Thriving Through Uncertainty

by Tama J Kieves

  I want you to have every good thing in this lifetime. Why be less than you can be? Give everything to your everything. I’m not advocating perfectionism. That comes from feeling inadequate or never good enough. Excellence comes from your divinity, from turning to the infinite resources within you.

  You have a spiritual mountain lion within you that can rip through every limitation and change the way you walk in the world—and the world you walk in. You always have another chance to dedicate yourself to your magnitude. You always have another chance to dare again, reach higher, go further, and express more of your eternal True Self. Respect your precious time here. Please don’t play small with your moments, yourself, or your life.

  And if you forget, I’m happy to throw a diamond at your head.

  TURNING POINTS:

  You Owe It to Yourself to Make Braver Choices

  I can always reach for greatness instead of familiarity. I can always choose comfort in this lifetime over comfort in this moment.

  I had given myself a chance. I had acted with formidable self-love and respect. . . . I had followed the iridescent butterfly all the way—and would never, ever have to wonder what might have been.

  Once you make the choices that honor you, you call upon the higher powers within you. You activate your root strength and raw magic. If you knew the significance of this choice, really there would be no choice.

  Being radically alive doesn’t come from going along with mass consciousness when you have maverick instruction within you—which you do.

  Sometimes it doesn’t feel glorious to let go of our littleness.

  Choose your glory. Don’t let the voice of weakness tell you what’s possible. You are stronger than you know.

  You have a spiritual mountain lion within you that can rip through every limitation and change the way you walk in the world—and the world you walk in. You always have another chance to dedicate yourself to your magnitude.

  Respect your precious time here. Please don’t play small with your moments, yourself, or your life.

  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?

  Raise your “upper limits.” Keep a specific and detailed appreciation or gratitude list. Build your joy muscles. Do not dismiss compliments. Pay attention to specific things in your life or environment that “raise your vibration.” What you focus on grows.

  Receive your good. Notice: Where do you feel guilt or discomfort about having good things happen or increased abundance? And why? Thoughts around this? Find positive role models of abundance and ease. Meditate or journal on this: “It is my responsibility to allow myself to receive. I am connecting to the Great Love in all of us. I can do greater things with greater love.”

  Anchor a great moment with a celebration totem. Have you experienced a moment recently or in the past in which you felt fully alive or felt in your bones things were working out? Mark or memorialize your experience. Can you create or buy a symbol for this?

  Feel the pain. Where have you been avoiding a painful feeling? Fear? Anger? Humiliation? Brokenness? Grief? Invite this part of yourself to share its story. Feel the feelings. Get out of your head. Can you sit with yourself in compassion and acceptance? Breathe. Listen to music. Feel. Let go. Comfort yourself. Connect to your compassion for others.

  Risk with strength and sweetness. Make a commitment to stretch and to be your own comfort zone. Dare something important to you. For example, I will begin that uncomfortable conversation with my husband (strength) and if it gets too scary for me, I’ll give myself permission to get off the phone (sweetness). And begin again.

  Go for the glory! Create a “Littleness and Glory” list: Make a list of choices that make you feel little. And ones that help you access dignity, grandeur, or glory. Become conscious of your choices. Go for the glory this week. Go past complacency or comfort. Where can you stick with something you value a little longer? Focus on making braver choices.

  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 SEVEN

  MAKE PROGRESS, NOT WAR (WITH YOURSELF)

  MAKING IT SIMPLE TO MOVE FORWARD

  In stages, the impossible becomes possible.

  T. K. V. DESIKACHAR

  Be not afraid of growing slowly. Be afraid only of standing still.

  CHINESE PROVERB

  I am going to tell you about cleaning up my clutter, baby.

  I’m really telling you the secret of finding your niche in the work you love. I’m telling you how to learn Spanish or end world hunger. Or figure out who you are, now that you no longer even have a shot of fitting into your old skin. I’m even telling you how to move on from the one whose name must never be mentioned, though you mention it way too much.

  This is about making progress in every way.

  My home office resembled a bit of a junkyard for years, accented with tasteful teal walls. I’d answer the phone acrobatically (thank God for yoga). I knew exactly where the slip of paper with the red dash was, though to others my desk looked like the remains of a parade after a windstorm, a tornado, and the apocalypse. I am a lover of potential. Others say a clutter freak. But we’re splitting hairs.

  For years, I swore I’d sift, sort, and jump into current time. One Friday night, armed with meditation and gospel music, I finally decided to tackle a fat pile and the contents of all my desk drawers. I dumped everything on the floor. It looked like a whale or planet had thrown up. The debris was CD covers, half-started articles, a ring I meant to fix, scraps of images for art projects, bank statements, unknown bits of unknown things, and disintegrated “important” phone numbers. I was doing fine until I had the thought, “This is going to take so much longer than I thought.”

  Then I was sorry I had started. I felt bad that I’d believed I could do it. I immediately felt overwhelmed, zapped, depressed. And now I felt stuck in this mess I’d created.

  It was too much. It was like a doctor had given me all the medicine at once instead of in doses. The body needs to heal in stages. Apparently, so does everything else.

  But I had tried to zip through a decade’s accumulation of unconscious choices in microwave-cooking time. I thought I could just whip it out.

  Later, I cried to a friend with organizational chops. (She’s a certified something and can find her car keys in under an hour.) She said, “Oh yeah, you never do it that way. Just take one corner. And set a time limit. Do it for twenty minutes.”

  Incremental change had not occurred to me. I wanted to power through years of inattention. I wanted this discomfort out of my life. I wanted to make progress and change my sorry, sloppy self into a minimalist—right this very second.

  It was then I realized my “ambition” had another name: self-condemnation.

  It wasn’t love that said, “Fine, let’s get this done, you freak.” It was fury. It was oppression. It was self-hatred parading as enthusiasm.

  But change that sticks requires diligence and patience, and I just have no patience for t
hat. Yet the smart CEO within, who values real progress over flash-in-the-pan efforts any day, says, “There is no rush. There is no need to go faster. Take the time you need.” This intelligence runs circles around the maniac of fits and spurts. Real power operates as serenely as a Quaker sewing circle. Quiet stamina crunches miles, heals illnesses, builds businesses, and opens the heart to greater love.

  And there’s scientific street cred to back this up, because God forbid we could be nice to ourselves without a reason or research.

  Robert Maurer, PhD, in his book One Small Step Can Change Your Life, advises practicing the “kaizen way,” a Japanese system of small goals and small steps. He documents how when we approach any big change or departure from our usual behavior, we trigger the amygdala’s fight-or-flight response. The brain shorts out higher thinking in favor of basic survival. We experience this as being completely paralyzed or blocked. I experienced it as a sudden desire to consume an entire bag of blue corn tortilla chips and then judge my thighs.

  But kaizen teaches that tiny actions slip past the radar. Nonthreatening actions or inquiries help us move forward without fear. These small steps are the backbone of progress. When your fear isn’t triggered, you have access to your rational and inspired mind. Creating a sense of ease for yourself encourages breakthroughs and accomplishment.

  In any life change, especially when you are going after a deeper dream, you will want to learn how to move forward in small, consistent ways. You can’t willpower your way through a wall. And there will be walls and chain-link fences. As you move toward your truth and potential, you will flush up your own opposition or any insecurity that has ever been in the way.

  There is a reason you didn’t make a conscious choice or didn’t “listen to your gut” the first time. And that same fear will now show up wearing chain mail and chugging Red Bull. You will have jiggled the hornet’s nest. And the hornets will not have studied the Bible or Buddhism. They will not turn the other cheek or count their breath. They want to sting your ass.

  I’ve seen my coaching clients resolve to write their memoir or dare to raise their rates in their business. It starts off gloriously, but then the old foe in the alley meets them. “You’re not that good. You’ve always been inferior. There’s so much better talent out there. You should have made it by now, anyway,” grouses the voice of the anti-calling.

  “You’re making progress,” I tell them. “You’re hitting the fear or pain that held you back. This is your do-over moment. Now you have the opportunity to move past that voice and choose something new. Take a tiny step. Make it super easy. Don’t go proving something right now. I want this to be so easy, there’s no resistance.”

  The same goes for you. I don’t care if you militantly follow through on a goal. I care that you love yourself enough to pace yourself. I’d rather you take small steps or stop in the moment than drill into the hornet’s nest of fears all at once and then stop for all time. I want you to learn how to become unstoppable. I’m after a bigger outcome than just the immediate results in front of you. I want you to set yourself free. However, you won’t find freedom in one fell swoop. You will find it in continuous, small, life-affirming steps.

  No one likes to hear this, but it’s true. An inspired life requires tolerating incompleteness and uncertainty. This is a life that will always ask you to go beyond what you think you can do. Because that’s how you meet your secret shaman, the part of you that surprises yourself with will, willingness, and the mental mojo to keep showing up. You’re not here to “finish” things. You’re here to work through them. Self-discovery is a process that never ends—if you’re lucky.

  It’s not like you can eat enough so that you never have to eat again. It’s better to have trail mix with you on the trail. You’re just never going to be done with hunger. And you’re never going to be done with change. So, give up the idea that you can do a massive push through it.

  I remember talking to a website designer. “It takes forever to do a website,” I whined, hoping for some chummy professional agreement. She smiled one of those thirtysomething smiles and said, “Oh, you’ll never get it done.” I smiled a thin, please-let-this-not-be-true smile. Endless work on a website? That sounded as good as endless gum surgery to me. I felt the need for an express exorcism. Demons snarled and pawed within.

  Ms. Chirpy Designer continued, “Just when you get it done you’ll have changed your mind and you’ll want to do it differently. You’ll always be growing.” This from a technical person, no less. And there you have it. You’ll always be growing.

  “You’re not here to “finish” things. You’re here to work through them.”

  So, here’s my new focus. I’m in this forever. I am in this for the joy of doing it.

  I am not just getting things “done.” I am making it simple to move forward. Maybe even fun. I am deciding to throw away one pen that doesn’t have ink, or file one piece of paper. Or I am editing one paragraph of a script for a video. Or I am finding one thing I love about my partner, when I have gone down the warpath of thinking everything needs to change this instant because my life depends on it, or more accurately, his does.

  A client of mine said, “I don’t have to change my whole diet today. I’ll start by drinking more water.” Another reported in, “I’m not going to find my calling this week. I’m going to go to a meet-up group on alternative dispute resolution. Or I’m doing yoga for six minutes a day. Then from there, I’ll take my next kaizen actions.” I beamed, Jewish mother turning Japanese.

  It gets better. Taking tiny steps will also put magic into your outcomes. “My need to finish things—kind of in a short-tempered way—blocks me,” I confessed to a friend who paints every day. “Ya think?” she said. Then wisely shared, “When I’ve tried to ‘do’ a painting, or ‘finish’ a painting, I get stuck and the result looks overworked. And then sometimes I’m frozen and can’t move forward. But when I step back and say what’s one tiny little thing I can do on the painting just to paint, just for the fun of it, that’s when I get back into simply loving the process of painting. And wow, I love the surprises I experience then!”

  I am in love with these tiny, pragmatic, significant steps. I know that really we are all practicing something so much bigger than the tasks at hand. We are deepening our secret powers, finding ways to slip out of the cage of overwhelm and frustration and into the territory of knowing what to do—one simple action at a time.

  This isn’t about getting it done. This is about knowing you can consistently handle facing uncertainty or challenge, and that’s good news, because life is big and broken and wild and wily and not like anything on television.

  I’ve come to realize that how I clean a desk drawer is also how I’ll show up for a friend’s prolonged fight with cancer or another’s gradual healing of chronic fatigue. It’s how I will deal with the loss of a job or a child, or any other monolithic change. I will lean into small, simple things I can do and the overwhelm will lessen.

  Taking one tiny step in the right direction—recycling the newspapers if you want to save the environment; writing for seven minutes if you want to pen your dissertation—this is the frontier of progress. This is sexy, meteoric stuff, though your ego will accuse you of being ridiculous. But with every small action, you bypass the foe, slip past the guards, skip off into the land of Showing Up before the ancient lizard brain realizes something massive has just occurred.

  Going tiny is the new big. It’s the only way to take on life-size goals. I am learning to access incredible bravery through the power of bite-size actions and composure. The crazy one within me screams, “It’s never enough, it’s never enough, you’re too slow, you’re doomed!” But I am going past my frightened ego, past this disbelieving one, and making continual progress.

  With each small step, I am owning my integrity. I am doing what I can. I am carrying forth the light within me. I am moving past my shame. I am crossin
g the finish line every single time, in each momentary action.

  This is not a small step. This is serving my potential and humanity. This is self-realization. This is never-ending achievement. This is no drop in the bucket. This is what’s on my bucket list.

  TURNING POINTS:

  Making It Simple to Move Forward

  When you are going after a deeper dream, you will want to learn how to move forward in small, consistent ways. You can’t willpower your way through a wall.

  Love yourself enough to pace yourself. I’d rather you take small steps . . . than drill into the hornet’s nest of fears all at once and then stop for all time.

  You’re not here to “finish” things. You’re here to work through them.

  Here’s my new focus. I’m in this forever. I am in this for the joy of doing it. I am not just getting things “done.”

  Taking one tiny step in the right direction . . . this is the frontier of progress. This is sexy, meteoric stuff, though your ego will accuse you of being ridiculous.

  With every small action, you bypass the foe, slip past the guards, skip off into the land of Showing Up before the ancient lizard brain realizes something massive has just occurred.

  With each small step, I am owning my integrity. . . . I am carrying forth the light within me. I am moving past my shame. I am crossing the finish line every single time.

  This is not a small step. . . . This is self-realization. This is never-ending achievement. This is no drop in the bucket. This is what’s on my bucket list.

  IT’S ONE STEP THAT LEADS YOU EVERYWHERE