Making Peace with Surrender

In a world where commitment, persistence, determination and battling through obstacles is an operational norm, and not just an aspirational  state of being it can be difficult to know when it is appropriate to change a planned course of action, and even harder to go through the process of admitting defeat.

‘Quitting’ or ‘Giving Up’ is not an attractive prospect for someone who views being ‘bloody minded’ as a compliment!

But sometimes, we need to step outside of ourselves and take the view of someone in our corner with our best interests at heart.  And sometimes that means we need to give ourselves permission to throw in the towel.

Knowing when that point is however is never easy especially when you are immersed in the delusional, one dimensional mentality required when single mindedly pursuing a goal.

A fighter has either the ref or his trainer to bring an unwinnable  bout to a premature end, an army has it’s General to declare surrender in a battle with no hope of victory, and a business has a CEO to decided when it’s time to shut up shop.

As individuals though in life, we must make our own decisions regarding when continued determination is detrimental and when persistence needs to give way to peace.  Reinhold Niebuhr recognises the difficulty of making these decisions in his serenity prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.

Making the decision to move on from a goal before we have reached the specific end point which we set ourselves, can be more palatable if we remember 3 things:

1. Success is in the doing.  It is in the pursuit of a goal.  It is in what we learn along the way.  It is in how we grow as a human being as a result of identifying something we want and then going after it.  Even if we do not reach our end point, none of that can be taken away, and it is this that is arguably the most valuable part of the process of goal achievement.

“There is no failure in pouring your heart and soul and energy into something that didn’t work.  Failure is not trying at all.” Jim Rohn

 2. Releasing one thing can often make room for something much better for us in the long run.  It is possible to become so focused on the mechanics of something  that we fail to realise we are just spending time fixing problems just to stay afloat and are not in fact making any forward progress.  Sometimes in order to move forward you must change tracks entirely.

“When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” Alexander Graham Bell

3. Losing a Battle does not mean Losing the War.  “Life aint a track meet, it’s a marathon” is a lyric from rap star, Ice Cube’s track, You Can Do It and sums up the fact that despite the inevitable disappointments, failures and losses that we will chalk up as we make our way through life, the outcome of one goal doesn’t form the whole story of our life.

And so in life, if we find ourselves in the position of having to raise the white flag and hold our hands up in defeat, we might take some timely comfort from The Olympic Creed:

The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered, but to have fought well.”

For me this is a personal blog written shortly  after I took the decision to abandon my pursuit of a place on the Barbados Olympic Team.  I had to concede defeat after an injury hit winter turned into a nightmare spring and when my right foot suffered an injury last week that left me unable to run for 4-6 weeks, I knew that this was one big goal I was going to have to let go.

But I do so confident that I fought a good fight.  And in that knowledge I have made  peace with my decision to surrender.

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I would like to thank some very special people who joined me in what became quite a battle over the last few months and gave so generously of their time, skill and resources:

Charley McConnell

Charley McConnell – My Coach – patiently persisted with me to the bitter end!

Rhiannon Jones

Rhiannon Jones – Chiropractor and Aquatic Therapist who also became my master motivator over the last few months and gave freely of her time and skills to work me to death in the pool!

Mark Buckingham

Mark Buckingham – Physiotherapist Extraordinaire. Has been in charge of rehabbing me through an interesting collection of injuries for over 7 years…this time though, we just ran out of time.

Romany Gurner

Romany Gurner – taught me all I know about Pilates and joined me in my battle for fitness with her laser machine in an effort to keep me in one piece!

Mark Cheetham and Adam Baker – Performance Consultants who I began working with in September 2010…they made a massive difference to my racing last year and were on hand again to help out this season

National Champs 2011 – Photo Courtesy of Ron Lawrence

I am eternally grateful to you and numerous other sponsors and supporters for supporting and believing in me – Thank you x