Embracing Uncertainty

Embracing Uncertainty

October 20, 2009, 9:24 pm
Filed under: Creating Your Dream, Uncategorized | Tags: bliss, Chris Dorris, Christopher Dorris, Clarity, coaching, community, courage, creativity, discipline, dream life, dreams, emotion control, Freddy Couples, Fun, intelligence, Keynote Speaker, meditation, mental toughness, Michael Allen, Networked Blogs, passion, Personal Coaching, personal growth, PGA Tour, psychological strength, surrender, The Gap, Tiger Woods, toughness, uncertainty, Waste Management Phoenix Open

CHOOSING PEACE AMIDST CHAOS

One of my favorite definitions of enlightenment : “The ability to embrace paradox, contradiction and uncertainty.” Another: “The ability to choose peace in every moment of your life.”

So if we marry those two definitions, then we can surmise that in order to be able to choose peace, we also need to be able to embrace uncertainty. Not just deal with uncertainty, but embrace it. Love it. Genuinely feel gratitude for the unpredictable nature of life.

We have challenges right now. Times are tough. Everyone’s feeling it somehow. Some more than others. Some are feeling inconvenienced by the economy while others are feeling pure panic. Some are finding this time to be an unprecedented opportunity for investment. Others have lost everything that could be invested and are in survival mode.

What I find remarkably interesting, however, is that there are extremely wealthy people who are in panic mode and extremely poor people who are in peace. Which supports the fact that the variable of how financially set you are is totally irrelevant to your ability to choose peace, embrace uncertainty or activate creative genius. The only variable that matters now, or ever, is your EQ, or Emotional Quotient – your ability to choose how you view the world and its current state.

 Uncertainty is the design of the universe in which we exist, from which we emerged. It’s the nature of our universe, and is also therefore our very own nature.

We’ve been taught to fear that uncertainty. And that’s bad teaching. Because of the conditioning we have experienced in our lifetimes, as well as our thousands of years old conditioning that we’ve inherited from the collective human experience, we have been taught to pay great attention to what could potentially go wrong as an effort to avoid it. We’ve been conditioned to selectively attend to the fact that, under certain circumstances, if certain things do or don’t happen, we’re not going to be OK. In fact, we very well may be screwed. And we’ve become very sophisticated at creating supportive arguments for that notion. For example, I could effortlessly argue that if this economy doesn’t turn around soon, I’ll lose everything and could go homeless. I could make that argument. Convincingly. If I had to argue that in a debate, I could do it, and win. But WHY would I ever want to do that?! That thinking doesn’t serve me. It leads to fear, and fear disables creativity which is the failure of intelligence. And I need my creativity and all forms of intelligence to create wealth, or anything else that I wish to manifest now or ever. So my convincing argument is unintelligent. And that argument is the product of my conditioning. I’ve been taught to think that way.

WHAT I THINK ABOUT, I BRING ABOUT

The great irony within this is that where I put my attention, I also put my energy and what I think about, I bring about. So, is it potentially true that if the economy doesn’t recover soon, and then this thing happens, and then that doesn’t and then this and that…then I could end up homeless? The best answer? Who cares? That’s a waste of my time. It leads to nothing creative or solution focused. It’s also the kind of thinking that creates heart failure. It’s infinitely unintelligent.

THRIVING vs. SURVIVING

So then what IS intelligent? It’s wise to feel good. And how then do I feel good? By thinking well. By choosing to change the internal dialog that I am having with myself all day every day. To make the content of that inner conversation one that is inspiring. To talk to myself in a way that leaves me feeling excited about thriving, not worried about surviving. I want to focus on my desires as opposed to my fears. Again, whichever one I choose to give attention to, is the one that I’ll give life to.

This kind of disciplined thinking is easy when things are going our way. But despite the fact that it’s tougher to think well under challenge, it’s more critical than ever to be a great thinker under duress. This time is one that I refer to as a collective critical moment. It’s popular these days to be worried and to complain. But that kind of thinking is actually, if anything, prolonging the struggle and return to abundance.

As Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world. Don’t contribute to the fear consciousness. Practice activating your creative genius by feeling gratitude for the challenges that we are experiencing right now, and choose enthusiasm. Choose creativity, innovation. Choose peace. Choose to embrace the uncertainty of all of this. That’ll never go away. Once the economy recovers, the uncertainty will still be there. So why wait? Practice starting to love it now.

SOME MANTRAS TO REPEAT A HUNDRED TIMES A DAY:

“EVERYTHING IS UNFOLDING AS IT SHOULD.” 

“THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE WORLD; WHAT’S WRONG IS THE WAY I VIEW IT.”

“I CAN CHOOSE PEACE RATHER THAN THIS.”

“I AM THE SOURCE OF INFINITE CREATIVITY.”

19 Comments

19 Comments so far
Leave a comment

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI