What’s the most profound piece of advice you’ve been given? Did you take it?
It came at a time when I was least willing to hear it.
I was in rehab, desperate for change but exhausted from trying. Buried beneath years of habits, pain, and walls I had carefully built around myself, I was carrying the weight of a life that no longer fit.
One day, a man said something simple:
higher power
I immediately dismissed it.
Not because I wanted to argue, and certainly not out of disrespect for anyone’s faith. Religion simply wasn’t where I was looking for answers. It never felt like my path.
Yet I have spent much of my life trying to understand the great mysteries of existence. Since childhood, I’ve been fascinated by the puzzle of the Universe. The more I’ve learned, the more convinced I’ve become that there is something beyond our understanding—a force, an intelligence, a mystery, an order we cannot fully grasp.
But I always rejected the idea that this higher power had to be defined as God.
Sensing my resistance, the man said something that changed everything.
Let it be whatever you choose.
Whatever helps you let go.
Something clicked.
For the first time, I understood that the point wasn’t what I called it.
The point was surrender.
Not surrender in the sense of giving up, but surrendering the exhausting belief that I could control every minute, every outcome, every aspect of my recovery and my life.
I was tired of managing everything.
Tired of carrying the world on my shoulders.
Tired of fighting battles that existed mostly in my own mind.
So I let go.
Not all at once. Not perfectly. But enough.
And when I did, something unexpected happened.
Peace entered.
For the first time in a very long time, I stopped defining myself by my past. I stopped measuring my worth by what had happened to me, what I had survived, or what I had done wrong.
Instead, I began asking a different question:
Who do I want to become?
What is the version of me I always wanted to be?
That question changed everything.
I started making decisions based on the person I wanted to grow into, rather than the person I had been. I became open to possibilities. Open to healing. Open to receiving help, love, opportunities, and joy.
My life didn’t transform overnight.
But it did transform.
Slowly.
And dramatically.
The walls that once protected me also imprisoned me. As they began to crumble, my world expanded. New experiences arrived. New people entered my life. New dreams appeared where old disappointments had lived.
Looking back, the most profound advice I ever received wasn’t really about a higher power.
It was about trust.
Trusting that I didn’t have to carry everything alone.
Trusting that there was a path forward even when I couldn’t see it.
Trusting that I could stop clinging so tightly to who I had been and allow myself to become someone new.
And in letting go, I found something I had been searching for all along:
Peace.
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