Trust In Your Circumstances

What if the thing you've been trying to fix was never actually broken?

We arrive with these exquisitely sensitive nervous systems, wired for connection and survival, and then we are dropped into a world that often feels… less than gentle. A world of sharp edges and unexpected turns. And we are told, in a thousand different ways, to make a plan. To have a five-year-plan, a ten-year-plan. To control the outcome. To strive and to push and to make it happen.

But what if the most profound practice wasn’t about controlling our circumstances, but about trusting them? All of them. Even the ones that bring us to our knees.

I remember a time, years ago, when my life felt like it had been stripped down to the studs. A long-term relationship had ended, a professional collaboration had dissolved in a way that felt both shocking and painful, and the apartment I had lived in for over a decade was being sold. All at once. I felt unmoored, adrift in a sea of uncertainty. My first, and most primal, reaction was resistance. A full-body clenching against the reality of what was happening. No, my nervous system screamed. Not this. Anything but this.

This is such a human response. It’s not a failing, beloved one. It’s biology. I spent weeks in this state of internal warfare. My sleep was fractured, my body ached with a tension I couldn’t release, and a low-grade panic was my constant companion. I was trying to strategize my way out of the situation, my mind spinning endless scenarios, each one more catastrophic than the last. I was trying to control the uncontrollable, and it was exhausting me to the bone. It was only when I finally collapsed into a heap of tearful surrender on my living room floor that something began to shift. Not in my circumstances, but in me. The fight was simply too tiring to maintain.

The Brain That Cries Wolf

Here’s a very good thing to know: your brain is not designed for your happiness. It is designed for your survival. Deep within the elegant, intricate folds of our brain is a tiny, almond-shaped structure called the amygdala. It is our primal threat detector, the ever-vigilant sentinel at the gate of our consciousness. Its job is to scan the horizon—both inner and outer—for any sign of danger. And when it perceives a threat, it pulls the fire alarm.

Instantly, a cascade of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline floods our system. Our heart rate increases, our breathing becomes shallow, our muscles tense. We are primed for fight, flight, or freeze. This is a magnificent, life-saving system when the threat is a tiger in the bushes. It is… less helpful when the “threat” is an email from your boss, a conflict with your partner, or the news that your landlord is selling your building.

The amygdala doesn’t really distinguish between a physical threat and an emotional or circumstantial one. To this ancient part of our brain, uncertainty equals danger. Loss equals danger. Change equals danger. And so, it screams No. It tightens the body, narrows the mind, and locks us into a state of resistance. Trust, in these moments, can feel like an impossible fantasy. The amygdala, in its elegant and ancient wisdom, is simply trying to protect you based on past experiences. If you have a history of trauma, of sudden loss, of your world being turned upside down without warning—and who among us doesn’t, in some form?—your amygdala is going to be extra sensitive. It has learned that the world can be unsafe, and it is not going to let you forget it. It creates what we might call a 'neural pathway' of fear, a well-worn groove in the brain that gets activated again and again. The good news, the breathtakingly good news, is that our brains are plastic. We can create new neural pathways. We can teach the sentinel at the gate that not every unexpected visitor is an invading army.

We are trying to have a conversation about spiritual surrender with a nervous system that believes it is running for its life. It’s a profound mismatch. And it’s where so much of our suffering is born—not in the circumstance itself, but in the war we wage against it.

The Wisdom of Water

The Tao te Ching, that beautiful and enigmatic collection of wisdom, speaks of this in a thousand different ways. It doesn’t speak of fighting the current. It speaks of becoming like water.

“The supreme good is like water, which nourishes all things without trying to. It is content with the low places that people disdain. Thus it is like the Tao.”

Water doesn’t resist. It flows. It finds the path of least resistance, not out of weakness, but out of an innate wisdom. It yields, and in its yielding, it overcomes all obstacles. When we are in a state of resistance, we are like ice—rigid, brittle, and easily broken. When we can begin to cultivate trust, we become like water. We soften. We allow. We find a way through.

This isn’t about passivity. It’s not about giving up or condoning harm. It is a radical, courageous practice of meeting the moment as it is, with the deep, embodied faith that even this—this challenge, this heartbreak, this confusion—is somehow serving our evolution. It is a trust in a larger intelligence, a current that is carrying us exactly where we need to go. Lao Tzu, the likely author of the Tao Te Ching, puts it this way: "Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like." This isn't an invitation to be a doormat. It's an invitation to align with the powerful, creative force of life itself.

For me, that period of profound loss and uncertainty became the most fertile ground of my life. The apartment I had to leave was replaced by a small, quiet cottage nestled in a garden, a space that held me and healed me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. The end of the relationship created the space for a deeper, more honest relationship with myself. The professional dissolution forced me to clarify my own voice, my own work, my own sacred purpose, on my own terms.

None of it was easy. There were countless moments of fear, of grief, of raging against the injustice of it all. But slowly, painstakingly, I learned to soften around the edges of my resistance. I learned to place my hand on my heart and breathe into the tight, clenched places. I learned to ask a different question: not “Why is this happening to me?” but “What if this is happening for me? What if, even in this, I am being held by a love that I cannot yet understand?”

That shift in questioning is the beginning of trust. It’s the crack that lets the light in. It doesn’t necessarily change the circumstance, but it changes us. It changes our relationship to the circumstance. And that, my dear one, changes everything.

The Practice of Trusting

So how do we do it? How do we cultivate this radical trust in a world that screams at us to do the opposite? It is a practice. A moment-by-moment returning. It is not a one-time decision.

You might begin by noticing the resistance in your own body. Where do you feel it? Is it a tightness in your jaw? A clenching in your belly? A shallow breath held high in your chest? Don’t try to fix it. Don’t judge it. Just notice it. Ah, there you are, resistance. I feel you. This simple act of mindful awareness creates a sliver of space between you and the reaction.

From that space, you can offer a breath. A single, conscious breath into the tight place. You are not trying to force it to relax. You are simply bringing a gentle, loving attention to it. You are reminding your nervous system that in this moment, right here, right now, you are fundamentally okay. You are safe enough to breathe.

Another simple, yet profound practice is to find an anchor in the present moment through your senses. When you feel the storm of resistance and fear rising, pause. Look around the room and name five things you can see: the blue of the mug on your table, the gentle sway of the leaves outside your window, the texture of the blanket on your lap. Then, name four things you can feel: the solid ground beneath your feet, the warmth of your own hand on your arm, the soft fabric of your shirt. Name three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. This practice, often called 'grounding,' is a powerful way to gently guide your brain out of the threat-response loop and back into the safety of the present moment. It says to the amygdala, 'See? Right here, right now, we are safe.'

Perhaps you might whisper to yourself, “I am willing to consider that this is for me.” You don’t have to believe it fully. The willingness is the potent seed. “I am willing to be curious about how this might be serving me.”

This is not about spiritual bypassing or pretending that pain doesn’t hurt. The pain is real. The grief is real. The fear is real. Trust doesn’t negate the difficulty; it holds it. It creates a larger container of compassion for the whole messy, beautiful, terrifying experience of being human. It allows us to be with the discomfort without being consumed by it.

It is the slow, patient work of re-patterning a nervous system that has been taught, for very good reasons, to be on high alert. It is the practice of coming home to the deep, unshakable wisdom of your own body, which knows how to heal, how to grow, how to flow. It is the radical act of believing that you are held, always, in a universe of profound and mysterious love.

May you have the courage to soften, even a little, around the edges of what feels hard. May you feel the deep and abiding wisdom that flows in and through you. And may you come to know, in your very bones, the incredible grace of trusting your life, just as it is.

With infinite love and support on your journey, Susan