episode 64: making friends with uncertainty
Listen to this episode here, or read the transcript below.
This week is a big deal for me - it’s the fifth anniversary of my business - a body art studio in southern California. I opened my studio on September 1 of 2017, and I’ve talked about the experience in a couple of earlier episodes of this podcast. Opening my studio was probably one of the biggest leaps of faith in myself that I’ve ever taken, and I’ll totally admit to you here, it was one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever done. I sunk my last liquid assets into my studio, literally putting everything into it. I was somewhat recently divorced, in a new relationship, had just moved to southern CA a few months prior, and didn’t know a single person here, let alone have a single client. Conventional wisdom told me to maybe work for someone else for a while, to get on my feet and network, but an opportunity for a really cool space presented itself one day and I just went for it.
It’s funny, because I think a lot of folks that don’t know me very well think wow, she’s so brave! But the day I opened my doors? I literally cried the entire way on my drive in. And then this ridiculous song came on the mix I was listening to - it’s an old one by the Sisters of Mercy called “No Time to Cry”. Yes, I’m an aging goth, that’s one of my all time favorite bands. And I took it as a sign to clean myself up and not screw up my black eyeliner - again, aging goth here - and I went about my day, which ended up being pretty lucrative.
All I wanted, when I opened my shop, was some guarantee that it was all going to work out. That I wasn’t going to lose money in investing in my own business. That I’d be successful. But what I knew - from experience, having opened a studio before - is that NO ONE could give me that guarantee. All I could do was look at it as an adventure, and deal with what I could in the moment, work hard, and hope for the best. I will fully admit, as someone who’s been largely self employed since she was 17 - and I’m nearly 45 now - I’m likely more comfortable living in a state of uncertainty than most. But I will definitely say that it’s not fun, and it scares me just as much as the next person, even though I’m more used to the feeling. I know, again, from personal experience, sometimes the universe puts you into some very uncertain situations, and those situations force you to step up and figure things out in the moment. Opening my studio was FOR SURE an exercise in that!
So here’s the theme of this episode: no one likes living in a state of uncertainty. Everyone wants a guarantee that they’re going to be safe in their lives. That they’re going to be taken care. That they’re not going to suffer. And that they’re not going to end up alone. We do all kinds of things to micromanage any infinite number of possible negative situations that we dream up. And if you’re like me - a survivor of childhood abuse - this is not even just a tendency, it likely has become a subconscious instinct. For anyone who’s escaped an abusive situation, we all want to know that we’ll never experience that again, so we create all kinds of rules and criteria and control to try and manage our inner circle and emotional landscape. Boundaries are great, let’s not forget that, but there is a huge difference between having healthy boundaries and becoming obsessed with over controlling our environment. Even if you’re not a survivor of abuse or trauma, this is a normal kind of thing to do, just likely to a lesser degree.
But there is an uncomfortable truth we all need to internalize and accept. In life, there are zero guarantees. No outcome is foretold. None. You know, I’ve been listening to a bunch of podcasts on wellness and spiritual influencers lately, and one of the common threads I’m seeing is that people are drawn to these gurus because - in a certain respect - they either “know things” or they’re able to guarantee that if you just follow their system (which they’re generally selling for a significant amount of money) that you’ll be just fine. Miraculously healed, or financially solvent, they peddle these outcomes. But no one really will admit - I don’t have the answers. No one has the answers. And there are no guarantees. AND that is OK!
Here’s a funny example. I talk all the time on this podcast about writing things down - journaling, the power of the written word, that kind of thing. And a few years ago, around the time I opened my studio, I wrote down a bunch of goals in a journal. I thought about these goals a lot right after I wrote them down, and then a ton of stuff started happening that threw me off. One was a giant wildfire my first year of business that started literally down the block from my studio. That was - uhhh - uncertainty. And then COVID shutdowns for over 8.5 months in 2020. That also was very uncertain. At first, because I was facing so much uncertainty, I felt like I wasn’t making any progress toward my goals. But then a few months ago, after forgetting about this journal entry, I found it. And I realized I had accomplished pretty much everything. I just didn’t follow the linear path I thought I would. And that’s the other thing about uncertainty. We have to realize that we can have goals, but the universe can throw us curveballs at any time - but it doesn’t necessarily have to make us stop trying.
In this podcast, I talk a lot about the keys to resilience and growth. And one of the biggest is truly learning to embrace uncertainty rather than fight it. How can we do that? Let’s explore some strategies for the remainder of this episode.
One: Recognize that in life, everything is technically uncertain and anything can happen at any given moment. I was a big Douglas Adams fan when I was young - loved the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and I always think about a spaceship in that book that had an improbability drive, where once you engaged it, all kinds of crazy stuff would happen. Like a giant sperm whale materializing in the space ship. In real life, that likely won’t happen, but things indeed will happen that you’ve never thought of, never anticipated, never hoped for, or never wanted. But you know what? That’s a consequence simply of being human on this planet. The sooner you can embrace that you can’t control every outcome, the less stress you will cause yourself.
Two - definitely, be goal oriented, but know that the path you follow might not be the one you think you’ve chosen. Don’t buy into quick fixes from gurus that guarantee their system is the one way to get to career success or financial freedom - oh god, please, know that no one knows everything, and what worked for them, might not work for you because you’re two completely different people with completely different life circumstances. That’s ok. Don’t judge yourself if it’s taking you longer to get to where you want to go. Don’t judge yourself if you get thrown off course due to things out of your control. As long as you have an end goal in mind, it doesn’t really matter how long it takes you, or how you get there - all that matters is you’re making progress. Please, be kind to yourself in pursuit of goals, and remember that you - like everyone else - are an experiment of one.
Three - Stop looking outside of yourself for a guarantee that everything’s going to be ok. I drive my husband crazy at times with this type of conversation. One of my biggest fears? Being alone at the end of my life. I don’t really have a relationship with any family members and I don’t have children, and my husband is 8 years older than me, so statistically speaking, when I’m an elderly lady, there’s a likelihood I’ll be on my own. I’m always asking him to tell me that it’ll be ok, to try and quell that fear. But he can’t. No one can. We all have fears like that. And instead of constantly looking for external reassurance, what we all need to do is instead know that we ALL have an ability within ourselves to take care of ourselves. Too often, we get distracted by the promise of external validation, when we should be working on that internally. Tell yourself - if this comes to pass, I will be able to deal with the situation WHEN it comes to pass, and I’m not going to spend my precious time NOW being drowned in my worries.
Four - learn to stay in the present moment. Stop future tripping on any infinite number of what ifs. A simply exercise you can do to develop this ability is simply to do one thing at a time in your daily life. I know, that sounds a little…huh? But we all get bogged down by multitasking. Watching TV while scrolling on our phones. Talking on the phone while cleaning or typing an email. Sitting with a family member at dinner while having our phone out on the table. By multitasking in this way, we’re not fully present. And it’s the same with future tripping. We have the present moment right in front of us, but we juggle that AND an unknown future. How is that possibly beneficial to anyone? It’s not. Do one thing at a time, and stay in the moment.
Five, and this one is my favorite. Flip the script - think of uncertainty as potential, rather than a terrifying prospect. If anything can happen, that “any-thing” can be something amazing. Here’s an example. Let’s say you have a medical issue and have to undergo a bunch of tests. It’s scary sitting with that, waiting for results. But maybe you haven’t been feeling yourself for a while. Instead of stewing on what the result may be, you can tell yourself, this has the potential to make me feel better than I ever have before once we figure this out. I’ll finally have answers. We can apply that same flipping of the script to almost anything that might seem negative - once we’ve had a chance to deal with and process the emotions around a situation, say a divorce or break up, we can see that maybe now we have some opportunities we’ve never had before. And by the way, I’m totally speaking from my own personal experience on that one!
In conclusion, learning to sit with uncertainty, and learning to make friends with the unknown, is one of the biggest tools for growth that we have. And I hope these strategies help you!