The Value of Embracing Uncertainty

 Hello everyone,

Here’s a truth…
Uncertainty is a normal part of life.

This is true whether your life is unfolding with a sense of ease these days (& I sincerely hope it is)…or whether for you this has been a time of rapid, profound and sometimes disruptive transition. Not knowing what’s next or what direction to take is simply part of the mix when it comes to making a decision, figuring out your next steps, and working through fears or concerns. At the same time it is also normal to want to fix what feels uncertain. We want to make something happen or we secretly wish we had a crystal ball. In the face of uncertainty, we want the answers. And we want them now!

But all that anxiety-producing needing to know and longing for answers is like herding cats.

Uncertainly is the zip code of “I don’t know” and when we want something different than that, we are instantly at war with our circumstances chasing a way to feel better. When we find ourselves in that predicament, it seems to me we are once again at a choice point.

Okay…I know that I consistently talk a lot about choice. But honestly at the heart of having the certainty you desire is the understanding that YOU ARE A CHOOSER in the human experience rather than a victim of circumstance. Exercising your power of choice will always reveal to you that you possess the golden key to finally getting the answers that make sense to you and that ultimately lead to living a yummy life.

So uncertainly invites us into a couple of choices:

• Either we think we are on a scary slippery slope of confusion, stuckness and possible failure.
• Or we decide we have stepped into an expansive field of all possibilities in which anything can happen.

The unsettling nature of uncertainty has been so up for my clients that I decided to make it the topic of this month’s gathering of the Trust Tribe. The Trust Tribe is made up of the graduates of my Trust Your Life programs and we meet each month to offer in-depth support for each other. So just a few days ago, we tapped into our collective wisdom to find the value of embracing uncertainty rather than fighting it. Here are just some of the strategies for dancing with uncertainty that we explored:

• Practice gratitude and focus on what’s working
• Receive without resistance all that life has to offer with openness & curiosity
• Turn to inspirational reading or audios
• Relax into having patience with the process
• Get trusted, self empowering support
• Trust inner guidance every step of the way

We all agreed from our own experience that practicing all or some of these strategies often revealed the within even the darkest of challenges lay the “gold” we yearned for…a clarifying insight, the wisdom to resolve a dilemma, or the courage to stay the course until a resolution became evident

The opportunity to viscerally know the value of trusting the deep wisdom within yourself and the exquisite wisdom of life’s unfolding is always the flip side of uncertainty. In other words the value of uncertainty is to dig in and get to know who you truly are while opening to surprising possibilities.

Want some real life examples? Well…like some of my clients and people I know who’ve had the courage to embrace uncertainty, you too might:

• Find that the seeming end of a relationship actually becomes the opportunity to transform that relationship.
• Discover that a decision to move to a new city opens up the opportunity to purchase the perfect new home in the city in which you are already living.
• Realize that a passion for researching a new minimalist, green way to live might become a new career path.

To shift out of dreaded uncertainty, my call to action for you is this: First consider this wisdom from one of my favorite lines from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel film: “Everything will work out in the end, and, if it hasn’t, then it is not yet the end.” Then, beyond worry and the need to control what is often uncontrollable, choose to trust that life is working out for you. Just that simple decision will infuse the flow of life with renewed energy. But prove it to yourself by observing, writing down and celebrating all the ways life feels good from the smallest heart warming moment to big challenging turnarounds.

The next thing you know you might even look forward to uncertainty because you will know that it’s a portal to unexpected miracles yet to be experienced.

Cheering you on to discover what might happen to you if you befriended uncertainty…
xoxo,
Max