Surrendering one expectation after another produced a cleaned slate at the end of the day.

One day it just seemed like nothing was going right, and I was getting angrier and angrier. I prayed the Serenity Prayer, and that helped some. Making a mental gratitude list helped as well by counting the things that were going right. Whatever I focus on increases, and now I was focused on the good rather than the bad.

That helped a lot. But when things started going wrong again, I realized what was really going on: I was focused on my old character defect of expecting things to go my way. And in that frustration and anger, I said to myself, “I’ll just add it to the list.”

It was in that sarcastic moment that I realized I had a way out of my frustration and anger and into the true freedom of surrender. Yes, add it to the list, but make it a list of surrender. Then I prayed to God, “Here is my list. You take it; I can’t handle it.”

Wouldn’t you know it, things still seemed to be going wrong, but now I could just smile and say to myself, “Add it to the list.” I had to do that multiple times throughout the day. Sometimes my character defects like to stay around and play.

Gradually, it worked. By the end of the day I didn’t have that mental list. It had gone away with the setting sun.