Woah. Finding Our Footing.
Uncertainty feels like its ‘winning’ these days. Exhaustion and fear weigh on us. If there is one thing that is certain, it is a great deal of uncertainty. You are most likely feeling like you can barely comprehend or digest global events, let alone respond to them and your needs.
Ideas for creating balance, moving out of hopelessness, and supporting endurance: To look forward, we can look back at how people have sustained themselves in difficult times. The science of uncertainty shows us that most often, finding our way through the fog to where we want to be takes patience and fortitude.
Consider possibilities: We get so narrowly focused on the current situation that we lose the bigger picture and start thinking in binary outcomes like failure/success or disaster/salvation.
Sort knowns and unknowns: Identifying what you know and what you don’t know can decrease your anxiety and provide some knowns to fill in the gaps. Like an oil spill, uncertainty can easily spread and contaminate perfectly functioning aspects of our lives.
Don’t force machinery: When you feel the anxiety, it can be tempting to grab at anything certain to escape the discomfort of the unknown. We instinctively want to figure things out as quickly as possible, but sometimes patience is precisely what is needed for an opportunity to emerge, an answer to surface, the path to become clear.
Follow your inclinations: Magic comes from letting ourselves do what we feel ‘pulled’ towards. It is always scary to begin. Don’t wait for 'perfect’ circumstances because they will never come. You will never figure out the optimal outcome or how to get there. You might get stuck or miss out on the way it was really meant to happen.
Question self doubt: There are many, many faces of self-doubt. We may tell ourselves that we don't have the money, we are too old, others have had the idea before, someone else could do it better, and on and on until we convince ourselves not to try. Move forward anyway, knowing that others have felt what you feel.
Add Comforts: Sensory comforts are sustaining and are meant to be—our senses have evolved to steer us toward safety, nourishment, and pleasure. Take note of the comforts that sustain you as they can become sources of healing in our daily lives, refueling us for the journey through uncertainty.
“Hope for me is distinct from idealism or optimism. It has nothing to do with wishful thinking. It is a muscle, a practice, a choice: to live open-eyed and wholehearted in the world as it is and not as we wish it to be.” — Krista Tippett
Take good care of yourselves,
Jordan
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