Thriving Through Uncertainty

by Tama J Kieves

  “Your inspiration is often waiting for you in the wild country of doing new things, not thinking about doing them.”

  Please jump in. Stop dismissing your ideas. Any inspiration is an invitation to new abundance. It’s not just the opportunity to write a song or a software program, or enroll in a grief support group. It’s the invitation to create yourself. The creator is changed by the created. Yet if you refuse to listen to your own new ideas, you hold back the boundless within you. You may think you’re just being conservative. But how could it ever be wise to deny your greatest powers?

  Why would you tell yourself that you could only achieve what you’ve already experienced? You’re still developing, aren’t you? It’s just not realistic to deny the miraculous. It’s self-annihilating. The reality is you are a miracle. You are a growing, conscious spark of the infinite and alive. You are being called to awaken new strengths.

  You won’t learn how to fly in the nest. You have to dare. It’s nerve-racking sometimes. Get over it. Because you were born to fly, not hide.

  Excitement doesn’t come from the things we can control. It will come from the things we don’t control.

  Recently I put on a new program as a speaker. I’ve led workshops for years, so you’d think I’m an old hand, good to go. Yes, well. The inner child in me whined, “I won’t know what participants will ask. I’ll have clunky answers with two left feet. What if I ramble? What if I’m boring?” Oh, the places you don’t want to go. I hate this part of trying new material. I want to be perfect. I want to dazzle. I don’t want to be uncomfortable. But one of my yoga teachers—a rather hot one, I might add—encourages us to fall out of a new pose but at least try it. He commands: “Perfection doesn’t grow. Only imperfection grows.” So I gave the new workshop. I gave myself permission to ramble rather than rot.

  Here’s what I find fun about growing: I’m not in control. I am guided by an inspired power. I am not limited to the crude strengths I’ve experienced thus far. I did that beta make-everyone-guinea-pigs-just-for-me brand-new workshop and I gained what I could never gain alone in my room. I walked in with wobbling knees and bees in my chest. I strolled out a lion. I became more of myself by using more of myself, discovering unknown power as I walked into the unknown.

  The participants shared breakthroughs, insights, and stories I never could have predicted or manufactured. There was an energy in the room. This was a co-creation. It was humbling. It was moving. And I would have missed it—if I hadn’t dared it.

  Russell Simmons, the hip-hop mogul with fashion and record labels and multiple HBO reality shows, says he created his empire by following his inner voice and taking risks. In his book Do You!, he says, “Time and time again I watch as the people who listen to their higher selves move on to bigger and better things, while the people who listen to the low notes end up stuck in one place or fade away altogether. They never realized that in ignoring their higher selves, they’re blocking their ability to be blessed.”

  Where might you be holding back on opportunities for growth? Fear keeps you small, and smallness keeps you fearful. It’s a pitiful system and it ages you like toxins, years of cigarette smoke, and gorging daily on Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream—which, it turns out, is not a food group.

  Keep listening to what you know you need to do. Your truth is never an instinct that diminishes you. Remember, you have a presence within you that can do anything. You are not limited to what you know from the past. You are not limited to what others have experienced either. Real life is always evolving.

  You’re hungry for the new because you hunger for yourself. You know there are still unexpressed reserves within you.

  It’s safe to go beyond what you have experienced before. It’s necessary. Expose yourself to growth.

  TURNING POINTS:

  Clarity Is in Your Feet, Not Your Brain

  You won’t be in the mood. You’re bored, stuck, and timid . . . until you do something new. A mood is not a fact.

  Hiding is withering, because risk is a vitamin and without it you die.

  Your inspiration is often waiting for you in the wild country of doing new things, not thinking about doing them.

  You won’t learn how to fly in the nest. You have to dare . . . Because you were born to fly, not hide.

  Excitement doesn’t come from the things we can control. It will come from the things we don’t control.

  Where might you be holding back on opportunities for growth? Fear keeps you small, and smallness keeps you fearful.

  Remember, you have a presence within you that can do anything. You are not limited to what you know from the past.

  You’re hungry for the new because you hunger for yourself. You know there are still unexpressed reserves within you.

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

  Some of these suggestions are just right for you. Others, not your cup of latte, or 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?

  Snorkel past the surface. Meditate with a mantra like “I am loved.” Or set an intention or inquiry, then do something that engages your attention in a different way. Doodle in a coloring book. Knit. Ski in silence. Walk in the park. Focusing on something else, especially if it doesn’t engage your left brain, will often allow you to relax and connect. These are mini-pilgrimages.

  Become a witness. Try listening to your feelings or desires without attempting to explain or justify them. When you uncover desires, do not ask how to make them happen. Observe. Be fascinated. Pay attention as a form of mindfulness. Be like an anthropologist, without judgment or assumptions. Be encouraging.

  Ask the right question. Give up trying to figure out what you will do with your whole life. Ask: What do I want to do in this moment? Or journal, “If money/time/social values weren’t an issue, I would . . .” Or imagine and describe your ideal day. Take one tiny movement toward one of your desires.

  Follow a bread crumb. Do it right now. Remember, a bread crumb might hold no promise of “future gain.” What is speaking to you in this moment? What inkling comes to mind? Is there a bread crumb you’re resisting because you think it’s silly or doesn’t make sense?

  Do something new. Shake it up, baby. Create a list of five to ten new things you can do, just for taste testing, experimentation, or a creative encounter. You can do this in different areas of your life as well: five new things in your relationship; five new things at work; five new books, movies, museums, or concerts to experience.

  Do a fun cluster mind map. First do a “cluster” mind-mapping exercise. Write the word FUN in the center. Then free-associate all your thoughts about fun, both positive and negative, memories, experiences, concepts. Keep free-associating. Then do a Freewriting exercise (see page 252 for directions) on whatever you discovered in your cluster.

  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 SIX

  TRADE IN YOUR COMFORT ZONE FOR THE STELLAR ZONE

  WAIT FOR THE OTHER SHOE TO . . . FLY

  And the sun and the moon sometimes argue over who gets to tuck me in at night.

  HAFIZ

  It
’s a service to feel good and receive this good. When you feel good, you can and will further the good of others.

  TAMA KIEVES (journal entry)

  One of the most courageous things you can do in this lifetime is to allow your life to become great. Yes, you may think, I should have that problem. But you do have that problem. It’s a bit of neuroscience, baby. You are hardwired to overlook joy.

  Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson writes about what brain science has called the “negativity bias” of the hardwiring of the brain. The bias is thought to be a residual survival instinct, as in it was more important to pay attention to the saber-toothed tiger that might take a run at you than it was to notice the tiny blue flowers the color of your loved one’s eyes. Says Hanson, “The result: a brain that is tilted against peace and fulfillment.”

  I think it’s time to adapt and evolve. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to tilt my brain toward joy. Science has also begun to tilt toward joy, documenting how people who feel more positive emotions have greater access to their cognitive and physical resources. Booyah!

  Sure, we need to pay attention to threats. But we don’t need to disregard our good in the name of being realistic. It’s time to stop calling negativity “realism.” I have an idea. Let’s just call it negativity. Because miracles are as real as crises. They happen every day. They’re just not on the news. There are moments in life of searing pain. There are also moments in life of excitement and the transcendence of pain. I’m fine with calling a spade a spade. But I’m also fine with calling a diamond a diamond.

  I’m not talking about just hoping for more good in your life. I’m suggesting that you begin to practice not blocking the good that is already here—as well as the good en route.

  We’re afraid of good.

  It’s a power. It’s a hypnotism. It’s new territory. It feels out of control, like pulling you out into the sea. Something in us wants to stay on the shore—keep things a bit lumpy, the devil we know, the comfort of the uncomfortable familiar.

  Have you ever sabotaged yourself when something was beginning to work out? Or put the brakes on your breaks?

  Oy, I have.

  I was leading my favorite retreat and I was thrilled because my numbers were great, more students than ever before. At the exact same time, a professional magazine contacted me about doing an article that would reach my ideal audience. So I was answering interview questions over the Internet in my private hotel room, feeling like Little Ms. Rock Star. And at the same time, I’d been running an online special for one of my e-courses, and the orders were streaming in. I’d always experienced trickles. This was happy madness. I felt like there was a festival in my brain and three bands were playing at once. I was delirious, grateful, and, frankly, astounded.

  Then I started to realize that there were even more orders than I’d thought. And then, while I was online, more orders started to come in. And then I heard it. I swear to God I heard it. A harsh inner voice. It said, “That’s enough now,” as though it were scolding a child that had been singing loudly and banging pots and pans.

  That was enough out-of-control-ness, enough good, it said without saying. I had begun to feel overwhelmed. I’d gone from feeling exuberant to feeling cold tingles, the fingerprint of fear. It all happened so fast. And just like that, the orders tapered off. I swear I put a hex on my own success.

  Psychologist Gay Hendricks, author of The Big Leap, coined this dynamic the “upper limits problem,” which he describes as an unconscious desire we all have to keep ourselves smaller and out of our “zone of genius.” We all freak out for different reasons, then bounce ourselves out of heaven. The work is to build the musculature to encourage the influx of grace. It takes grit to allow a force of good to work through you and for you.

  “It’s a travesty to ignore, discount, or block the goodness in your life. You can unwittingly live a life that is smaller than your true nature.”

  For me, I think it was a challenge to the story I had been telling myself. I was used to feeling vaguely disappointed that I hadn’t reached higher levels of success. It was my cosmic shtick, if you will. I knew this limitation like my own right hand. It was unsettling to be in a different identity, in the mansion of amplified reality.

  But life gives us the chance to get realized, instead of “realistic”—as in to let go of the small stories we tell ourselves about what is possible. We have the chance to reinvent ourselves. We have the chance to be vessels of greater powers.

  And this is the life path of the inspired ninja, the one who chooses to open to a greater life.

  It’s a travesty to ignore, discount, or block the goodness in your life. You can unwittingly live a life that is smaller than your true nature. You won’t consciously mean to do it. But you will do it. You will create the life you fear by paying attention only to the stories that reinforce what you do not really want.

  A new life demands new choices. And one of the greatest choices you will ever make is to take your joy seriously, at least as seriously as your pain.

  I know firsthand the cost of brushing off happiness. Years ago, to support the release of my first book, This Time I Dance!, I put myself on the road. It was a daring, heroic move, investing money in myself, speaking to practically any group that had a bunch of chairs; water was optional, crackers a luxury. At the first event of my hodgepodge “tour,” I spoke to a creative business networking group. They loved my talk on “Discovering Your Creative Edge,” and I loved them loving it. I felt like I was belting out a melody that had lived inside me my whole life. And they were singing the harmony that had lived inside them. Time disappeared. The small meeting room in the moderately appointed hotel became the Taj Mahal. At last my dreams had become real. I had a “national audience” for my message, or at the very least, an audience that didn’t lick its own leg and yowl for Friskies. I was on my way. Cue the cartwheels.

  That afternoon, still cartwheeling in the secret realms of inner joy, I walked into a Cost Plus World Market, one of those stores that sell ethnic home accessories, fun art, and things you really don’t need but suddenly have to have. I sashayed down the aisles, boogie author, she who had just nailed her first real talk on this national adventure.

  I picked up a piggy bank, a leather olive green pig with red and purple wings. “When pigs fly,” I thought to myself and grinned. My journey of writing a book without a publisher or agent in sight and getting it nationally published and now speaking to people who wanted to hear me, in a state where I didn’t live, seemed way more miraculous to me than a flapping sow. I was living what had been impossible to me.

  I held the crafted object. “I should get this,” I thought, to symbolize shattering discouragement and conventional limitations, rising above the mud of doubt. I continued to hold it in my hands, soaring with gratitude, suddenly in love with the artisans who had crafted such a thing, all of those who create in this lifetime, the presence of beauty all around us, and all of life. I was inspired. I noted its carved flowers.

  “Yeah, but you know how things go,” another inner voice, the most familiar one to me, piped up. It’s my careful voice taking things down a notch, the one that guards against pain, hunts for risk of being hurt, believes pain has more gravitas than joy. This “smart” voice always has me living in what could go wrong. This voice tells me that it’s safer to buy the wilting sale flowers at the supermarket when I am in love with the long-stemmed white roses.

  The voice continued, “It’s just the beginning of your trip. You don’t know how the rest of the events will turn out. You could be disappointed and then you’ll feel dumb about your fanciful totem. You could be overestimating your success.” Yes, as though, God forbid, I rewarded a moment that represented everything I’d ever wanted. This would be the calamity? Then the voice threw me a bone: “Let’s just wait and see how things turn out.” And on that sad advice, I left the store. I never bought that pig.


  That night I did a book signing at a bookstore. I’m not sure if the Universe could have possibly done a better job at creating a shadow experience. So few people came. I swallowed hard as I realized it was time to begin and no one else was coming, no matter how long I stalled. Then a man with long stringy gray hair abruptly and repeatedly interrupted my reading with wandering political rampages and very private jokes, every author’s nightmare rite of passage. The crowd, or more accurately, the wretched handful, stared at me helplessly.

  I surveyed the empty chairs, and thought about the cost of the plane fare, hotel, and other “investments of faith” of this trip. I felt like a piñata, clubbed until the sweetness emptied out of me. “Good thing you didn’t get that silly pig,” said the voice inside. I cringed at the thought of having believed that everything would turn out just right, believing I was now finally on that roll I’d always dreamed about.

  Today, years later, I know I should have bought the pig. I should have bought my celebration totem, because in that moment I felt fully alive—I knew love and achievement and the reality of my vision. It would have been wise to anchor that pivotal moment, to mark and memorialize that experience with more than a fleeting reverie.

  The following disappointment didn’t change the truth of the original life-changing moment—until I let it.

  When I said, “Let’s wait and see,” I turned my power over to outside circumstances. That “wait and see” was an admission that I could change my mind about myself, about what had already transpired, and about the faith I held in the Higher Intelligence that whispered to me daily. That “wait and see” was an insider’s bet on the dark horse of difficulty I’d trained myself to expect. But more than that, it was a vote to make moments of pain carry more consequence than moments of joy.