Things have changed in ways we would have never imagined. We are facing thoughts and emotions that are speaking to us louder. The uncertainty of this moment can generate stress, anxiety or even fear. No matter how many areas of your life feel uncertain, we can always leverage this ‘not knowing’ in a way that is empowering and strengthening.
So how can we use uncertainty as an ally?
Discover What’s Behind Your Uncertainty
The first concept we need to embrace if we want to use uncertainty as an ally is: life is never certain. It never was, and it will never be.
As a meditation teacher I can see how most people’s suffering comes from trying to find evidence (or certainty) of their capacity to achieve something both in the past and future. Even for the most confident people in the world, external events can hurl life into chaos when they don’t trust they have everything they need inside themselves to solve any situation.
If you pay attention to all the areas of your life, you will be able to realise that you are uncertain of many things. However, you are not worried about all of those things. For instance, you don’t know what your neighbour will do tomorrow, and you are completely ok with that.
Whenever uncertainty doesn’t feel right it is probably because there is a hidden fear that feels a lot like self-doubt. Here’s the key: It’s not uncertainty that makes us feel stressed, it is that we worry about our ability to solve a situation.
What to do then? Instead of avoiding this fear, embrace it. Rather than resisting the turmoil when things get out of control, step into the uncertainty, learn from it and discover what you are scared of so you can transform this fear into a new challenge.
From Passive Uncertainty to Active Challenge
When you are in a state of uncertainty, it seems like life ‘happens to you’ without you being able to do anything about it. But if you discover the fear behind it, you can create a challenge for yourself to overcome and grow so you can take action. You can learn to replace the cycle of concern and in turn, change towards an active and positive approach.
This exercise could look like:
– I am uncertain about ___, and it is affecting me because___
-The fear that is hiding behind this uncertainty is___
-For me to overcome this fear, I need to challenge myself to___
When you embrace challenges, opportunities become bigger. No matter what is presented to you as a challenge, you can always embrace it to thrive on the other side.
When you move towards a challenge, there is progress. Challenges are opportunities.
The more we allow the challenges to change us, the more we change and the more we grow.
Discover Your Certainty.
If you need to get the feeling of certainty by knowing what the future holds, you’re never going to be at peace. Your confidence and your sense of certainty cannot come from what will happen in the future because we can’t control the world.
Since certainty can’t come from the outside, we need to create it from the inside out.
Our certainty can come from who we want to be.
We can be certain about how we want to show up in the world.
Our certainty can come from how we want to evolve and how we want to respond to whatever happens in the future.We can be certain of who we are.
And we can be certain about our ability to deal with whatever is presented to us at any point.
From this place of self-confidence, we can go and face this new challenge right now.
“Obstacles are nothing more than tests designed to measure how seriously you want the rewards that your ambitions seek. They show up to determine how willing you are to improve into the kind of person who can hold that amount of success. Failure’s just growth in wolf’s clothing. And pretty much nothing else is as important in life as personal expansion, the unfoldment of your potential.” – Robin Sharma
Uncertainty is a gift of this new reality and a driver of creativity and personal power. But this is only accessible to those that do the work and have the strength to overcome the fear that comes with it. Now is the perfect time to use all this uncertainty about what will happen for your benefit.
Ironically when we stop trying to control everything, we start feeling much more powerful, and we have much more control of our life because unprocessed emotions are not driving us.
Between today and the next evolution of yourself, there will be many challenges.
Allow the challenge to change you in the most significant way possible.
The big question then becomes:
How would this challenge change you in a way that better fulfils the purpose of the person you want to become?
PS: Here, you can find 10 questions you can ask yourself to convert passive uncertainty into active challenges.
