Once upon a time, there was a young prince who, when he came of age, left home to become the ruler of neighboring kingdom. His father, a wise and good king, told the prince that if he ever needed help, he should put a light in his tower window, and the king would send a special horse and carriage to carry him to safety.

However, the king also warned the prince that an evil wizard lived not too far from his new home. And when the prince turned on the light, the wizard would also see it and send his own horse and carriage to carry the prince off to danger.

This frightened the young ruler-to-be. After all, how would he be able to tell the difference? His father assured him there was a foolproof measure. Each time, before entering the rescue carriage, he was to closely examine the horse pulling it. A light-colored horse would always take him to safety, but a dark horse would always take him to danger.

As time went on, the prince was faced with many trials that came with ruling a kingdom – and each time, he put a light in the window. And for many months, because he was in such a rush to escape when he was upset, he failed to heed his father’s warning and forgot to look at the horse that came to get him. As a result, he often found himself on one painful wild ride after another. And he realized too late that in his hurry to escape, his impulsiveness was causing him as much distress as the condition from which he was trying to escape.

This wonderful fable from author and teacher Guy Finley shines a light on how we react when things get tough. Do we pounce into familiar unhealthy patterns or do we pause?

We are the only creatures that have the ability to pause and choose our response to situations. And unfortunately, we often react not respond, and in doing so, make a bigger mess out of an already messy situation.  Or we hop on whatever vehicle we use for comfort when we’re upset, whether that’s raging, shopping, smoking or drinking a martini. These are our red shoes: They don’t solve the problem or eliminate the pain – they’re just a distracting and often agonizing ride right back to the issue that upset us in the first place.

The power of a pause is priceless. Even waiting a second or two before you speak or act can make all the difference. When you stop and hit the mental reset button, it’s amazing how your perspective can change.

Back to our prince. I’d like to think he eventually learned to pause, observe his reaction to stress and elect to wait for the light-colored horse. Because when we do this – when we choose a positive response and not engage a negative pattern – eventually, the dark horse will stop showing up.

I don’t know when my first exposure to the word “surrender” was, but it very well could have been courtesy of the Wicked Witch of the West and her smoke-writing broom.

That visual was horrifying enough to persuade this 6-year-old that surrender was a dreadful, terrible, very bad thing.

But what if it wasn’t?

What if you could reframe surrender into something far more positive? What if surrender didn’t mean giving up, it meant opening up – to whatever is going to happen, knowing all will be well.

Life serves up all sorts of tough experiences – from the mildly irritating to the downright painful – and when we rely only on ourselves to fix every situation we very often bump up against our own limitations.

Instead of asking for help, we find ourselves gripping, grasping, clinging, clutching. “I can fix this,” “Just let me try this.” “Let me do it.” We analyze and agonize until we’re exhausted, but we’re no closer to a solution.

When a friend once asked me if I’d tried just surrendering a particularly vexing project, I was aghast. What? I should just sit here and do nothing and wait for the dogwood bush to burst into flames and intone instructions? Mon Dieu! How could that help?

Thankfully, this friend is very patient with me. She explained the idea of surrender as  letting go, not giving up. She reminded me what was in my control – like tapping into my inner wisdom and leveraging others for ideas.

Then – and this is the really important part – after I had done my best, I was to let the outcome go. That was uncomfortable and unnerving. But I did it anyway. And remarkably, in this particular situation, solutions began falling into place like the tumblers in a complex lock disengaging in succession.

Surrendering outcomes, not beating our heads against a wall, not feeling responsible for fixing the world – all are very difficult to let go. But anything we’ve learned to do, we can unlearn.

And as New York Times best-selling author Gabby Bernstein says in her new book, The Universe Has Your Back, “The moment you embrace your peace within and surrender the outcome is the moment the Universe can truly get to work.”