I Got Burnt Out On 'Self' Help: From Striving To Surrender Ep 64

In this episode I share my journey of getting burnt out on ‘self help’ and how this led me on a life changing journey on learning to surrender and give up control.

This episode explores the fundamental difference between self-help and surrendering to a higher power. 

If you’ve ever felt the exhausting pressure to make things happen on your own—to force results, control outcomes, or constantly strive for change—this episode is for you.

We’ll discuss how profound transformation and incredible changes occur when we rely on something beyond ourselves. 

I’ll also share how surrendering can open the door to incredible breakthroughs and miracles that self-reliance alone could never achieve.

Discover why shifting your faith beyond yourself can lead to extraordinary life changes.

If you’re longing for rest, for a feeling of peace and for a breakthrough somewhere in your life, have a listen. 

If you’d like the resources list I mention in the episode, send me an email at: info@annabellematson.com 

Private Coaching - book in for an Initial Breakthrough Session or work with me in a 3 or 6 month program

Working Lightly™ a program for women who want to work from deeper self belief, and advance their career with a lighter body & mind.

Download the I AM Motivational Audio for free

Releasing Emotional Stress Digital Course

Visit my website

Instagram | Facebook

Submit a question for an upcoming episode.

Transcript

0:07

Hi, it's Annabel Matson, and welcome to the Steep Your Soul Podcast, soulful guidance for women who are seeking deeper truth and meaning to their lives. If you're ready to move past what's been holding you back. And awaken to your full potential and purpose in life. Then let's get started. Started. Hi, it's Annabelle here. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm really happy to have you here with me for another episode of the Steep Your Soul podcast. This one feels something that's been on my heart to share with you for a while, and I've started to see it come up more and more in my client sessions and in my conversations with people. And when I know. That when I see that happening, I know it's something that I need to record an episode about. So I, it's my hope that this episode be a real blessing to you. Before we get into that one though, I just wanna thank you for all of your feedback around the previous episode that I recorded with Eve. That was such a. Privilege to be able to share her incredible story with you on the podcast. If you haven't listened to that episode yet, it's definitely worth a listen. It's the one episode just before this one. And it's just been really incredible to see how her story has. Touched and impacted and encouraged you and really unique in different ways, in different situations and different challenges that you're facing. So that's just been really wonderful and I always love hearing your feedback about episodes. So please get in touch. My details are in the description of the episodes, so yeah, please share with me. Your thoughts on the episodes. I always love hearing from you. If you're new here, welcome to the podcast. There's lots here for you, so make sure you subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. That means you don't miss any episodes as they get uploaded. Even better rate the podcast or leave a review that really supports the episodes to get out to more people, to help them and to be a real encouragement to them. If you if this is the first episode that you've listened to on the podcast or maybe you just have listened to one or two, I wanna encourage you to, after this episode, go back and have a look through the podcast feed, see what other episodes are there that are jumping out at you. And they may very well have a message for you, some kind of encouragement that's gonna really support you in your life. So if you are listening to this episode, you are probably interested in self-development personal growth. You might have taken courses or workshops. You might be listening to podcasts a lot like this one. And there's probably a level of self-awareness that's present. So you are aware of your own passions, maybe you're aware of the places where you get stuck, but have you ever felt like. No matter how much work you do on yourself, it's never enough. It feels like there's always just another block to clear, another mindset to shift another change, to create some other deeper layer to get to, to unlock the results that you're seeking in your life or in your work. This is a feeling and a sentiment. I think that has been echoing. As I said in a lot of my conversations recently, there is a real pattern in our culture of self-reliance, and I would say that this is one of my biggest weaknesses because I just like to, things to happen in my timing. I like them to happen in my way, in the way that I plan them. And if there's something that I can do about that, then I will go and do it. And sometimes I will just soldier on myself with challenges and things that are going on without asking for help. Maybe you relate to that as well. We can take the world on our shoulders. When problems arise, when challenges show up, it just feels oh, this is like another burden to add to the list and we'll just get busy working it out ourselves. How might we need to solve this problem? What might we need to do? We can end up living from my mind a lot. I feel like this gets exacerbated through the personal development world as well. The more we get into personal development, the more we uncover about ourselves and the more it can feel like there are so many things that we need to change or shift or heal to get to where we want to be, and that can feel overwhelming. There's lots of ways we can help ourselves. So we can learn tools, concepts, practices, techniques, all of which are really powerful. And I teach a lot of these things myself, but there's an important truth that we can overlook or maybe we are not actually even aware of, that we aren't meant to carry the weight of our transformation on our own. And I did this. I did it for many years and it led me to a place of burnout and frustration and disillusionment, and I just got so tired of trying to make change happen all on my own. It felt like this incredible burden to be responsible simultaneously for the success that I was seeking. And then the healing work, the personal growth work to get me there. I got burnt out on striving to get there on trying to help myself. And as you listen to this, maybe you relate to that as well, those feelings, that burnout, it really led me on an exploration, which I think is still very much continuing in my life, and I'm sure it will continue for a lot longer, but it helped me to start to realize I didn't have to earn. Healing or success, or the results that I was seeking in my life, I didn't have to earn them. I didn't have to be perfect in order to be blessed. I didn't have to have perfect thoughts or be perfectly healed, or be perfectly in alignment to get to where I was supposed to be. True freedom. True healing and transformation and change in my life came from giving up, doing it all on my own. Where the change happened was learning to surrender to a loving God who wants to bless us, who wants to see us prosper mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially, socially, a God that actually goes to work on our behalf. Making this shift from striving to surrender has brought about enormous change in my life. This journey is still very much ongoing for me, and I still feel like there's definitely more areas where I need to be letting go. And I see that work is just, yeah, very much continuing on the inside of me, but seeing the shifts that I have made in this area has brought about incredible peace into my life. And I've also witnessed firsthand the flow of provision and blessing that can come into our lives when we let go and we surrender into God's grace. So I wanted to share this with you today and the hope it will be encouraging for you if you feel like you are stuck in the cycle of self-improvement and your longing for a feeling of peace for rest, and ultimately for a breakthrough somewhere in your life. This episode is for you. As I mentioned earlier, I can get really busy trying to make things happen myself, getting all my plans sorted, trying to plan the future out from where I am. And I was spending a lot of my life living from this space for a while, and it made me feel so exhausted. I got so exhausted trying to do life on my own. It felt like. The responsibility of my entire life was on my shoulders. There was just a lot of emphasis on me to create the outcomes that I was wanting to see in my life and in my work. I. I needed to get my thoughts right. I needed to raise my vibration to the right level. I needed to clear all of my blocks. It felt like the world I was living in at that time was echoing this belief back to me. That success and healing and fulfillment, all of the things I was seeking, rested entirely on my efforts. And when I first learned about. You create your own reality manifestation. Firstly, it felt exciting and really empowering. It's a great feeling when you learn you don't have to be powerless to your circumstances, that you have the power to change your circumstances. And I believed if I believed I had control over my life and that with enough effort and enough of right thinking I could make anything happen. And when this worked, it felt amazing and I felt powerful, but when it didn't work, so maybe a program launch flopped, my business would go through a quiet period, or things were just generally not meeting my expectations of how I wanted to see things happening. That same responsibility would hit. It would feel like, okay, this is my fault. It was because I had too much fear. My energy wasn't right. My thoughts were incorrect. I had patterns I hadn't yet conquered or over overcome yet, or I attracted it because if I was the source of power behind my successes, then what did that say about the times that I felt like I was failing, quote unquote, the times that weren't meeting my expectations? Because I had to be responsible for those times too. I couldn't, it couldn't just be one way. So in those times where it felt like things were not working out the way I wanted them to, shame and condemnation would ensue, and I would just find myself in a really stuck place. So over time, that initial sense of empowerment, of taking control of my life. It really started to weigh me down. So the to-do list of self-improvement felt like it was never ending. And no matter how much work I was doing, it felt like there was always something else that I needed to heal, some deeper layer to uncover to get to where I wanted to be. So the self of self-help can really become a trap. Self-reliance keeps us focused on ourselves, our problems, our inadequacies, and all of this makes us more weak and more discouraged, more disillusioned with our situations, which I think drives us more and more into a stuck place. So there was just this undercurrent. My life where I was the one that had to keep working harder. I'm responsible for where I need to be going. I had to make the change happen all on my own. I had to be the one to heal myself, and then I kept hitting brick walls. I knew that there were barriers holding me back from moving to another level to accessing a greater sense of wholeness and wellbeing in my life. But I just couldn't work out what do I need to do about this? I had done all of the things that I knew how to do, and I just got tired of trying to make it all happen. I'd been striving so hard to heal myself for the success and the peace that I was seeking, and it just left me feeling really burnt out. So it was like I came to the end of myself and I can't keep trying to do this myself. It was just too much. So maybe about five years ago, I began exploring my faith in a deeper way, and I started to feel myself moving away from an impersonal spirituality. So seeing a higher power or some is something distant, and really just that higher power only responding when I got into alignment with it. When I got into alignment through my own effort. I felt myself moving away from that to something that felt more real and more tangible. I felt God calling me beyond that actually into a personal relationship with him and I. It has changed everything for me. So he's not just a distant force, he is a loving father who desires to bless us mentally, emotionally, physically, socially, financially, in every area of our lives. And if we don't receive something. And the timing that we'd hoped for or in the way that we'd hoped for. It's not because we haven't worked hard enough for it. It's not because our thinking wasn't correct or we should have put in more effort. God's plans are perfect and he gives us what we need at the right time and when we are ready to handle it. So his timing doesn't change who he is and it doesn't change his amazing plans for us. And it doesn't mean we need to work harder and strive more and more in order to be able to get what we want. There is a passage in scripture that really resonates with me and it's in Matthew 11, starting at verse 28, and it says, Jesus is saying, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. And I think this speaks to how so many of us feel. We feel burdened by responsibility. We feel burdened with this responsibility of trying to figure everything out, trying to work it all out on our own. And this passage is saying that there's actually a way out of all of that, and that's through Jesus. That this way is not about doing more. And what a relief that is. It's so much more about letting go. It's about rest. It's about trusting in God that he is the one that can do that work in us. That he is the one who provides for us, that he is the one that opens the doors of opportunity for us. And I started to realize I don't have to earn this success. I don't have to earn this healing or these breakthroughs. I didn't have to be perfect for God to want to bless me. I didn't have to have perfect thoughts or be perfectly in alignment. I just broke out of all of that thinking that had been creating so much striving for me. And through my walk with God and understanding who Jesus is, what his sacrifice has given us, I've realized that my ability to be blessed is actually not about me. And my deservability or how much work I've done, and it's so much more about the goodness of God, about who he is. And I remember having a revelation about this one day, and I felt God speak to me, say, and he was saying, take your eyes off of yourself. And look to me, it's not about you needing to prove your worthiness to me in order to receive the blessings and outcomes that you're wanting. And it's about who I am. It's about my grace. So what is grace? God's Grace is his unmerited favor. It's his blessing. It's his provision. It's his peace, it's his healing, it's his restoration, and it's a gift from him. It's not something that we have to work for or earn. We don't have to have. Perfect thoughts or raise our vibration to a certain level to receive it. We don't have to try and make it happen ourselves. God's grace is something that he freely gives to us, and His grace gives us the ability to do what we can't do on our own. So it doesn't really make sense to the rational mind. It doesn't make sense by human standards that we can just be our imperfect selves and receive blessings and provision and supernatural healing, but God's kingdom is upside down in that way. God is just ready to pour out his grace, his healing, his provision, his wisdom, his power into our lives. But if we don't receive it by faith, we may not fully experience like the fullness of God's grace. But when you experience God's power, his goodness and his grace for yourself, it is absolutely undeniable. And it's available for all of us. It's not just for a special few people. So if you've tried all of the things, if you've been using all of the tools, the techniques, if you keep coming up against the same obstacles, I feel that there's a reason that you are here listening to this episode. And God wants to invite you into His grace so he can go far beyond what's possible for you and your own strength. He can move beyond your human limitations and support you with everything that you need. And this is when we see healing. That is supernatural. That doesn't make sense. If you listen to the episode before this one Eve's story, I shared a bit about my dad's diagnosis and the really awful diagnosis that he got given. Six months to live no treatment available. And he is here four and a half years on in really good health. That's supernatural healing. That's God's grace. We cannot do that on our own. This is where we see provision when there is no jobs about, we hear that there's no employment in a certain area, but then we find an amazing job that comes our way, that pays really well. Our business can be blessed without having to pound the pavement, without having to burn ourselves out to make it happen. This is where we can experience peace. Whenever it feels like everything's crumbling around you, we can walk in this incredible peace that's not based on circumstance. It's not based on ourselves. That's God's grace that he pours into our life. And again, if you listen to Eve's podcast, the one before this one. Where we shared her story, you would've felt just the incredible peace that she walks in despite the diagnosis that she's been given. That is God's grace on her life. So this truth became so freeing. It felt like I was finally laying down this really heavy backpack that I'd been carrying for years, and I could let go of the endless trying to figure everything out and the search for what I was doing wrong and why I wasn't where I wanted to be. And I could just lay all of that at God's feet. And through that surrender, he could take over and do the deeper work that needed to be done on the inside of me. And that's when everything started to shift. And it led me on this journey to stop striving, to loosen my grip on the reins of life. And as I let go, I started to see God move in ways that I could never have orchestrated on my own. And I experienced just this peace in this lightness that really bega began to settle in on the inside of me, a kind that I'd never really experienced before. So what I've come to understand with all of this. Is that it's a balance. It's a balance between using the tools and the techniques and the practices that are available to us and surrendering to God. Because there are incredible resources and tools and techniques and wisdom that we can use to support our growth, and God wants us to use those things. I feel God has really equipped me with many of these things in my own work in terms of what I teach others in my coaching work. But ultimately it's God who completes the work in us. So even if we feel like we've tried everything and nothing has worked, even when we keep hitting the same roadblocks, we keep getting stuck in the same patterns. We might feel like we run out of options, but God never does. There's a scripture that talks about be being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion. When I was at church the other day, the speaker said something that really stuck with me. God never looks at our situation and says, wow, she's really mis messed this one up. I've just got no idea what I'm gonna do here. God never gets stuck. He never runs out of solutions. He is our source of everything that we need, and there are always more ways if we seek him. So if you are stuck, circling around in the same struggles, unable to move past them, you need supernatural support beyond your own human ability. And that's exactly what God offers and is willing to offer that to you freely. But I know it can feel tricky to navigate that line between taking action and trusting God to take over. I've wrestled with this. I think I still wrestle with it. How much surrender is too much? How much effort is too much? I. But I think what it is, it's this balance, finding a balance between the two. I know that there are things that I can be doing to participate in the change that I wanna see happen in my life or in my work. And I think God wants us to use these things. So that can be, where it can be about discipline. I think discipline is a big thing that we see a lot in scripture, exercising discipline in certain areas. It might be about creating healthy routines, setting boundaries, staying consistent with small things that really lead to lasting growth. It might be about, needing to shift my thinking. Maybe it's about replacing fear or doubt or negative self-talk with thoughts that are more empowering thoughts that build confidence, that strengthen self-belief and intentionally focusing on what's working in your life rather than what's lacking. Maybe how you are needing to participate might be about taking care of your mind and your body. Nourishing yourself, not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally. So taking care of your nervous system, learning practices, using practices that nourish yourself. In that way, choosing intentional thoughts that align with peace and clarity can be about resisting old habits and behaviors. Learning how to respond with patience instead of frustration. Choosing to honor ourselves and our own needs rather than people pleasing, turning away from old ways of behaving that don't work for us. Maybe where we need to participate is that we needing to take courageous action even when it feels scary, saying yes to new opportunities, even when we don't have all the answers, stepping into the unknown with trust and with faith. Maybe how we are participating in our change is that we are seeking support from others, learning from mentors, working with people. In a one-on-one sense or gaining wisdom from books and podcasts and things like that. I feel like I have mentors that I work with one-to-one, but I also feel like I've got mentors from afar, people that I've never met, people I probably won't ever meet, but they're people that I learn a lot from books and podcasts and the things like that. And so through all of this, God helps us. He helps to strengthen our discipline. He can support us to shift our thinking. He builds our confidence and gives us boldness and courage. We don't have to do it all on our own. So I guess what I'm trying to say here is surrendering to God doesn't mean doing nothing. It means letting go of the belief that it all depends on me. So here's the key. We are gonna know that we are striving in our own strength because we'll feel it. There won't be any peace. And for me, that is the telltale sign. I know that I've gone into striving mode because I'll feel it in my body. I will feel a r this and anxiousness in my body. There won't be any peace. So the journey is not about doing more or trying harder, it's about shifting the foundation that we are standing on. Instead of relying solely on ourselves, we are invited to rely on God's grace and his power. It's about working with God. Yes, we take steps. Yes, we use tools and techniques. Yes, we reach out and receive support in the way that we need to, but the ultimate transformation, the healing and breakthrough, we can go to him for that. That comes from God, and here's the most beautiful part. It doesn't depend on how much work we've done. Or how perfect we are. But it's about his love, it's about his kindness, and it's about his mercy. God's grace is what brings lasting transformation in our lives, and it's available to us without having to strive. So learning about God's grace has changed my life in such an incredible way. As I've been mentioning, there's still very much areas where I'm learning to let go more fully but I'm just seeing that I'm experiencing so much more freedom in my life. Freedom from carrying the sole responsibility of my life and my results and my outcomes. Freedom from the fear of having to make everything happen on my own. And I just know if there's a barrier in my way, God already knows about that and he can shift it. He can release it, he can heal it, and maybe not always in my timing, but he really is faithful to complete that work in me. So I'm no longer striving to manifest things or to pressure myself to be the source of my own success. Instead, I look to God for that, and time again, he has proven himself faithful to me. Because of this, I think I just feel a lot more trust, and because I'm feeling more trusting, I've got more peace. So not every day is perfect. There are definitely moments and days where I don't feel peaceful or I don't feel trusting, but once you learn these truths, you come back to them. And it feels easier to return to them, to return to that place of peace and trust once you know them. I think I feel more relaxed about my future. I'm letting go of rigid timelines and my own expectations of when things should happen, and I'm leaning more into the truth that God has a plan and his plans are always good. I don't have to push things. I don't have to force things to happen. I need to surrender to his plans and allow them to unfold. His perfect timing will open the right doors for me. That doesn't have to be something that I strive for myself. And what's cool about this is I'm experiencing God's provision in my work and career without having to strive. Things are flowing. Really just so much more easily for me. Most months, my one-on-one client work is fully booked, and I just feel really grateful for that. We don't have to strive for connections. As I said earlier, we don't have to force the doors open ourselves. We just need to take the steps that God is asking us to take and leave the rest in his hands. And this truth has just brought so much relief for me, realizing I don't have to figure it out on my own. It's lifted this huge weight off of my shoulders, and when things don't work out. The way I'd hoped, I don't fall into that condemnation that I found myself in in years prior. I don't obsess over whether I attracted the outcome or if my vibration wasn't perfect. Those were the thought patterns that were holding me captive for so long. Instead, if I, something doesn't work out the way I hoped, I trust God. I rest in his grace, knowing that he's making a way, knowing that if there is something that needs to move on the inside of me to prepare me for that outcome, that God will support me to do that. So if this is speaking to you today, and maybe the idea of having a relationship with God is new to you. I just wanna give you a few simple starting points. Again, I don't have all the answers. I would definitely still consider myself very new to faith. But there's been some things that have really helped me. So I just wanna share some of these things with you. God's word promises. All those who seek will find. That's in Matthew seven, chapter seven, verse seven. When we draw near to him, he draws near to us. That's from James. Chapter four verse eight. Maybe the word God carries a bad connotation for you. Maybe you've seen people misuse his name, but I would really encourage you to put aside all your ideas about religion for a moment and realize this is about a relationship with a God who loves you. Who cares for you and really desires to lead you into this place of true peace and wholeness and a life with him. So we can just start seeking him in prayer. I. All those who seek will find is what God's word promises. So when we seek him in prayer, we will find him. Ask for his presence. Invite him into those places in your life that have been feeling stuck, that have been feeling heavy or hard. The areas where you've been striving on your own, feeling like you're not getting anywhere. Ask him. Invite him into these places. When we draw near to him, he draws near to us. So he doesn't need special language. This is not about needing to pray in a certain way in order to receive an outcome. He just wants your heart. He wants your sincere desire to connect with him. So just ask, and it's amazing what God will do in your life when you invite him in. So I've got a bit of a prayer that I would love to pray over you as we come to the end of this episode. I just really invite you to close your eyes down if it's safe for you to do that. You might like to open your hands up as just a way of receiving this prayer. Yeah, and I'd just really love to circle everything off, I think with a prayer as we close out the episode. So dear God, I thank you for the person who's listening to this episode right now. I thank you that you've led them here all the way to the end of this episode because there's something here for them, and I thank you for the incredible love that you have for them and for the grace we have access to through your son Jesus. Lord, I just ask for a blessing over this person listening. I ask for a blessing of peace over them, and I pray, Lord, that you would guide them into a place of true rest. You would bring them out of striving Lord and show them another way. Not just rest for their body. But I pray, Lord for that deep rest in their soul, rest from overthinking, rest from needing to plan everything out in their life. I pray, Lord, that you would lead them out of this striving, out of this exhaustion of doing life on their own and show them a new way. Lord, show them what it looks like to live a life surrendered to you. So I just pray, Lord, for an outpouring of your grace upon their life where there's a need. Lord, I pray that you would meet that need in abundance where there's doubt. Lord, I pray you'd bring faith where there's fear. Lord, I pray you'd bring courage and where there's weariness, Lord, I pray that you would bring strength. I pray, Lord, that you'd continue to reveal your heart for them. Let them know, Lord, beyond a doubt that they are seen, that they are known and that they're loved by you. And may they walk forward with confidence knowing that you are with them always. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. So thanks for joining me for this episode. If there's a bit of curiosity for you around this if you're not already following God or have a relationship with him, but you sense, ah, there's a bit of a curiosity that this podcast has created on the inside of you and you're keen to be connected with some resources, I would love to send some to you. So I've curated a bit of a list of some podcasts, some books, some YouTube messages just from people that I learn a lot from. And these are centered around this topic that we've been talking about today, so I'd love to send those onto you. So you're just welcome to reach out to me. Send me an email. The links to be able to do that are in the description of this episode, and I will get those suggestions off to you. As I said, podcast books, YouTube messages. I've got a list that I would love to send to you and that I think will really help you with building on these concepts that we've talked about today. If you're interested in learning more about working with me in a private program or via one of my courses, you can check out the link below and learn more about that. Subscribe to the podcast, rate the podcast, leave a review. I would love to hear your feedback about this episode. Reach out to me on email. You can find me on social media, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, all the places. Yeah, I would love to hear feedback. What came through for you in this episode? What did you think about it? Please let me know and send this episode onto someone that may need to hear this, and I look forward to connecting with you in a future episode.