Uncertainty is an Invitation towards Growth
This is a daily invitation to grant yourself permission to drop all your other nagging ‘Musts’ and ‘Shoulds’ about self-improvement, personal development and living a virtuous life. Just choose this one thing and sit with it today.
Just Be Like This Today: “Today I accept Paradox”
You remember growing up and being told, “Don’t be so loud!” and then you also distinctly remember being told, “Speak up! Don’t be so shy!” or “No, you can’t have it now!”, “No, you can’t do it later!”
Don’t be too brash! —Don’t be so timid! Don't be too sensitive! —Don't be too thick skinned! Don’t give up so soon! —You have to know when it’s time to walk away. Don't keep asking. —You have to let people know what you need! Don't put yourself in danger! —Don't play so safe all the time! Don't be fatalistic! —Don't expect the world to bend your way! Don't be too soft! —Don't be too bold! Don't be too early! —Don't be too late! Don't hoard! —Don't squander! Don't be too naive! —Don't be too jaded! Don't be too assertive! —Don't be too sumbissive!
Imagine an enormous 3D map, a landscape of hills and valleys, each one being one of these virtues you are supposed to balance perfectly, and they always seem to influence each other. Lifting the right one higher drags up the ones you are told to keep down. Lowering the ones you are told to moderate, drags down the ones you are told to elevate in yourself.
This landscape metaphor serves as a powerful reminder that growth is not a linear path but a multidimensional exploration that requires us to embrace contradictions and uncertainties. Each hill and valley on your metaphorical map represents the diverse aspects of your personality and behaviour that some voice is urging you to calibrate – sometimes in conflicting directions. The act of balancing these aspects, then, becomes not just a challenge, but an art form in itself, necessitating flexibility, awareness, and the willingness to embrace the unknown.
“A false sense of security, it turns out, is the only kind there is.” —Michael Meade
SO HOW DO WE SOLVE THE UNSOLVABLE PROBLEM?
The only real compass and calibration tool you can rely on, is your own gut, your own truth, your own sense of purpose in life. You have to first accept the paradox of YOU!
To be a human being is to live the experience of duality. And that is just another way of saying that from your first-person perspective of life from the inside of your own authentic experience is Paradox.
Sometimes you actually already know which choice suits you best, the problem is disappointing someone else, or breaking a promise to yourself that is keeping you small. Sometimes then, the real trick is facing the uncertainty of what it will mean if they don’t like the real you.
The secret aim of Tension, is Transformation.
TAKE HOME/PRACTICE
The take-home today is a simple one, with profound implications.
Uncertainty is the ground that you walk on really, you never know when it is going to give way beneath your feet. You never know when the other shoe is going to drop. The only way to live with your choices, no matter what happens, is to make your choices from Love.
Every choice you make from love, regardless of the contradiction it shines a light on, is something that you can do and not suffer avoidable regret from. You only have the wisdom you have, you only feel what you feel. You only want what you want. Making choices this way doesn't create a contradiction, it simply illuminates what is already there. Facing the contradiction in yourself is how you develop self-knowledge. This is how you work out and practice your own authenticity. Paradoxically, authenticity—that most true thing about you, has to be practiced, because of how shaped and moulded you have become by trying to be accepted and valued, by trying to belong.
First, belong to yourself!
Your practice today is to decide which kind of regret you prefer. The regret of not living your truth or the regret of facing discomfort.
Be okay with uncertainty, and keep asking yourself today, when you feel torn or conflicted by any paradox: “What would ‘Love’ look like for me? What choice however unpopular can I make that feels most like Love to me?”
This is the only way to weave our way between the two pillars of opposites. This is the way we find ‘The Signal’, and follow the way.
Just be like this today!
If this post resonates with you and you are looking for a more direct application of this Living Wisdom, or a more tailored approach to effective practices, the other half of my day job is meeting with people and helping them apprentice themselves to their own life: Schedule a Call
—Everything is Waiting for You.