If uncertainty is sent to teach us……..what are its lessons?
The second of a three part blog from discussions between Helen Green, Jane Bytheway, Julie Barnes and Lise Ribeiro from the Oasis Practitioner Community in response to the unusual way 2020 unfolded. We share this as a piece to raise questions and what we have learnt.
Getting perspective and making choices based on our values and beliefs can help us to stand firm and locate ourselves even in the fog of uncertainty.
Finding out what really matters to us – of love, family, other people, our values and our own ways of being, living and relating to others. Taking care of our and others’ safety and health, well-being and security. Valuing our freedom to take risks within, and beyond, our comfort zones. Focusing on these and letting go of what is not important or that no longer serves us.
Deciding for ourselves can be hard enough. Navigating uncertainty becomes a more complex negotiation when we include others who don’t share our views or values.
· How do we stay connected to our values, even in uncertainty?
· How do we hold our ground in the face of difference?
Embracing Discomfort
Viewing uncertainty through different lenses and getting comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. Knowing and accepting that we all have different levels of tolerance for uncertainty, at different times, and in different situations.
As we build trust in ourselves, we come to know that we can handle what life brings us. Creating firmer ground beneath us by learning to tolerate and even welcome disruption and discomfort. Liberating ourselves from expectations of the ‘smooth road’. Staying in touch with our true sense of self rather than acting from perceived or actual ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ of others.
Developing our self-awareness and self-acceptance builds our tolerance for uncertainty – a deep breath, a straight back, two feet grounded on the earth, reconnecting with our best selves while allowing the swirl of emotions to be acknowledged and pass through us. Using Tara Brach’s RAIN model to do this with intention can be helpful:
RAIN:
1. Recognising my feelings
2. Acknowledging them – I am …
3. Investigating – curiosity in body, textures, colour, where in your body are you feeling it?
4. Naming it – this is what it feels like e.g. anger, sadness, disappointment, turmoil
· What is your inner landscape like?
· How do you describe your experience of navigating uncertainty?
· How are you with disruption?
Seeking certainty in uncertainty
Within our stories of uncertainty is a strong belief that we can work it out and that ‘this too will pass’. Recognising the touch points of certainty we do have – the grounded knowing of the familiar.
Finding certainty for ourselves; e.g. even the certainty that things will change. The certainty of what I do know – my own truth. That family matters to me even though they are often discounted in the labour market and workplace. That my well-being is all I have and when I over-work, over-stress and over-tire, I am serving no-one.
Looking for the certainty, even in uncertainty. It might be a spiritual belief e.g. that the universe will take care of us, or practical learning from previous experience that ‘I will be okay’.
‘There is nothing we are in that we can’t get out of…’
‘At the core of navigating uncertainty for me, is trusting myself to be okay. That things will work out and I will be okay. To stay present and even to let go of expected outcomes. Connect to what really matters to me. Find the constants that I can rely on in the whirlwind’. Can I account for my actions or inaction to myself? To others?
When the road ahead is unknown, what can we be sure of?
What do we need in order to take risks when we can’t see the outcome?
Understanding our choices and making decisions
‘Make a choice and live with it until you can live into it’. Learn from it and make another choice if it is not right. It’s a decision for NOW, not forever. Listen to your inner voice.
We believe it will work out eventually and we get relief from making a decision for now – relief from struggling and going round and round about what to do.
It can be hugely liberating to recognise that ‘this is only a decision for now’ and that many (most?) decisions are not set in stone. That we can decide what is right for us and others, now, today, in this moment. If we find that we don’t like it we can change our mind and make another decision. And when we can’t, making our best throw for the best outcomes for now.
What else exists between the polarities of all or nothing? What can ‘both/and’ thinking bring us?
· What supports us in choosing the next step, living with the consequences and being okay with it?
· What is right for now?
What comforts and supports us
‘And what brings me comfort and joy? What restores my body, my soul, myself?
We get more of what we consistently focus on. Paying close attention to creating more of what restores and supports us is an essential part of the journey.
Creating routines, rituals, regular activities and touch stones through the day, the week, the year can bring comfort and structure to our locked-down lives. Spending time on the things we love – ‘music, light, photography, walking in nature, painting, laughter, eating well, reading, doing nothing, exercise, learning, adventure, experimentation, Netflix, movies, stimulation, conversation, touch, hugs, company of others, nature, action, non-action, mindful and guided meditation’. Whatever brings comfort to ground and support us in uncertain times.
Connecting with who I am, what really matters to me and how I wish to be in the world. Not who I am seen to be or who I become for others, but the true person within.
· What brings you comfort and support?
· What structures and scaffolding hold you up?
· What do you need to weather the storm?
If we let go of the familiar, and do indeed, ‘make the path by walking’ what can we learn from our smallest steps? Steppingstones can help us along the journey, laying the foundations to a longer path across unknown territory? The Bolton Abbey Steppingstones inspired us to explore how this metaphor can help us.
· They create a clear way of crossing the lake in small steps.
· They look safe but are actually far apart and quite a big leap to cross. It’s a long way and you can start to feel the danger when you are halfway across with other people coming up behind you.
· They look safe, especially when the water is calm but less so when it’s windy or the river is fuller and choppy. The stones remain the same but the level of danger changes depending on the context – are the waters calm or choppy? Will the stones support me in the same way in the wild weather?
· If the gaps between the steppingstones are too big, maybe we need something to come in between them to help us hold our ground in stormy weather e.g. another stone in between or a handrail or a person to lean on?
· ‘Hope is not a strategy’…but perhaps it can be a foundation stone for creating a strategy.
The last bullet point led us into a discussion around hope and The power of Hope , a final blog linked to our discussions around Navigating Uncertainty.