UCanMakeItIfYouTry - Surrender to What Is, Let Go of What Was, and Have Faith in What Will Be

Surrender to What Is, Let Go of What Was, and Have Faith in What Will Be

-- Sonia Ricotti

Three instructions. Three distinct movements of the spirit. And together, they form one of the most complete guides to navigating change and loss that you will find in a single sentence.

Sonia Ricotti, the author and speaker known for her work on resilience and transformation, distilled something profound here: the reason we suffer through difficult transitions is almost always because we are fighting one of these three things. We resist what is. We cling to what was. We cannot trust what will be.

And the path through -- not around, but through -- requires all three.

Surrender to What Is

Surrender is a word that makes many of us uncomfortable. It sounds like defeat. Like giving up. Like lying down in the face of something that deserves to be fought.

But that is not what Ricotti means, and it is not what the wisest teachers across centuries and traditions have meant when they used this word.

Surrender, in this sense, is not passive. It is not resignation. It is the active, courageous choice to stop spending your energy fighting reality.

Because here is the truth: when something has already happened -- when the diagnosis has been given, the relationship has ended, the job has been lost, the door has closed -- the energy we spend insisting it should not have happened does not change it. It only exhausts us. It keeps us locked in a battle with a past that is already fixed, unable to move into the present where our actual life is waiting.

Surrender to what is means: This is real. This is where I am. I am going to stop fighting the fact of it and start dealing with it.

That is not weakness. That is one of the most powerful things a person can do.

Let Go of What Was

This is often the hardest of the three.

What was -- the life we had, the person we were, the relationship that shaped us, the version of the future we had planned -- can feel like the truest thing about us. We built our identity around it. We organized our days around it. We loved it, or we had simply grown so accustomed to it that its absence feels like a wound that will not close.

Letting go does not mean pretending it did not matter. It does not mean erasing the past or dishonoring what was real and good and meaningful. It means releasing your grip on it as the thing that defines what is possible for you now.

The past is a foundation, not a cage. What happened to you, what you built, what you lost -- all of it is part of you. But it does not have to be the ceiling of your future. Letting go is the act of saying: That was real, and I carry it with me, and I am also free to move forward.

Grief is part of this. You are allowed to mourn what was. Letting go does not mean skipping the grief -- it means moving through it rather than setting up permanent residence inside it.

Have Faith in What Will Be

This is the instruction that requires the most courage, because it asks us to trust something we cannot yet see.

Faith, in this context, is not a religious requirement. It is a practical orientation toward the future -- the decision to believe that what comes next can be good, even when the present moment offers no evidence of that. It is the choice to remain open rather than closed, hopeful rather than defeated, willing rather than withdrawn.

And it is a choice. Every day, in the middle of uncertainty, you get to choose whether you approach what is coming with dread or with expectation. Neither one changes what will happen. But one of them allows you to show up for it fully, and the other keeps you braced against a blow that may never come.

Have faith in what will be means: I do not know what is next. But I am willing to believe it can be good. I am going to walk toward it with my eyes open.

The Three Together

What makes this quote so powerful is that the three instructions build on each other.

You cannot truly let go of what was until you have surrendered to what is -- because clinging to the past is often just another way of refusing to accept the present. And you cannot have genuine faith in what will be until you have let go of what was -- because if you are still holding on to the old future you planned, there is no room for the new one to arrive.

Surrender. Release. Trust.

This is the sequence. Not once, but again and again, as life keeps changing -- as it always does, as it always will.

You Can Make It

Wherever you are in your own story right now -- whatever you are being asked to surrender, whatever you are struggling to release, whatever future you are finding it hard to trust -- this is your reminder that the path through exists.

It is not easy. But it is available to you. And you do not have to walk it perfectly. You just have to keep walking.

Surrender to what is. Let go of what was. Have faith in what will be.

You can make it.

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Your Gift of Life Foundation is dedicated to mental health awareness and helping people find the strength to navigate life's most difficult transitions. Visit us at www.yourgiftoflife.org.