Thriving Through Uncertainty

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by Tama J Kieves


  If you’re in transition, the things you decide right now will affect your entire life. And because you’re going through change, you feel more vulnerable. And when you’re feeling weak, it’s possible to make weaker choices than you really want to make.

  I want to help you choose from strength, love, and the astounding guidance of your inspired mind. Because when your plans fail, that’s when your real life begins. This is a precious opportunity to create the life that is calling your name right now.

  Fears and resistance will talk you out of showing up for yourself in every way you can. But it is showing up for yourself that will end your pain. I am going to help you keep showing up.

  My yoga teacher Jen once said, “You think you are hitting obstacles on your path. But the obstacles are your path.” Now of course she’s a yoga instructor and specializes in stretching people into physical torture for a living, while she shares philosophy, so there’s that. But I’ve shared this same wisdom with my clients: Whatever is in your way, is your way. Because your life is your life. It’s not an accident. It’s a miracle.

  If you and I were working one-on-one together, I would assure you that you have a path. It’s already within you. It’s better than you imagine. In fact, it’s so much more fulfilling, you can’t imagine it.

  It’s time to follow your innate intelligence instead of doubt it. In this book, I provide you with ideas, stories, techniques, and tools that dismantle your smallness. I whisper to the strength and creative current within you. Each piece of this book is designed to call you into alignment. It’s not just the words. It’s the energy. The truth will speak to the truth in you.

  You’re not just going to shift your circumstances. You’re about to shift your identity. You may be thinking, That’s great but can I pay the mortgage? Can I help my son stop drinking? Can I find a publicist for my work? Can I find another job? And I will tell you, yes you can. This and more. Albert Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” It’s time to realize you don’t have a problem. You have a process. You are in transformation. And that means you’re moving forward into the next, best part of your life.

  In Praise of Those Who Are Wondrously Stumbling

  The famous, wise comedian George Carlin once said, “The caterpillar does all the work and the butterfly gets all the publicity.” I am a fan of caterpillars, those who are dissolving their own skins to become who they are meant to be. We who continue to grow, perpetually enter the goop of change, or butterfly soup. It’s incomplete. It wouldn’t look good on a photo shoot.

  As you move along your path, you may feel angry, held back, sad, unseen, or empty. It takes so much courage to be developing or undoing or daring. Yet please don’t let the in-between space convince you that you lack anything. Being in transition doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re breaking away from the old, an identity, maybe a set of assumptions or an understanding or a world that no longer fits you.

  It’s easy to sit on the sidelines in the lounge chair of life and be a spectator, or a critic of those who are facing their lives head-on. But I’m a sucker for those of us who are daring to make something of this time on earth. Real life is always taking place in the middle of things, not just in the polished perfection of an illusion of the end goal. How you live in the middle really is the quality of your life.

  In the middle of change, we are consciously engaging with the biggest questions of our lifetimes. What is this time for? Can I create my reality, and what does that mean? Is there a Higher Love I can count on in life? And if I overeat while I’m anxious, do the calories count? Many of us don’t just think outside the box. We live outside the idea of boxes, in the outposts, in colorful tents, nests, or stations far beyond traditional definitions. We are trying new things. We are thinking new thoughts. We are on our way. We have no clue where it is sometimes. And sometimes we know exactly where—and we’re afraid to admit it to ourselves, because it seems as though those destinations are meant for other people, not for us. Oh, the courage to believe. The courage to quest.

  We are the ones who are attempting to listen to a truth inside us instead of to the interpretation we hear on the evening news. You can call that unrealistic. I call it creating a new reality. Because it’s innovators, artists, messengers, mystics, thought leaders, outliers, and lovers who have always changed the face of the world. It’s mavericks in every walk of life. It’s always taken someone who believed in an idea more than he or she believed in the situations in which that idea did not yet exist.

  We are living in a world of change. Things are moving faster. We are being asked to be more adaptable and fluid. Some will try to find solidity through grasping for an ever-elusive sense of control. I’m hoping you will discover a trust in the creative current of your life.

  Sure, you may have just been trying to get through your life without awakening to a shamanic experience or wearing beads. I get it. You just want a job or a boyfriend or a cure. But here you are. This is your life. You have the chance to side with yourself, your deep true self, or turn against yourself. Which choice will you make? Will you choose to be realized or “realistic”? This is your moment, dear one. I encourage you to step into your true power. I encourage you to step into the middle and blaze.

  I’m Practicing and Thriving Right Beside You

  An inspired life is the result of owning your truth—following your own indwelling authority. It’s the intimate landscape of learning how to listen to and trust the precision of your intuition or guidance. This is a life that isn’t on any map.

  Some days it’s frightening, like crashing through the air on a roller coaster. It’s that wild and exhilarating rush, too, when life meets you in midair for a kiss.

  As I grow deeper in my work, message, and personal life, like everyone who is on a path of evolution, I find myself continuing the “hero’s journey,” the walk into a mythical forest for the grail. Some days, it’s dark and dank and I wonder what the hell I’m really following. Maybe I don’t want to be a stupid hero. Maybe I just want to be rescued by some nice knight, preferably one who loves a woman who has an occasional homicidal hormonal mood swing or two. On the worst days, I’ve feared I’m not following anything except a delusion—and now something stinky, clawed, and real is following me.

  And then there are those other days. These are the days when you walk through the darkness, resolved. You decide to bet the farm on your own life. You call yourself an inspired pilgrim instead of a fool.

  You walk deeper into your life. And then, just a few steps farther from the darkest patch of forest, you come upon a clearing, a meadow, a thousand yellow buttercups, and the sun gleams in a way that paints your name, your nickname, on each petal of every flower and you know in an undeniable way that you are exactly where you are meant to be; it’s a greater sense of security than any amount of money could offer you. It’s hitting the mother of all jackpots, the great sweet Powerball of the Universe.

  These are times of knowing that you have been loved and seen and heard. There is so much joy in having trusted yourself and realizing that you were never off-kilter or flawed. You were different. You were compelled. You were keeping a promise to yourself.

  It is the most extraordinary feeling to have maintained your faith and conviction in something and to be right, to discover the magic, an extraordinary portal that no one else knew. Only you know the secrets you hold—even when they may not yet have risen to the surface of your consciousness. Only you know the potential that beckons you. Only you feel this almost unwanted tug of glory in your bones.

  This is the adventure of your lifetime. I don’t want you to miss it.

  You are a pioneer in your life. It is as though you are discovering the Wild, Wild West. There are no signposts, Starbucks, or convenience stores. GPS has no idea where the hell you are—because, honey, you are so off the map. There is a black, black night w
ith 8 million greedy stars dotting the sky.

  And though you feel alone or as though you will never know how to get to your goals, know this: You have never been less alone. Without the distraction of the world’s answers, you can finally hear your own undivided genius.

  Every curve of the road is guiding you. Every tree knows your step. Every bit of sky is whispering clues to you. This mysterious Brilliant Love is drawing you forward, rooting for you, investing in you, chanting for your fruition. It is in the nature of your destiny to lead you to your destiny.

  Every circumstance you are in is a chosen conversation designed for your good. There is a scent to follow. The wind is pushing you in the right direction or whispering what is necessary. The rain is a wild, unfettered priest dousing your existence in holy water. Everything is in your favor. The moments of realizing this are worth a lifetime. Really, it’s one thing to be alive. It is a whole other thing to be awake.

  This is what it means to thrive through uncertainty.

  This is what it means to show up for your life. I hope you will join me.

  Walk through this door.

  EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT READING THIS BOOK

  I don’t believe in accidents. I believe you are reading this book at the appointed time for you. I may have never met you. And yet, here we are. I’m writing to you. Just so you have a visual: I’m wearing my purple glasses, I’m drinking coffee and a green smoothie, and my desk is not something I’d ever show you, or maybe I should, because it’s proof positive that I can thrive through uncertainty.

  Just so you know, I don’t feel as though I’m talking to a generic group of people called “my readers.” I’m here intending to talk to you at this exact moment in time. I’m so grateful you care enough about the quality of your life to read a book like this. You are extraordinary. And I believe that you and I are going to open up extraordinary possibilities together.

  Now, if I were teaching a class, I’d start by telling you here’s the bathroom, we’ll take a lunch break at twelve thirty, and other orienting details. Since a book is a journey we’re taking together, I want to point out a few things to make your trip as powerful as possible. Once we get started, I don’t want to break the trance. So, I’m going to play flight attendant here and go over the safety features of this Boeing 747 before we take off. It’s going to be a great ride, and I want to make sure you get the most out of it.

  Just Read One Piece. Don’t Worry About Reading the Whole Book.

  I wrote this book to be read one piece at a time. That means you can jump around. Skip to whatever is important to you. Read out of order. Follow your soul’s order. It will still make sense. You may be needing to grieve, so the chapters on finding your answers aren’t as helpful. You may be needing to get going and conquer the world. You may have no idea what you need. Feel free to leapfrog. Of course, do feel free to read it all, especially since each piece has more than one message embedded within it. And sometimes, you might not know what you need until you read it.

  Because I wrote each piece so that you can read it as a stand-alone, sometimes I repeat a story or context. Also, you may find that a particular piece is one slice of truth, but not a complete answer. To me, each piece is an angle of the prism, and each chapter is the prism.

  Wait, but You Said I Should . . .

  I’m sharing everything I can with you, to help you shift your mind and choose from strength. Yet sometimes, you might think there are contradictions. For example, in one chapter I’m going to tell you to take time off and rest. And in another chapter, I might tell you that you need to take action to stir up energy and clarity. The truth is more panoramic than any one answer. It’s like trying to capture the breadth of a mountain range with one photograph. Likewise, there is never one line of action that is right for everyone in every situation; different approaches work at different times. Use your common sense and your uncommon genius. I’m offering options. I’m leading you to the buffet instead of putting you on a meal plan. Choose what you love.

  You Have My Full Permission Here (in Writing) to Skip the Exercises

  Do the exercises. Or don’t. Whatever you do, do not allow guilt to motivate you. (Personally, I can be horrible about doing the exercises in books.) You do not need to catch up or stay on track in any way. This is your journey. If you are doing the exercises (they are powerful and fun, and designed to immediately shift you) as you go along, you might also want to jump to the back of the book and read “Three Practices I Recommend.”

  Trust Me, I’m Writing About Your Issue

  I write often about career transition, finding your life’s work, and creativity, but don’t be fooled. I could have been writing about dating, marriage, health, or financial issues or how to believe in yourself as you learned to salsa dance, pursue a liver transplant, or heal your relationship with your mother. The dynamics of learning to trust your inner voice are the same. Moving beyond fear and the limiting voice in our mind is a universal process. Of course, I do include other kinds of stories in this book. I’m just mentioning this here, because I’d hate to have you get hung up on the details. Stories are spells. There is a specific message or gift in each of them.

  The Brilliant (Dis)Order of This Book

  When it comes to change in your life, it’s not a cookie-cutter path. It’s not linear. I’d say it’s more like a meth lab of explosive power than it is a spreadsheet. So much is going on all at once. Sometimes you don’t even realize all that you learned, until much later in the day, or until you write a book.

  I did not write this book in chronological order, but in order of significance of what I believe will serve this threshold time in your life. I skip around in time, writing glimpses, scenes, stories, and principles designed to wake up the highest intelligence within you. And I should mention that while I often share my own experiences, this book is not about me. It’s about all of us who are consciously on the caravan of transition. I use the authority of personal story to liberate the personal truth in you. There’s an activating power in intimacy.

  Also, I deliberately repeat some aspects of stories or lessons. As a writer and teacher, I trust the instruction of repetition. I find deeper angles or dimensions of teaching in the experience. The “same story” becomes a new story.

  If you’re not familiar with me and my other books (and even if you are), here’s some background so that you can understand the context of this book. This quick framework may help shore up some of the information.

  I’d been a rule follower earlier in my life, suppressing my deepest desires and doing whatever it took to get approval and be “secure,” as I understood security back then. I knew when I was younger that I wanted to write, but I ignored that dream, thinking that the desires of the heart were frivolous. Fast-forward and I graduate with honors from Harvard Law School. I move to Denver to take a job in the litigation department of a top law firm. I’m on a partnership track, receiving accolades and bonuses. Fast-forward again and I’m on a beach in Northern California wondering if I want to live, because having squelched my creative and inspired life, I am empty and suffocating in meaninglessness, and I can’t see a way out. I am staring at an ocean when I make the best decision of my life.

  Finally, without a plan, another job, a husband to support me, or any significant savings, I walked out of my law firm job, my identity, my safety, to discover who I really am and what might be possible for me in this lifetime, if I followed the pull of my desire. I wrote about this transition and about creating the work you love in my first book, This Time I Dance!: Creating the Work You Love.

  I spent twelve years writing my first book, healing, uncovering what I really believed and would base my life on, including beginning to study and teach the wisdom path of A Course in Miracles. While writing This Time I Dance!, I started leading workshops, speaking, coaching clients, and taking people on retreats. I self-published the book initially, but it was soon disco
vered by my “fairy godmother,” a VP of marketing and publicity for Random House who said it was “the best book [she’d] ever read on finding your calling” and promptly got the book to Tarcher, my dream New York City publisher, which was then part of Penguin and is now within Penguin Random House—as in, all the big boys together. This event was an astonishing validation for me, as I had trusted my “inner voice” for years without a contract, publisher, or literary agent.

  After This Time I Dance! came out, I began taking my dreams into the world in a bigger way. Yet as much as I wanted to succeed, I began to realize that I could not just do “business as usual.” I reminded myself that I had not walked out of one conventionally successful, yet incredibly painful, life just to go ahead and create another crazy life. I realized I was still conditioned to believe there was a “right” way to succeed. Now I had to find the courage to listen to my instincts and radical guidance instead of the “experts” (or “experts, schmexperts,” as I later called them). I aimed to create inspired success—not linear success, but success on all levels, on my own terms, created from the inside out. I believed that the same power that compelled my dreams would also give me extraordinary means. I didn’t just want to “make it” in the world. I wanted to remake the world, by teaching other artists, entrepreneurs, leaders, and visionary organizations to create unparalleled success through unconventional means. That’s the journey I took in writing my second book, Inspired & Unstoppable: Wildly Succeeding in Your Life’s Work! I’ve been traveling and speaking to audiences extensively about this work and it’s one of my favorite things to do.

  And throughout all these years, I’ve always worked with coaching clients, helping them stay true to their inner voice. In both personal and business coaching, I saw that clients always wanted to know what to do. I wanted to teach them what to think, so that they would always know how to choose from their best instincts. That motivated me to write A Year Without Fear: 365 Days of Magnificence, a book of five-minute mind-set shifts that I’m grateful to say has spread through word of mouth and become a morning ritual for many readers.

 

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