.