Today's email is about a subject that's been on my mind for the last few weeks:
Surrender and letting go VS having direction and a master vision for your life.
If you've been following for a while, you know that in 2024 I relinquished goal setting completely.
I just decided to wake up every day, meditate, and make music.
But if I really think about it, I actually did have a goal.
The goal was to create a generational, legacy-building work of art that honors God. That brings people closer to their soul and a connection to something beautiful.
And this realization right there precisely identifies the relationship between surrender and goal setting.
It would seem that the idea of letting go of outcomes or letting go of goals and surrendering to whatever life puts in front of you would be a practice that is particularly incompatible with the idea of setting up a master vision for your life.
How could you set goals if you're just surrendered to all outcomes?
Now if you read great teachers like Michael Singer, he takes a pretty adverse stance against the idea of setting goals. Singer is the author of The Surrender Experiment and many other books about letting go—a yogi, meditator, and follower of Christ who actually became a billionaire through the Medical Manager Corp technology that merged with WebMD.
I once saw him apologize to Tony Robbins on stage—after ranting about how stupid it is to define the life you want, right in front of thousands of goal-setting Tony Robbins devotees. Singer had just gone on about how goal setting is antithetical to the highest spiritual path, where you're simply in a mode of service to each moment. Obviously sort of against Tony Robbins' whole thing. Definitely a bit awkward lol.
This had me confused for a while, especially as someone who's spent a lot of time defining the life I want AND invented an app that helps you set goals.
Here's what finally clicked for me.
And it's quite simple. Basically it's like this:
1. You surrender daily.
Wake up. Pray. Meditate. Get still.
2. Your prayer, day to day, is for the highest path.
For a higher power to guide your life. That can be Jesus, God, whatever your reference is of the highest path that exists for your life. To guide your instincts. Guide your soul. Guide your intuition.
3. You then get pulled to certain tasks and goals (this is through RAS (Reticular Activation System) plus quantum mechanics and particle physics - but i’ll leave this for another email).
In doing that, certain circumstances will unfold in front of you that assist you with that aim of serving as many people as possible.
4. Get clear on what you're meant to create.
What I found lately is that it's really helpful to get clear on what it is that you're sensing you're meant to create that serves as many people as possible. That is—what is the 'surrender' thing you're supposed to surrender to and what are you supposed to do?
5. Write it down as a vision.
Set that up for yourself in the form of writing down everything into a clean and clear vision for your life. A vision of life where you are serving as many people as possible and making the world a better place. That is surrender.
This is exactly why I built the 8AM App—to help you clarify what surrender is calling you toward.
You can try it out for a dollar at 8amapp.com. With the 8AM app, you can set the vision and then use it every morning to stay aligned to it.
It's designed to ask you questions about how to create your vision in a way that aligns you to higher service.
And that's really the biggest piece. As long as your master vision is in service to others, then you're probably in a state of surrender.
You're probably in a state of letting go.
That's my message for today.
I hope you enjoyed.
I'll see you tomorrow.
— Arlin
P.S. New podcast out now where I go more into these topics of "doing nothing" and surrender.
