I remember lying in bed at night as a child, listening to crickets and the distant yipping of coyotes, breathing in the scent of night-blooming jasmine that snaked along the trellis outside my window. On the surface, I was safe and comfortable. Inside, though, a flurry of what-ifs threatened to upend everything.
Worry became my constant companion into young adulthood. I worried about everything — from the absurd (would a poppy-seed bagel make me fail a drug test?) to the catastrophic (a car accident taking away someone I loved, job loss, financial insecurity).
No matter how smoothly things were going, I could always find something to worry about. And then, one day, something happened that I never saw coming – the one thing I hadn’t worried about. It upended my life. Everything changed, including me.
All those years of worry suddenly felt laughable. I saw how it gave me a false sense of control, as if anticipating the worst could somehow protect me from it.
But the hard truth is that we can’t prepare ourselves for the truly hard things.
Life feels uncertain these days for all of us. My clients share how hard it is to be decisive, focused and motivating when everything around them is shifting: restructurings, shifting priorities, tightening margins.
Looking back, I realize worry was my way of coping with uncertainty. What’s yours? When things feel out of your control, do you take on more? Withdraw? Try to be indispensable? Start looking for a Plan B?
We all need ways to cope that help us find grounding in the midst of change, but we also might notice how these coping mechanisms limit our experience, our very sense of feeling alive in all of its messiness.
What if, instead, we saw our lives more like the ocean – sometimes riding high on a wave, sometimes tumbled and breathless, sand in our mouths – but always part of something larger, moving, alive?
I was going to end the post there, but after feeling the effects of uncertainty myself and talking it through with my coach yesterday, I decided to add a PS.
While uncertainty is fertile ground for aliveness and creativity, it is also exhausting. In those moments when I feel caught in an undertow with sand in my teeth, I remind myself of the work of Dr. Kristin Neff. She defines self-compassion as treating ourselves with the same care as we would give a loved one.
Think about giving it a shot, maybe even tonight.
Starla Sireno is recognized as one of the top executive coaches in NYC. Starla is in the business of transforming executives into better leaders and better humans. Inquire how to work with Starla or her team.