Anyone trying to make plans over the past 2 years will have been sorely tested. The seemingly endless changes to the ‘rules’ and threats to existing plans whether at home or abroad are a potential recipe for frustration and despondency. This then gets amplified in our work lives as we seek to navigate the new trading rules with the EU, the continued economic and operational impacts of COVID, global war and conflict, and an overall sense of life being on an unstable foundation.
What if this deep uncertainty is actually good for us? What if we are actually learning how to live more in the moment – not in a hedonistic, selfish way but in a joyful, appreciative, grateful way – being present with what is.
The power of uncertainty is that we can’t continue onwards on automatic pilot – well we can but it becomes a very diminished, defeatist level of autopilot. Uncertainty, if we let it, invites us to let go of the need to be in control of everything and to be in relationship with everything instead. By being in the moment, we have the opportunity to see and feel things as they really are and to make our choices from that point.
That’s not to say planning and looking ahead aren’t also valuable, they are – having a destination in mind and imbuing that with purpose and intention are vital. Uncertainty invites us to hold those plans though with more lightness and flexibility, opening to new possibilities in every moment. Seeing and sensing the excitement of new possibilities, beyond those we had considered in our plan brings (and requires) a new level of creativity, a new set of qualities of flexibility, freedom, and openness all of which bring new answers and new experiences.
Our kit bag for uncertainty is much more rooted in our feeling body than our mental body and that’s not the usual currency of leadership or organisational life. Our intellect has been well developed on the whole over many decades and it’s time now to open to new capacities such as intuition, compassion, caring, and a deep sense of humanity. Uncertainty strips away the façade of control and invites us into our heart to see what our true foundation really is and what really matters.
As we become clearer. We will see, as we have been seeing in these past many months, that humanity is what matters, people matter, relationships matter, and being in a healthy relationship with our world matters. So uncertainty and suspending autopilot has been good for us.
Let’s embrace it now as a ‘normal’ and celebrated part of living and see where it leads us.
Very clever considerations that I share.
Everyone must learn that uncertainty surrounds us constantly, with or without a crisis. We live and cannot control everything.
This reminds me of a philosophical reflection of Heraclitus: you cannot bathe twice in the same river, because both the body and the water of the river will never be the same. From this we deduce that the world is constantly changing and that just as the river changes, we too are changing, increasing the chances of creating uncertainty around us.
In summary, it is not possible to control everything, nor can people be expected to behave as we expect (that is, according to our logic). We need to be able to cope with a certain amount of uncertainty and take risks for what is important to us. And it doesn’t seem to me that there are more important things than the values you mentioned.