Your mind is a thing that generates thoughts that seek out things in three-dimensional form, which culminate in your identity with those things. Do you see? Accumulation of “things” does little more than give your mind reasons to identify with those things and just more things to think about.
When you are told to surrender “things,” your mind goes into a struggle, that something must be given up, but that is not surrendering; it’s resistance, and another thing to get you thinking. Surrender and the ultimate freedom it ensures is taking away the power that your thoughts have invested in things. In other words, it frees you from thinking about “things” to think about.
Identity is a thing, and anything you think you are (identify as) distracts from the real. YOU cannot be thought or imagined, but YOU can be known, but that happens only when you have nothing left to “think” about. What to do? Start undoing things by not thinking about them!