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attacker I must first surrender to his grip. When I let go and relax, my opponent’s grip will naturally loosen, giving me the opportunity to break free from his hold. Our initial response is always to resist any perceived threat. Yet it’s only when we breathe deep, relax, and lean into the experience that we stand strong and gain access to all our power and strength.
    In order to transcend our suffering, we must go against our instinct to hold on and instead surrender to the path of letting go. Anything we want to change, anything we’re afraid of, anything that we are angry about or refuse to accept will keep us glued to the past and attached to our stories and the shadow beliefs that drive them.
    Surrendering to what is requires us to soften our hearts, let go of the expectations that come out of our stories, and accept whatever life presents us. Surrendering to all the ingredients that have made up our lives invites us to listen with innocent ears to the deeper message of our pain rather than being stopped by the familiar conclusions voiced by our Shadow Boxes. Only when we admit that we are clinging to the comfort of our stories will we be able to soften our resistance and gain the wisdom of our life’s experiences.
    Only by making a new decision to use our stories to love ourselves rather than to beat ourselves up will we ever be free to use them in the way they were designed to be used. I promise you that if you let go, if you resign as General Manager of the Universe and as the star of your drama, your life will get easier and you will be able to hear the deeper calling of your soul.
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    w h y y o u h o l d o n t o y o u r s t o r y N o b o d y ’ s C o m i n g
    There is no better time to begin the process of seeing your story for what it is, with all its limitations and its promises, than right now.
    There is no one who can do this for you. Nobody is coming to save you. For me, the tides changed when I came to this unsettling realization. For years I kept trying to make my life better. I worked hard to change the circumstances of my life, but I always seemed to fall short of my desired results. Then one day, sitting on the bathroom floor of my apartment and feeling sorry for myself, a light went on and I had a profound and life-changing realization: No one was coming. I could continue to suffer, to work hard and try to make my story nice and fun filled and easy like I dreamed of, or I could get off the floor, grow up, and face the fact that no one was coming to save me. In a moment of grace I realized that I had waited my entire life for my mother, my father, or the man of my dreams to come pick me up and tell me I was perfect, that my life was perfect, that I could have anything I wanted, and to promise me that from now on we would have a fairy-tale existence.
    Unknowingly most of us are waiting for someone or something to rescue us. But I am here to tell you, no one is coming—not your mother, not your father, not a prince on a white horse.
    Though most of us think that if we wait long enough someone will step in and save us, the very sad truth is that nobody can travel our path for us. If we are brave enough to give up the hope that anyone is coming to save us, we will take an important step toward taking responsibility for our lives and our happiness.
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    T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w S t e p p i n g i n t o H o p e l e s s n e s s Most of us spend a lot of time fooling ourselves into believing the good old “One day soon I will catch up with my dreams” story and enrolling ourselves in the hope that our lives will get better. Even though we need hope in times of great distress, it is important that we distinguish between authentic hope and wishful thinking.
    Often we trick ourselves into believing we are getting somewhere when really we are getting nowhere. Hope, positive thinking, and pleasant fantasies can easily turn into denial. Several years ago I was involved in a very stressful