Finding Strength in the Unknown
They say “Life’s like a box of chocolates”.
Well, I kind of hate it.
There are plenty of surprises that I love, but not knowing which rogue chocolate is full of the coconut…not for me. Accepting the level of uncertainty that comes with chocolates….and life, well it’s just not something that I’m the best at.
Embracing uncertainty takes courage, but in this embrace, there lies a lot of personal growth and resilience, you just have to be willing to ride that roller coaster…except this roller coaster messes with your head, scoffs at your plans, and leaves you clinging to whatever shreds of predictability you can find.
It’s no secret that the world is spinning in uncertainty, leaving us mentally exhausted and spent, but we can learn to navigate it and even thrive within it, which will unlock inner strength you didn’t know you had.
Thriving in the Chaos
To thrive or not to thrive, that really is the question. When we condition ourselves to be resistant to the unknown, we are setting ourselves up to let chaos be the ruler, instead of us being the ruler of chaos. Learning to thrive is far beyond just looking at the dumpster fire and saying “it’s fine, everything’s fine!” It’s about how we reframe our thoughts and approach to really believe that it’s all going to be fine, and really it’s not very complex.
Roll with the Punches
There are plenty of things we can control, which are balanced by plenty of things we cannot control. More times than not, we will just have to contROLL with it. Maintaining a level of flexibility (think mental pilates) is necessary in the face of uncertainty. The best visual for this I can think of, is the silly reels I’ve seen of a sunflower holding on for dear life while the wind whips at hurricane force levels.
Friends, we gotta be that sunflower—bendy, not breaky.
Focus on the Bright Side
Cue the song by Monty Python “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”! Truly though, it’s all about the silver linings. I don’t know why they call them silver linings anyway, because to me those thoughts typically bring me right back to reality in the best way. To me, that’s pure gold.
The universe has a funny way of nudging us (ahem…shoving us unwillingly) in a direction we hadn’t yet considered, so maybe we need to pay attention to this more instead of wasting time playing the blame game.
Live, Laugh, Then Laugh Somemore
Have you ever been so knee deep in it all that the only thing left to do was laugh, then you actually felt better afterwards? Well, there’s a method to that madness. When we laugh our brains do us a solid favor and swap out the release of cortisol with the highly sought after dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins.
So in a way laughter really is the best medicine.
Squad Goals
As cliche as it sounds, there is complete necessity in having your own squad. We all need that group text where we can say “you’re never going to believe this”, and get responses like “I’m ready, spill the tea”, or some version that lets you know the support you have around you is ready to…well…support!
Embrace the Adventure
I mean, everything is an adventure, whether we like it or not. The choice is really whether we are going to be an active participant or not.
Honestly, uncertainty will always be the plot twist you never saw coming, so we might as well embrace it!
Navigating the Storm with Mindfulness
If it all seems overly simplistic, that’s because it really is that simple. It boils down to a choice that we make, we just need to be more intentional about leading from a positive space instead of caving to the negativity.
But there are also times in life where we are going to encounter a snowball of uncertainty. We will all eventually go through the “everything is crashing down” part of life, where no amount of positivity or laughing are going to push you through it.
I’m not naive to the fact that we can’t all be positive all the time, nor should that be an expectation because truthfully, that’s unattainable. We have to allow ourselves to feel all the feelings, and that includes the good, the bad, and the ugly.
In those ebbs and flows, we have to harness our mindfulness, which is something that goes far beneath our surface. It’s where we trigger reflection, and find our internal dialogue that provides us with a sense of reason, if we can figure out how to get to that space.
Breathe, Baby, Breathe
Breathing should always be your first go-to exercise. Just breathing can bring us back to equilibrium, allowing us to think more clearly and with resolve. Sometimes, breathing may be the only thing we have the bandwidth for, but that alone can be more valuable than trying to jump into damage control mode.
Try box breathing:
- Inhale for 4 seconds (pretend your belly is a balloon and allow your breath to blow it up)
- Hold for 4 seconds
- Exhale for 4 seconds
- Hold for 4 seconds
Inhale courage, exhale fear.
Repeat as needed.
Ground Yourself in the Present
Oftentimes I think we make “grounding” too complicated, too existential. Unless you have the capacity to go to that level, keep it simple. This may even if that mean that you look around the room you’re in and state what is a concrete fact like:
- The chair is yellow
- The pen is on the desk
- The cat is purring
Repeat those things until you can feel yourself becoming more centered.
You’d be shocked to know that grounding ourselves doesn’t have to involve deep meditation and introspection. While those are amazing and highly encouraged things, uncertainty can take the wind out of our sails, leaving us feeling depleted. Just keeping this exercise simplistic can level your thoughts.
Find Joy in the Little Things
In uncertain times, it’s the little things that matter most. The short of it is to always seek and find joy in a steaming cup of coffee, a cozy blanket, or a belly laugh with a loved one.
It’s the small moments that add up to a life well-lived.
Stories of Resilience: Everyday Heroes
There are plenty of stories that show how embracing uncertainty leads to greater things, if we allow ourselves to surrender to the process of resilience. Below are just a few:
- Thomas Edison failed somewhere between 1,000 to 10,000 times before he invented the lightbulb, until the 1 time that he didn’t fail.
- Stephen King’s first novel was rejected by 30 different publishers, and in fact, he threw his novel in the trash until his wife fished it out of the trash and encouraged him to finish it. Now he has sold over 350 million copies of that novel.
- Bethany Hamilton had her arm bitten off by a shark during a surfing accident when she was 13 years old. Instead of giving up her love of surfing, she went back on her board a month later and went on to win first place in the NSSA National Championships
- Walt Disney was fired from his first job because his editor said he didn’t have enough imagination or creativity. To make matters worse, he drove Disney’s animation studio, Laugh-O-Gram into bankruptcy. It wasn’t until he moved to California and began producing cartoons did he find the success in his career that then made him a legend.
The list really goes on and on. The point is, we’re surrounded by people and stories who’ve looked uncertainty in the face and emerged stronger than ever. It’s all in how they embraced it and harnessed the strength within it that they found success.
Will our lives and experiences be that grand, for most of us no, but no matter how “small” your uncertainty may be, the “win” that waits on the other side of that is just as significant as those above.
