Trusting the timing of your life

It sounds like such a great mantra to live by – ‘to trust the timing of your life’ – but in reality, when things do not go according to our inner timeline, we usually panic or freak out. Think about a moment, like when the plane is delayed (although that hardly ever happens on a FlyNamibia flight), or a traffic jam delays our arrival at the airport. Moments like these have a way of putting paid to calm reasoning. Yet, as we have discussed before in this column, to surrender is to claim back a certain power in your life. When we recognise that we do not control the sun rising each morning but yet it does rise, we remove a huge amount of stress we have in thinking we can control everything. Life is not something we can control, we can only control ourselves and our reactions to things.

Have you ever noticed that oftentimes the things that are not in accordance with our inner timelines, produce something better than we could have imagined? Have you stopped to notice how the day you got stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the airport, you still managed to make the flight and also you bumped into an old friend from primary school that you had not seen in years? Often these kinds of ‘coincidences’ would never have occurred if you hadn’t been delayed. That is why we should trust the timing of our lives. We never know what life is trying to bring us, and the surprises happen in its twists and turns.

Our mind is always trying to take control of everything it comes in contact with. That is the nature of the mind, and it is doing this to try and keep us safe and make our lives better. But we fail ourselves if we don't accept ‘what is’. Everything happens at its own pace and there is no way to skip ahead. There is no life hack to the natural process of things and you can't hurry up life's timing. When we try to force our timing on life timing we simply create stress for ourselves.

Surrender is at the heart of all spiritual paths: no practice is more powerful or profound. Surrender is not a strategy: it is the profound absence of strategies. Surrender is the recognition of the fact that what got you to where you are is the combination of the good and the bad experiences you have gone through. Brianna West writes, “One day, the mountain that is in front of you will be so far behind you, it will barely be visible in the distance. But the person you become in learning to get over it? That will stay with you forever. And that is the point of the mountain.”

The timing of your life is trying to bring the best for you. When you trust this truth you can allow your mind to surrender. Recognise that where you are now took overcoming challenges and hurdles. Those difficulties and obstructions led you to this moment, to where you are now and who you are now. When you look at it like this, you can perhaps even be thankful for the challenges… for ‘the mountain’. When you can be thankful you put your headspace in this different frame of mind and that is really good for mental wellbeing. This is what it means to trust the unfolding mystery of life.

Sometimes things seem frustrating or difficult in the moment, but we don’t know where that moment is going to take us. Perhaps (i.e., as is usually the case) it is going to take us somewhere amazing, show us something incredible and if not… it’s going to help mould us into someone even better than who we were yesterday.

Kirsty Watermeyer