Hello my friends,
As human beings, we are mostly programmed to seek certainty. To know what is coming, to have a stable job and income, to predict certain outcomes, etc. In other words, we are control freaks?. Nothing wrong with that (well…) – that’s how our society functions and that’s how most of us have been brought up. I certainly have.
Until one day we realise that this “certainty” thing is not about us controlling things but about us being controlled by the outside circumstances. We become the slaves to our mortgages, lifestyles, image… You name it.
Striving for constant certainty brings other “side effects”. Anxiety, stress, fear and other uninvited friends. Simply because when things don’t go as planned we don’t like it and we try our level best to get things back to the way we think they should be. Everything outside of our perception of certainty is uncertainty. And uncertainty is scary.
When you stop for a second and think about the above – it’s madness. The above is the reason we get stuck in the jobs we don’t like, get stuck with the partners we should walk away from, often do things without questioning them, etc.
We are willing to put up with a load of BS, often all our lives, just to have certainty. Better the devil you know, right?
There are people out there that are OK with uncertainty. I admire them. A lot. And I have been listening to their life stories, their perceptions of certainty and uncertainty, their ways of thinking and feeling for a while now. A few years. Wanting to unprogramme my certainty programme that I have been carrying all my life. My parents did the best they could (and I love them to bits), just like millions of other parents out there but the certainty programme they brought me up with was rubbish. Complete rubbish. I don’t like it. Caused me a lot of anxiety in the past.
First time I “dared” to break my pattern of what I thought certainty was (secure job and income) was two years ago. I was 45 at the time. I resigned from my cushy corporate job in Japan. Without another job, without knowing what was I going to do. And it felt soooooooooooooooo liberating. I somehow KNEW I was doing the right thing. Simply knew it.
And it felt like I discovered what the true certainty was. True certainty means trusting what feels right. To YOU. Listening to your gut. And no – we will not always be able to do what feels right. And it’s OK. But if we, from time to time, simply stop and have a date with ourselves and listen to what really matters to us – we might be able to do at least one little step at a time towards letting go of the certainty as we know it and saying hello to the certainty we know is our own authentic voice.
Trusting instead of controlling is a huge step. But boy, does it feel right.
As my coach says. Living with ‘I don’t know’ opens up a gate to endless opportunities. And that’s not scary, that’s exciting.
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Have a wonderful day.
Michaela x