Relinquish your attachment to the outcome.

I keep getting the message that if you are so attached to the outcome of something, you can miss out on the bigger picture.

A part of me is resisting the message. Another part of me is confused about how to wrap my head around what this really means, and how to apply it to what's going on right now.

I fully believe in attracting what you want and asking God to provide, so my prayers have definitely been about a May 2015 graduation. My actions have been following suit because "prayer/faith without work is dead". But this whole idea of getting things to work out for a May completion has really been challenging me. I feel like becoming so focused on things falling into place for graduation has made the process appear really tormenting and frustrating.

In the past two months, I have sat outside of people's offices for hours, pleaded for committee members to read and respond to my emails so I could have forward movement, and tried to network as much as possible to get what I needed to make deadlines. It has been exhausting. I'm pretty certain that this knot in my stomach is the result of all these things.

Each time I get close to a deadline and things seem to derail, I feel scared and borderline defeated. This has definitely been the case today.

I got an email this afternoon that made me worried about getting my candidacy application in on time to be eligible for this year's commencement. As I read the words on the email, I felt myself kind of crumble on the inside. All of that work to get things in to IRB for their last scheduled meeting, and it appears that things did not go as planned. I was crushed.

After a moment of wishing that my eyes had not seen what they did, I tried to regroup and figure it out. That message about not being attached to the outcome resurfaced, but all I could think of was what hurdles I might need to jump to make things work. I strategized in my head. I made one phone call that I hoped would get me some answers, but there was no answer on that line.

The rest of the day, there was a part of me that felt like I my dreams were escaping me. But there was an even stronger part that wanted to fight to push forward. Tomorrow, I will definitely do what I can to figure things out, but I know deep inside that the pursuit of this goal should feel freeing and not like this kind of battle.

"If we use any mental strain or effort trying to manifest our intentions, it doesn’t help – the tension will only delay and constrict the manifestation of desire."

That which is mine, destined for me, is already written. I know I have to relax into the plan for the divine, but the human part of me just has to acknowledge these feelings so they are not all suffocated on the inside.

I'm still praying and doing my best, but today, I just needed to say:

This is hard.