Thriving Through Uncertainty

by Tama J Kieves

  I am no longer interested in living a hollow life, even if it looks good on paper or to others. It is unholy to ask myself to be other than what I am. I choose love instead of force. It’s not about getting everything “right.” It’s about knowing everything is already all right and choosing to act from there.

  At last, there’s no guillotine hanging over my head. I’m just following bread crumbs and rose petals.

  TURNING POINTS:

  Drop Your Demands, Raise Your Possibilities

  I’ve had to continually learn how to let go of my ego’s plans so that my soul’s plans could make their way through to the light.

  Sometimes everything I think I need to do actually keeps me from the only thing I need to do. The only thing I need to do is to diminish fear.

  If the goals are less threatening, you will show up with more joy.

  Flying is the path of undoing fear, not increasing it.

  What you cannot allow yourself to be holds you back from being everything you want to be.

  Nothing you think you need will give you the freedom you already have within you but deny yourself.

  Do what you can and allow this to be enough. Follow what makes your heart feel full, not what alleviates a sense of guilt—because guilt does not belong in the equation of radical freedom.

  I am meant to succeed through wild love, not fear. I am meant to take inspired direction, not control every detail and pound out results.

  MOVE ON WITH LOVE

  For many years, I wanted to flee across the border to the New Year as fast as possible. I wanted to slam doors, burn my past. But this is what I know now: I want to enter miraculous time. There is no “new” year without a blessed year before it. How you end one year is how you begin the next.

  TAMA KIEVES (journal entry)

  Am I looking to create a future that makes up for the lack I’ve experienced in my past? Maybe I need to heal with my past, so that I’m not seeing a lack. Since I build and attract my future based on what I believe about my past, I’m willing to see a better past.

  TAMA KIEVES (journal entry)

  Here’s the thing about the in-between times. You may want to get going as soon as possible. You’re burning a hole in the carpet. But we who are living inspired lives move in conscious, alternative ways. If you really want to spring into action like never before, then do what you’ve never done before: Take the time to heal. Healing is an action, of epic proportion.

  Most of my clients have come to me because they are in transition. Ending a job. Dissolving a marriage. Moving from one phase of their business to the next. I talk to them about the miracle of beginning again, giving ourselves the chance to start over at any time, a million times, because our past does not have to determine our future. Everybody loves this part.

  Most want to hop onto the express bus right now, hightail it into the bright lights, big city—perfect new life. They are so ready, they say. Translation: I want to get the hell out of town. Not so fast, I think. I want you to turn around and appreciate or bless your past. I don’t want you to abandon your own life in any way.

  It’s a law of grace. You won’t really move on until you move on with love.

  Ann was leaving her medical practice. She’d put years into building a community and private practice as an ob-gyn specialist. But she was tired. Cooked. Done. She wanted a new life—within fifteen seconds, not in two months. “I just don’t want to be there anymore. Of course, I am going to be responsible, but really, Tama, I just want to run out that door and not look back.”

  It’s hard to have to wait before you move forward. I call this the “ghost phase” of transition. You have already died to this part of your life. Yet you are still in the building. Your spirit has left. You stepped off the cliff. The new life calls you ten times a day, like a seductive new lover with airline tickets to the Greek isle of Santorini, urging you to grab your bags. But you can’t get excited or even address your heart palpitations. You must face the projects or people that make you tired, those you are leaving.

  “I know part of you feels a million miles away from this office,” I said. She groaned in recognition. “But since you’re going to be there,” I continued, “let’s decide how. Don’t numb out or count the seconds. I want you to love your way out the door.” Thank goodness she was Canadian. She didn’t tell me where I could put my love. “Take some of your staff or colleagues out to lunch. Tell them what they’ve meant to you. Savor a memory. Make a new memory. This is your life. You will never be here again. What do you want to do here, while you’re still here? How do you want to remember this time?”

  “It’s a law of grace. You won’t really move on until you move on with love.”

  Think about the situation you may be putting behind you. How do you want to remember it? Memory is like papier-mâché. You can mold it into a daffodil or a dragon. You can make a better past at any time. A memory is a choice. When Ann did leave her medical practice, she left feeling full of love for her staff, her patients, and herself.

  I know you want to step into a life of goodness. I want you to step into a life of goodness from a life of goodness. No matter what has or hasn’t happened, you can choose to love your past. Now, since I’m going to guess that, like myself, you’re not some blissed-out saint, it doesn’t mean you have to love the part where your husband cheated on you with the babysitter or the business deal fell through. I suspect we’ll all get there. But right now it’s okay to feel raw or numb.

  Still, there are moments of grace you can remember. Don’t lose them. Choose how you tell your story. You are always telling the story. Who are you becoming? What desire, awareness, or power are you awakening through moving through this situation in your life? Make it up.

  That story will be a part of your new story.

  Collect Only the Good

  Okay, it’s moving day, darling. Let’s do a little conscious creation together. If you were taking a carton into a new time in your life, what would you put in it? What experiences do you want to carry forward? Which scenes do you wish to remember? Are there moments that you would like to experience more of? I think of these as premium seeds to plant in the new life.

  It’s important to pay attention to the good that is always with us, even in the crazy-town times that drove us to psychic hotlines, dive bars, hair loss and facial tics, or even to writing our own self-help books. Study what worked. These are your jewels. Don’t abandon or blacken them because of things you believe didn’t work.

  Remember to appreciate yourself too. Your courage, or a moment where you grew.

  Remember people or resources that showed up, even for an instant. Pack up your box.

  You are going to leave everything else behind.

  When you leave something behind, treat it like a faded T-shirt. Give it to Goodwill with goodwill. You don’t have to blow up the village; this isn’t reality TV. Don’t obsess over what others did wrong. You’re not condoning behavior. You’re just not allowing that which was less than loving to influence the quality of the life you’re about to create. Leo Buscaglia, the phenomenal motivational speaker known as “Dr. Love,” said it like this: “Don’t brood. Get on with living and loving. You don’t have forever.”

  If You Don’t Forgive, You’ll Relive

  Where do you feel ashamed or frustrated? Is there something you want to see yourself do differently in this next phase of your life, or right now? I have a friend, Susan, who periodically looks at her “broken promises” to herself and others. One day I talked to her and her voice sounded like music. “I just spent the day catching up on communications or items I owed people,” she said. “I feel somewhere near glorious. I’m not leaking energy anymore, feeling crappy about myself. I can concentrate on other goals now.”

  As you move into a new realm, you will bring forward what you can’t leave behind. This pain follows you like a stray black dog. It
hunts you down and plays the same song over and over on the jukebox, the song you hate. Then some complete yahoo who doesn’t even speak the language sidles up to you—and sings that song. You have a problem.

  Certain situations, stories we’ve told ourselves, or relationships from our past demand our understanding and release. Lessons come around until they are healed. They may require tears. Or a truth to be spoken. Or a new realization. Pain won’t let us go until we let it go.

  Are you free to have a new life? You can’t just paint over a crack in the wall. The crack will still show through any color, even Moving-On-in-a-Freaking-Hurry Red or Happy-Dappy Pink. Old beliefs will spoil fresh starts. I hope you set yourself free. Forgiveness is the miracle agent that can release you from every painful story.

  Remember, you are not upset about what you failed to experience or do in the past. You are upset about what you are making that experience mean about your life right now. You could choose another perspective. You could choose to remember that you are infinitely loved by a complex and purposeful Higher Intelligence, and that what seems like chaos to you is an order so lush with love, your finite mind can’t possibly place it in a familiar box.

  You have the chance to make it right. You always have the chance to move forward with a new tool, awareness, intention, or resolve in your heart. You can take something “broken” and let it inspire you with new purpose; you can pull a Gandhi and “be the change you wish to see in the world.” Only you can wipe the slate clean. You can start by doing any small thing. And anything that moves you into the present is no small thing.

  There Are No False Starts. There Are Only False Conclusions.

  As you move forward, maybe you feel nervous about trusting yourself, because you’ve begun strong before, singing songs from the top of the mountain, but then you trailed off and dropped your intention. Maybe you suffered from self-forgetfulness or distraction. You talked yourself out of things. You judged your abilities or how long things seemed to take. You lost faith in your chirping heart. Then you beat yourself up.

  Let me whisper something else into your ear: Every time you’ve ever believed in yourself, you put gold in your veins. The gold is still there. Gold is always gold, even when you forget. You can do it differently this time. Or get closer to doing it differently, until you do.

  You’re not hopeless until you give up hope.

  I know that being a writer, I have had a lot of false starts. I began writing articles and short stories that withered on the vine. Or they disappeared between the pages of a notebook that was stolen by aliens who have now made hit movies on their planets. The writing that got away.

  Still, I’m always glad I began, even if I didn’t finish. I experienced bursts of transport in the moment. And more important, when I wrote days, months, or years later, my work coalesced. It was all those “false starts,” all those episodes of chasing ideas, even with torn butterfly nets, that got me across the finish line. It wasn’t as if I sat down one day and built a castle from a vacuum. I used every twig or stone I’d picked up along the way. Everything had helped me.

  The fruitful times arise from “useless” ones. There are no false starts. There are only false conclusions.

  So right now, begin again. Pick up the magic baton. Decide to lose weight, become a Realtor, write your novel, take some time for solitude, have that spooky honest conversation with your spouse, or dare to fall in love—yes, even at your age.

  Get real about what you want. These are your years. Dare again. Maybe you’ll hit it out of the ballpark right away. Maybe it will take you a thousand swings. It doesn’t matter. Take your swing. It’s what you’re here for.

  How You End Is How You Begin

  I’m big on training my brain and writing consciously encouraging messages to myself. I’ve found that if I feed my brain with affirmative perspectives, I leave fewer neuropathways available to my inner critic. It’s kind of like feed a fever, starve a fault-finding maniac. Here’s an Ending Invocation I wrote to help me honor myself and move on from something that wasn’t working. You might find it helpful.

  I bless this segment of my life. I take in all it offered me and all that I received. I thank myself for everything I tried, even if I didn’t think it worked. I thank myself for the times I believed in myself, even if I didn’t sustain it. I thank myself for the times I know I got it right. That stays with me forever. I thank myself for the times I stretched—and for the times I invested in my truth or hunted for it. I thank myself for it all and for all the good that is yet to be revealed from this time.

  You can hit your highest note in this lifetime. But it’s not as easy to go into a life of joy if you’re still angry or berating yourself. It’s just easier to hit a high note from a high note.

  Whatever you do, and however you do it, consciously move on with forgiveness, acceptance, and love, as much of it as you can muster. Because how you end one chapter—or one moment—of your life is how you begin the next.

  TURNING POINTS:

  Move On with Love

  If you really want to spring into action like never before, then do what you’ve never done before: Take the time to heal.

  Turn around and appreciate or bless your past. I don’t want you to abandon your own life in any way.

  It’s a law of grace. You won’t really move on until you move on with love.

  Memory is like papier-mâché. You can mold it into a daffodil or a dragon. You can make a better past at any time.

  Remember, you are not upset about what you failed to experience or do in the past. You are upset about what you are making that experience mean about your life right now.

  It was all those “false starts,” all those episodes of chasing ideas, even with torn butterfly nets, that got me across the finish line. It wasn’t as if I sat down one day and built a castle from a vacuum.

  There are no false starts. There are only false conclusions.

  It’s not as easy to go into a life of joy if you’re still angry or berating yourself. It’s just easier to hit a high note from a high note.

  Do Try This at Home: Jump-starts, Inquiries & Exercises

  Some of these suggestions are just right for you. Others, not your cup of latte, at least at this moment. Follow your gut. Feel free to adjust to your liking. Do what’s right for you rather than what’s written here.

  Pick three Turning Points from this chapter. Write them out for yourself. Post them where you will see them. Meditate on them. Journal about them. Do a Freewriting exercise. (See page 252 for more about Freewriting.) Create a piece of art. Pay attention to your thoughts, memories, dreams, and “random” ideas and incidents. Inspired thoughts spark inspired responses. My words begin the conversation, but what do these truths unlock in you?

  Dedicate yourself to an inspired practice. What will you do regularly to regulate and feed your mind-set? Pick a form of meditation, a spiritual discipline, or a journaling practice. Remember, it takes practice to stay inspired. Real life is an opponent that won’t quit.

  Have a “being party” for one. Create space for grace. Take a day (or a week, month, or hour) off-line, off-limits, and off your own back. Don’t visit with friends, watch TV, or take care of anything. Notice what you feel or desire. Receive whatever wants to arise. Make the commitment to practice not judging yourself.

  Do one simple thing. In Alcoholics Anonymous they have the slogan KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Where do you feel overwhelmed or like things are complicated? If you could focus on only one thing, what would it feel great to do? Use this “do one simple thing” method in other areas of your life, too: relationship, health, money. Remember, simplicity encourages mastery.

  Accept the unacceptable. Consider this statement and meditate or journal about what it means to you: “But what you cannot allow yourself to be holds you back from being everything you want to be.” What expectations do you put upon yourse
lf that might get in your way?

  Pack your carton. If you were taking a carton into this new time, what would you put in it? What have you experienced that you’d like more of? Which scenes do you wish to remember? What did you learn? Create a positive statement about your past.

  The Forgiveness Challenge: Let’s get free! Whom or what do you need to forgive? What part of yourself do you need to forgive? What beliefs or interpretations do you need to let go of? Do an Inspired Self-Dialogue (see page 248 for instructions) about something or someone you’d like to forgive. All you need is a little willingness to see things differently. Invite a Higher Love to help you. And let this take time.

  Do you have a question about this chapter? I’d love to know what’s on your mind! I may just get wildly inspired and answer you immediately. Send me your thought or question at www.TamaKieves.com/uncertainty-question, and you can also register for a FREE Thriving Through Uncertainty Coaching Call designed to shift your mind-set and bring you immediate clarity.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT TAKES A DIFFERENT WAY TO FIND A DIFFERENT ANSWER

  YOUR ANSWER IS NEVER WHERE YOU’RE LOOKING

  I’m astounded by people who want to “know” the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.