You are afraid of surrender because you don’t want to lose control. But you never had control; all you had was anxiety. —Elizabeth Gilbert1

What if the fear of losing control is based on an illusion? What happens when you realize you never truly had control to begin with, and so you’re not really losing anything in giving it up—except, perhaps, the anxiety that comes from trying to control things that are beyond your control.

  1. Quoted in this essay on toxic preconditions by Oliver Burkeman. ↩︎