Release the Outcome, and The Right Action Will Come

Surrender, My Friend

At the start of this week, I sat in bed with a headache, feeling a bit disconnected from myself. I went to write in my notebook and wrote just a single line:

“Insights will flow, the moment we let go. No performing, just being, and seeing how the mind begins to dissipate.”

What I meant was simple: the tension in the mind starts to dissolve the moment you stop gripping and just let it wander.

A few days later, on the train to Jerusalem, as I do every Wednesday for class, I went back to that sentence and kept writing. And the second I let go, I actually could. So in the spirit of letting your mind wander and not over-editing, what you’re about to read for the first part of this piece is a jumble of how my mind works. It’s not polished and that’s the point.

Life starts to make sense when we allow things to be. I’m trying to block my mind from going where it needs to go. We hold up this invisible barrier and don’t even know it. Let go of fear, let go of outcome. We don’t know what is best for ourselves. Well, we often do know, but it’s constricted by the ego. The ego’s need for control. And control? Control can go fuck itself.

Step into the unknown. The unknown is where every garden grows.

I kept writing, talking to myself the way I do.

Write. Make the video. Call the client. Put yourself out there. But also, don’t push yourself, because things that come from force are never good.

But wait. What if you let go of fear instead of forcing? There’s a difference. Don’t just do something because you know you have to. That’s like pushing someone who has their feet planted firmly in the ground. It only makes you want to dig your heels in more.

I think the real answer is to let go of outcomes. Let go of fear. Think: okay, whatever will be, will be. This is what allows you to pave the way with curiosity.

This is what I’ve come to learn in my writing, in my life. When we release our grip, the things meant for us will come in.

DON’T RELEASE THE IDEA OF WRITING A BOOK. RELEASE THE IDEA OF NEEDING TO SHOW THE WORLD. RELEASE THE IDEA OF NEEDING TO BE SEEN AS ANYTHING GREAT, OF NEEDING OTHERS TO SEE YOU IN SOME WAY. RELEASE IT ALL. DON’T FORCE YOURSELF TO TALK ABOUT THE THINGS YOU DON’T WANT TO. JUST ACCEPT. ACCEPT. ACCEPT. SURRENDER. RELEASE. BE FREE.

And then maybe you’ll actually start to want the things, so they won’t come with anxiety. They’ll come from needing to do them because you can’t live without them.

Don’t run from the feeling. Go into it. Don’t run from the fear. Don’t say “I just want to be done” or “I just need to rip off the bandaid.” I don’t think that’s actually a good way to do things. I think you need to lean into the fear.

I’M SCARED. I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING. I WON’T PRETEND TO KNOW WHAT I’M DOING.

I just need to show up and try and be real and release all outcomes. So I lose a client? So I never write the book? So I never do the things I want? So what? I know my worth at the end of the day and I know what I bring. If something doesn’t align, then so what? Everything will be okay in the end, as long as you stay true to yourself, have compassion for yourself, and are just fucking honest.

I don’t think pushing yourself into the deep end is always the best move. When you push, your first reaction is fear and struggle. I think it’s better to release the outcome and go in calm, so you don’t trigger that same initial anxiety. Maybe instead of forcing, you surrender to the outcome, and the right actions come. What that looks like may be slightly different than what it would’ve looked like under pressure. And I think that’s for the better.

It’s like when we tell ourselves just go to the gym, just fucking go. And sure, you might get yourself there. But that relationship with the gym? It’s built on force. It’s not sustainable. It’s not real. What if instead you released every expectation you had of the gym. No goal weight, no PR, no body you’re chasing. Just went to move? You’d probably find yourself wanting to go more. Wanting to stay longer. That’s how it works with anything in life. Release the expectation of wanting to be the best, of wanting to accomplish the thing. Just let yourself be curious. Just let yourself wander.

SURRENDER, MY FRIEND. ALL WILL BE OKAY. WHAT IS MEANT FOR YOU CAN’T MISS YOU, AND WHATEVER IS NOT, NO NEED TO GET CAUGHT.

So How Does All of This Connect to Torah?

Like I said in my last post, when I have the time I want to start writing about how my weekly experiences and insights connect to the parshat of the week. I try to allow myself to just write and grapple and explore my own ideas that are coming up in my life, and then at the very end of the week, look up the parshat to see how it is connected to my own struggles. In the spirit of this entire post, I feel it’s important to first let yourself explore, let your mind wander, let it go to the places it needs, and then, and only then, look at the parshat and see the connection. There’s something about it landing on Shabbat, at the end of the week, that makes it feel like the perfect moment to look back and see how it all fits.

So here we go. Behar.

In Behar, the Torah introduces the commandment to let the land lie fallow every seventh year. What does this really mean? It means fucking surrender.

1. The Radical Act of Letting Go: Shmita

The word Shmita literally means “release.” In Behar, farmers are commanded to drop their tools and abandon their ownership. For an entire year, you cannot sow, prune, or harvest. You must declare your field “ownerless,” allowing anyone to walk in and eat. It’s a forced surrender of the ego’s need to provide and control.

This is exactly the “invisible barrier” I was writing about. The expectation, the outcome, the thing we think we need to do. We think we’ll get more from planting more, doing more, growing more, but really, we get more from simply releasing.

2. Curiosity vs. Control

When a person stops forcing the land to produce, they shift from being a “master” to being a “sojourner.” When we stop manipulating the ground, whether that’s our career, our writing, or our relationships, we become curious observers of what our true selves, God, or the universe, brings forth naturally. The Torah promises that the land will yield enough on its own, but you only experience that if you first step back.

We often don’t trust what will come because it’s unknown. But the unknown thing is actually far more aligned with what we’re supposed to do. The ego is so limited. Our connection to our true selves, and to the divine, is infinite. Trying to control may feel like it gets you a known outcome, but that “known” outcome is far more limited than the unknown one. The unknown may be scarier, harder, longer to get to, but it’s the one that’s right for you.

3. “The Land is Mine”: The Ultimate Ego Check

A central theme of Behar is the verse: “For the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me” (Lev. 25:23).

This is the ultimate ego check. It reminds us that we don’t actually own our successes, our talents, or even our identities as “great athlete” “great artist” “great “writers.” By surrendering the outcome, we acknowledge that we’re just showing up to do the work, but the growth belongs to something much larger than us.

I notice this in myself. When I get into a mindset of I’m good at this, I’m great at this , it makes me feel like I need to prove something. But when I just allow things to flow through me, to be granted to me, I have infinitely more capability. I don’t try to control my purpose. I follow what I have a strong innate pull toward, so strong that I can’t not do it, and I have endless energy for it.

4. Trusting the Right Action

The Torah asks a terrifying question: “If you shall say: What shall we eat in the seventh year?” (Lev. 25:20). The answer isn’t “work harder in the sixth year.” The answer is trust. By surrendering the need to produce an outcome, the right action, resting, studying, connecting, being honest with yourself, becomes possible.

Sometimes we think we need to do something that we so deeply care about. But we get so overwhelmed by the pressure that not only can we no longer do it, we don’t even enjoy doing it. The curiosity gets cut off. Now you are the one determining the purpose and outcome, but you’re so limited in what you know. The purpose should come from exploration, because exploration is what reveals what is actually true and real. If you write about what you think you need to write about, you’ll never discover what you should actually write about.

It’s the same thing with getting clients, getting a job, accomplishing any goal you think you want. You can think you know exactly how you’re going to get it, and maybe you’re right. But to keep forcing what you think is the right action is so limited. The more we release, the more we get in touch with our true selves, our true desires. And from those places, the actions come from something much more connected, whole, and passionate. They come from wanting to do them, not forcing it. And then the passion and energy to do them is endless.

The more you want the outcome, the more you need to stop forcing the action.

This is every single aspect of our lives. Even making the cover for this piece. I wanted to go back and create a title page for my cartoon “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls” on surrendering, because really it’s all about this. I had an idea in mind and I kept trying to make it and I kept exhausting myself, that headache fatigue, not enjoying it feeling, and it was defeating the whole purpose of everything I just wrote. Then I let go and let my messups and curiosity take me, and I ended up creating something with so much more character and creativity, something I had endless ideas for, something that no longer exhausted me. This process isn’t easy. I get sucked into the trap of chasing waterfalls, chasing outcomes, all the time. But in those moments I have to remind myself: let go, follow the river.

I made an entire cartoon on this very idea of surrendering. If you want to check it out, it’s called “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls.”

Dani BensussenDon’t Go Chasing Waterfalls This is a little cartoon I drew and a poem I wrote: it’s called “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls…Read more7 months ago · Dani Bensussen

Release the outcome, and the right action will come.

Let your mind wander. Let yourself do things for the sake of doing them, for curiosity, for exploration. In that, you will find everything you need. You’ll find all of the ideas, the insights, the energy. You’ll find yourself. You’ll find your purpose. You’ll look up one day and see a goal you didn’t even realize you reached. Everything will come to you. But the harder you force it, the more it runs from you. It’s like a Chinese finger trap. The more you force, the more stuck you get. The moment you soften, you’re free.

Questions to ponder:

What might be trying to come through you, if you stopped telling it what it could look like?

If you let go of who you think you’re supposed to be, what you think you’re supposed to do, who’s actually there?

What are the things in life that come really naturally, that flow, that are undeniable once you release your grip?

Where does your soul run towards if you could do whatever you wanted without a certain outcome?