Living with Uncertainty Uncertainty is a fact of life.
This is the water in which we swim.
We live never knowing exactly what will unfold.
We're always on the horizon of a newly dawning moment.
A moment that is never fully predictable and ultimately out of our control.
This fact of uncertainty alternates between being a source of anxiety or a source of excitement because it presents open-ended possibility.
We know that life is happening in the present.
Although the mind continually predicts,
Projects,
And fantasizes about the future,
The future is unknown and ungraspable.
We could even say that the future never arrives.
Because as soon as the moment that was in the future arises,
It instantly becomes the past.
The future always remains the future.
We are always on the horizon of continual uncontrollable possibility.
Therefore the belief that we have more than minimal control over what people will do and the external events that will happen to us is an avoidable source of self-inflicted stress.
We can work with this ultimate lack of control and unpredictability about the future by increasing what we could call our uncertainty tolerance.
Our uncertainty tolerance is the capacity we have to be okay with the untamable wildness of the future.
When we are within our uncertainty tolerance,
We can be directly with the body and mind experience of not knowing,
Not controlling.
Instead of anxiety and its corollary impulse to control,
Being present with not knowing positively charges the moment with an aliveness.
We find that rigid certainty is not only a figment of our imaginations,
It is a deadening agent upon our lives.
Widening our uncertainty tolerance,
Abiding in the openness of not knowing,
We invite freshness and spontaneity to come forth.
To widen our uncertainty tolerance,
We learn to interrupt the habits that create anxiety.
We learn to let go of negative assumptions about what will happen and stay in our body as waves of nervous energy move through us.
We recognize thoughts about the future as no more than that,
Thoughts about the future,
Information that may or may not be accurate.
We see that very often the mind generates false assumptions and even predicts disasters when no immediate danger is around.
Every time we see thoughts about the future with this kind of perspective,
We deepen the ability to be with waves of anxiety,
Hold center and stand firm in presence.
Every time you stay present with feelings and sensations,
You deepen the ability to be with emotions such as anxiety.
You observe more clearly the connection between thoughts about the future and the feelings that arise inside you.
Gradually you interrupt habits of mind that generate unnecessary worry or fear.
Your confidence in responding to life from the present moment grows.
Your appreciation for uncertainty as an enlivening force leads to more confidence and appreciation for living in the now.
