Moment to moment, we make decisions that pave the path to our future lives–what we eat, whom we connect with, where we work, where we live. And we think we control most aspects of our lives, but the truth is we live in a world where many external factors are completely out of our control.
This has become abundantly clear, especially in the last decade.
Every day, I walk people through their most vulnerable experiences, which often leaves them with a felt sense of fear. And once we explore the fear further, it almost always stems from uncertainty.
The intolerance for the things we can’t control.
We like to feel in control of all aspects of our lives. And when we don’t have a felt sense of control, it can cause anxiety or existential dread.
What most people don’t understand is that our level of tolerance for external uncertainty is largely determined by how our earliest environment felt. Our relationship to uncertainty was often solidified before we started making our own choices in life.
If we grow up in a chaotic environment where a felt sense of uncertainty was the norm, our nervous system learned to anticipate danger early on. We end up expecting and preparing for danger constantly.
So how do we strengthen our relationship to uncertainty? We first take the time to understand it, and then we can determine where we need to go. We learn about how our earliest experiences and environment determined our internal sense of safety.
And then we get familiar with our nervous system. We get curious about how our internal state has developed strategies to keep us safe. And we slowly learn to sit with uncertainty one moment at a time until our internal world can tolerate the feeling of a felt sense of safety.
And once we get comfortable with safety in our internal world, the external world feels much less threatening.