When Facing an Uncertain Future

Suddenly, you face an uncertain future as you watch the world around you change in an instant.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, we are experiencing a time of incredible transition and change.

When faced with such upheaval, it is natural to feel that your anchor to everything you have known is being taken away. Almost as if the very ground beneath you is crumbling. 

The only sure thing is uncertainty. We want some flavour in our lives, but we also want strategies to deal with life’s ups and downs.

“If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

An uncertain future

Everyone has times in their lives when the future is uncertain. For most of us now, it’s due to Coronavirus. Do you remember the ‘good old days’, when it might have been a big challenge or a big opportunity you knew was just around the corner? 

Change can create a tremendous amount of fear as your mind gets filled with thoughts such as, What will happen to me? Can I support myself financially in the future? Will my children be all right? 

As you experience the uncomfortable feelings of being groundless, you become aware that the future is uncertain. There are people out there (entrepreneurs) who, even without COVID-19, feel the future is always uncertain. 

Let’s take some advice from them on how to deal with an uncertain future.

 

1. Continue to plan

Planning is the key to living intentionally rather than reactively. But how do we make time to plan when our days are filled with uncertainty?

When our days are like that, it’s easy to get lost in the drama. The risk is that we end up always having to play catch up, that we are being reactive instead of proactive. 

This is a time when a little bit of planning and forethought and planning can make a huge difference.

So, I suggest making at least three plans. A Plan A, if things go well, as anticipated. Plan B, if things take a wrong turn. Plan C, if things go far better than you expected.

When you have a plan, you have actions to undertake. And better to have alternate plans and know what you can be doing instead of throwing your plans in the trash and living in complete uncertainty.

Plan on several levels

Planning can happen on various levels. Obviously, you need to have a business plan ready when an opportunity or an investor comes your way. What I’m referring to is more of a method for facing the uncertainty coming your way. This might require something on a shorter term, say a 90-day plan or even a 30-day plan.

When you plan, you make the best of the time you have, you practically ensure progress towards your goals, and you ensure you have the resources you need to make the most of the opportunities you have.

When you make time to plan you can see that some of the things you’re currently doing may not be moving you towards your goals or you can figure out ways to do what you’re doing better. 

Recap #1: Make time to plan.

 

2. Focus on things you can control

The elements you can control are the things that go into your plan first and foremost. You can’t decide for anyone else what they will or will not do. But you can prepare to be at your best and most influential when you talk with them. 

“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.” – Steve Maraboli

Being able to discern the difference between the things we can control and the things we can’t comes up frequently in conversations with clients. Surprisingly, it always comes back to one principle:

You can control your input, but not the outcome.

I can control how I show up every day, but I can’t control other people’s opinion of me.

I can control how much effort and time I put into preparing for a sales meeting, but I can’t control whether I end up getting the contract. 

In each of these situations, we can influence the outcome, but we can’t control it.

A personal example, and this was a huge learning curve for me.

There are some things most, if not all, people worry about nowadays: Might I contract Coronavirus? If I do, will I survive? If I do, will I recover fully and so on? These are massive things. 

Unfortunately, they are also the things that I can’t control.

Yes, I can absolutely influence them, but I don’t get to decide how they turn out. And stressing and worrying about them doesn’t change this.

I can control how many times I wash my hands each day and how often I touch my face. I can make sure I minimise the risk of contracting the virus, and I can maximise my health in case I do. 

So I focus on the elements that I can control and that places the responsibility of the plan’s success primarily on me.

Recap #2: With your plan, focus on the things you can control.

3. Have a morning routine

Whether you’re a morning person who rises at 5 am or a night owl who burns the midnight oil, we all have to start our morning at some point. And curiously, we all seem to start it differently. There are a billion different ways a morning could go.

But which morning routine is the best?

There’s probably not one ideal morning routine that is perfect for everyone. If we look at the morning routines of high achievers as well as the latest research, we can learn a lot.

Bear in mind, it is easy to maintain a morning routine when everything is going well. Still, it becomes more of a challenge when we face an uncertain future. You might get into a ‘why bother’ mindset.

 

Maximise today

If the future is uncertain, then we need to maximise today. Let’s start the morning on the right foot and boost our productivity. 

Your first task of the day should be significant and meaningful. Something that requires a lot of focus, will, and determination to accomplish. 

The logic behind that is that we have limited self-control.

The strength model suggests that self-control draws from a pool of common resources that gets depleted. Think of self-control as a muscle that gets fatigued after it is used.

Researchers have come to the following conclusion:

As the day goes on, your self-control experiences greater and greater depletion. That makes it vitally important to make those early morning hours count.

Recap #3: Start the day on the right foot with a morning routine that helps you accomplish your plan.

 

4. Understand the nature of fear

I want to introduce two crucial concepts taken from CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy). 

Following from point 2. Focus on things you can control, the only things that you can truly control in life are your thoughts and actions.

Thoughts create feelings which determine actions. 

Studies have shown that you have a thought first and then the feeling. You cannot have a feeling without first having a thought. 

Mindfulness

This is wonderful news and validates the value of developing an awareness of your thoughts. A practice we commonly call mindfulness. 

It follows that if we can control our thoughts, we can influence how we feel and what actions might follow as a result.

Consider this, both anxiety and fear only live in future thinking.

They are based on events that MIGHT happen, but haven’t happened yet and actually MAY NEVER happen. 

When you understand the nature of fear, you understand that fear loves to have power over you in this way.

It creates the illusion that events that might happen have already happened! And you feel every one of them.

Anxiety and fear do not exist in present moment thinking. When you stay in the present, you eliminate your anxiety and fear.

Recap #4: Become aware of your thoughts and how they create feelings that drive your actions. 

 

5. Know your non-negotiables in advance.

There are some things that you care about more than other things. It’s unique to each of us. 

Without awareness or consideration, boundaries can be crossed, rejected, or overlooked.

This makes us feel confused, hurt or invalidated. 

And if this happens often enough, it alters our reality. It affects the relationship we have with ourselves and with others as well.

You need to develop boundaries that you consider non-negotiables to create a happy and healthy life. Dr Carla Marie Manly is the author of Joy From Fear, and she suggests that when you set boundaries, you create a sense of internal and external security.

When we set boundaries, it allows us to be clear on our needs, and this helps to maintain clear limits with others.

 

The difference between non-negotiables and regular boundaries

Struggling with the difference between non-negotiables and regular boundaries?

Okay, think that our non-negotiables are those elements that we must have in our life to feel safe and secure.

Some boundaries are flexible in their nature, but non-negotiables are essential to our sense of being honoured and respected.

It might take time to figure out and incorporate your non-negotiables into your everyday routine.

Many of the people I work with are not feel comfortable when they start to do this. I emphasise that developing these boundaries benefits your present and future self. 

And that’s a pretty cool thing to consider.

Below, Manly provides a general list of non-negotiable boundaries you can consider for your personal life and how you can maintain them for the long haul.

Having non-negotiable boundaries become a part of your life will transform your world. 

Time to beware, at first observation, I can’t tell what your non-negotiables are, and you can’t tell what mine are.

But if we get to know each other better than we might get an inkling.

Recap #5: Throughout your days and weeks, have non-negotiables that act like big rocks within a shaky terrain.

6. Remember your why

Your ‘Why’ is the foundation you can stand on, no matter how uncertain the ground around you becomes.

Revisit your why repeatedly. Not just for yourself, but for everyone with whom you work and you work for.

To know your ‘Why’ is amongst the most important things you can understand in your life.

Your Why is your purpose in life, what you believe you are meant to do here.

It is the reason you get out of bed in the morning and do all that you do. 

A few of us know our ‘Why‘, the majority of us don’t. For some of us our ‘Why‘ changes over time.

Knowing your purpose in life is crucial because it gives you direction. It allows you to prioritise and let go of all that isn’t serving that purpose.

Coming back to your Why regularly allows you to assess where you are in your journey.

Are you living a fulfilling life and on track or did you take a wrong path and need to find your way back?

When your Why guides your decisions, you have the confidence that you are making the right decisions even if they are difficult.

Pursuing your Why might require that you say goodbye to some people to leave room for new ones.

 

Do you know your Why? 

My Why infuses everything I do, and it guides how I build my business and my life.

Take a moment to reflect on your life purpose. If you are not sure what it is, don’t judge yourself too harshly. Give yourself time to figure it out. Your Why is there waiting to be discovered and fully tapped into. 

Recap #6: Your why is your foundation. Keep yourself locked onto it, no matter the storms or mountains you face.

How do you face uncertainty and triumph? Leave a comment we’d love to hear from you.

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Feeling Overwhelmed? This Changes Everything

Feeling overwhelmed is a daily routine. These days no one knows where to start. We get assaulted with wave after wave of bad news, of death and loss, and of COVID-19.

Overwhelm is a state of emotional paralysis when you feel that you’re unable to cope or handle the circumstances you face.

The entirety of the experience fogs our brain and hinders us from seeing things clearly. You become crippled with indecision. 

But things don’t need to be this way.

It is so hard to focus with this much uncertainty. Your to-do list holds so many competing and different priorities that you feel anxious about starting anything.

Grinding for your goals

And in your depth of anxiety, you relinquish your stress to the couch and binge-watch Netflix instead of grinding for your goals.

I know this story, trust me, I know it too well.

We get overwhelmed when we struggle with too much information, too many choices or too many responsibilities.

The dictionary definition of overwhelm is too poignant not to share it: “to bury or drown beneath a huge mass; to defeat completely.” Oh damn!

I get it, we are buried beneath activities, to-do lists, commitments, career paths, the news, what to eat, and what to wear.

It is hardly surprising that we’re utterly defeated by the time it comes to making a decision.

 

The reality

The reality is that we are overwhelmed because, with so much conflicting information, we lack clarity on what we want! In this time of uncertainty, if we truly understood our dreams, goals, hopes, passions, and purpose, we would have a clear action plan. 

Want to know the irony? Clarity only comes from execution and confidence comes from taking action! We can only have clarity in our lives when we try something, fail, try something new, and fail again. 

So why should we be afraid of failure?

It might be obvious the direction I am going with this. We repeat these destructive cycles of fear, overwhelm, doing nothing and never trying.

The truth is that when we do nothing, we fail anyway.

The hard truth

To be overwhelmed is a choice. “Stop right there!” I hear you say. “You know nothing of my circumstances, you know nothing of what I have been through or what I am facing.”

It is a choice to perpetuate this cycle when we fail to give ourselves the time to prioritise and reflect on what needs to get done first or what’s most important.

When our anxiety peaks, we become paralysed, and we choose to do nothing. 

And we decide to relinquish our dreams because it seems like too much effort and hard work.

We convince ourselves that the circumstances make it impossible, so don’t even bother trying.

 

What is overwhelmed?

It is when we feel as though we’re unable to handle or cope with our circumstances. It is a form of emotional paralysis.

It is common to feel you’re lacking control, which leads to your indecision. The feeling of overwhelm can result from having too many options or choices on hand.

When you’re mired in, overwhelm it feels like you are lodged in quicksand.

It is common to find yourself using phrases like “I’ll never get this done,” “This is too much for me,” “I can’t handle this,” “I can’t do it all by myself.” 

These thoughts are toxic and will trigger feelings of anxiety and worry.

When your mind is filled with these thoughts, you may feel helpless and disempowered and pushed to make quick decisions.

 

Lack of clarity

This stems from your lack of clarity. 

When overwhelmed, you can’t see things clearly.

This results in confusion and exposes you to feeling like things are out of your direct control and influence. 

Your problems seem more significant and closer than they actually are, and you indulge in complaining, negativity, procrastination, and blaming your circumstances or others for your predicament. 

You only end up more stressed and exhausted. And the destructive cycle perpetuates itself.

The challenge 

The challenge is that many of us are too comfortable in this state.

We decide to stay in this negative cycle rather than remove ourselves from it.

We prefer to blame something else or someone else for our inaction or missteps than accept that we’re 100% in control of our lives.

The blame game becomes the band-aid we apply to our wounds.

If being overwhelmed is a choice, and it is, we need to realise that we love choosing what’s known, comfortable, and safe. 

Yes, I am saying that if you have chosen to be overwhelmed before then, you will choose it again.

Because it is known, comfortable and safe for you. It is your habit.

 

Take action

I said it earlier, clarity comes from execution and confidence comes from taking action. When you think you have tried everything and everything seems to fail, and you are still feeling overwhelmed, just do something. 

Don’t give up because it’s too hard or you feel confused or don’t know where to start.

Start somewhere. It doesn’t matter if it’s the “right” step or the most logical step.

Try it anyway. 

It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work out, at least you have the clarity from taking a step forward.

That clarity can help you get creative and find another way. Or, maybe it does work out, and you wouldn’t know this unless you took that step! 

Clarity comes from execution.

We have to keep trying, keep moving forward and keep going to understand what works for us and what’s a giant waste of time.

 

The takeaway

Maya Angelou wrote: “When you do nothing, you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved, you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment.”

When you get involved and take powerful action it fuels forward movement. It provides the momentum you need to push past the feelings of overwhelm and on to bigger and better things. 

If we believe that the journey is the reward, then we should not fill ours with inaction, stress, and overwhelm.

Power through your journey with confidence and clarity.

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While In Lockdown

During this “global lockdown” a lot of us find ourselves wondering how to best spend our time. Chances are you will already have read lots of advice on this subject. 

Apologies if you know this content already, but if this post helps even a few people, then it’s worth posting.

We are all concerned with what the future holds, but we can’t let our fear of tomorrow steal our future.

Let’s focus on today. And tomorrow, we focus on today again.

In every adversity lies the seeds of an equivalent benefit and a chance to re-orientate and re-energise yourself for the future. 

With the lockdown, now is a brilliant time to move up a level and prepare yourself for the opportunities that will be available when the lockdown ends.

Here are some thoughts to help you:

Fear and Faith

As I said earlier, it’s natural to be fearful at this time.

The likely reaction to words like’ lockdown’ is to instil fear and dread. 

But we can also have faith. Faith that after we get through winter comes summer.

Faith that we will get through this and faith that there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

Be Grateful

Gratitude takes root in our heart and in our senses, for one beautiful moment…and then the next. 

What does it mean to be grateful? 

It is not convincing yourself of some false notion that everything’s fine and dandy.

Living with gratitude during this lockdown means choosing to focus your attention and time on what you appreciate. 

The goal is to approach difficulties from a different perspective and not to block them out.

Appreciation has the effect of softening us.

It eases our restless and turbulent minds by connecting us with ordinary things, great and small, that are wonderful.

And that we might otherwise take for granted.

Keep Trading

If you are in business, see if you can keep selling. This will probably mean going online.

And if you can’t keep trading, then you need to protect the business.

That means to sort out the financing that you will need to get you through this lockdown.

Take care of your team, you need to keep them informed and involved so you can get them ready to hit the ground running.

 

Slow Down

Stephen Fry, everyone’s favourite surrogate uncle appeared on The Andrew Marr Show to offer us tips on self-isolation in lockdown.

As president of mental health charity Mind, he offered suggestions on “how to get through the day”.

Because he is Stephen Fry, he spoke of reading books that speak to his soul.

Of reacquainting himself with calligraphy on YouTube.

And of learning a new language, Esperanto. Only Stephen Fry would use the lockdown to learn a language the world was obsessed with back in the ’70s, but absolutely no one uses now. 

His final tip? Take things slowly.

He said, “Even cooking the smallest thing now, I prep it, I put little pots, and I do the garlic in one little pot, you know, just like a TV chef! It’s preposterous, but it just slows my life down and stops me getting too anxious and too nervous.”

We must make look after our mental health a priority.

Doing things more slowly and thoughtfully can make a difference.

Reach Out

If you know someone whose business has had to stop trading in the lockdown, reach out and let them know you’re behind them and you will support them.

You need to seek them out and reach out to them in this lockdown.

I do know that asking for help is not a simple and intuitive thing to do. “Asking for help” is this vague skill we are all somehow expected to know, yet it’s never taught to us.

Rather than wait for them to ask for help, you must reach out to them. This means we reach people sooner and deal with them more compassionately. 

This is my opportunity to reach out to you. If you’re struggling, but you don’t know what to say, trust me, I get it. Let’s talk.

All you need to do message me at this website.

 

Learn

The lockdown provides an opportunity to focus on learning – your learning.

Use this time to learn. 

Remember those books you bought ages ago when you decided they were a ‘must-read‘? Now is a great time to find them, dust them down and get to it.

Learning another language does fantastic things to fire up brain development. So maybe not Esperanto like Stephen Fry but you could try French or Spanish or even learn to code.

 

Input Shapes Your Output

I don’t think most of us grasp quite how much, and sometimes how subtly, our inputs determine who we become.

Our inputs, what we watch and read, and who we talk to, primarily create our perception of reality. 

The sensory information we absorb through our surroundings combine to create subconscious linguistic models in our mind about how the world ‘really’ works and the best way to interact with it.

You are what you input.

That information develops your thinking patterns, and it influences your output in the form of the work you produce, the decisions you make, and the type of interactions you have.

The importance of surrounding yourself with positive influences at this challenging time of lockdown can’t be overstated.

You have the choice to focus on doom and gloom, or you focus on the positive, the possibilities and the opportunities.

That is a choice in front of you every single day.

You can choose to step up and make the time and energy count, and this is a power which you have within your control.

I’m amazed by the incredible positivity of people on my Facebook group.

We will do a live video once a week, and want the group to fill the feed with ideas, support, positivity and good humour.

Eliminate Junk And Clutter

Since many of us are indoors more with the lockdown, now is the perfect time to take a look at what has outlived its usefulness in your home and can be safely thrown away.

Holding on to the past can sometimes keep you looking back in the past, and can definitely stop you making forward manifesting progress.

To be successful, you have to be focused on looking forward, not backwards. 

Cleanliness and freeing up space releases energy which can then be recycled back into the Cosmos.

It’s a straightforward way to boost your manifesting powers and will accelerate your results.

 

Make Mornings Count

We keep going on about the power of your mornings, and for good reason.

This is especially true during lockdown because some people may be getting bogged down. 

Morning power walks are an excellent way to get your juices and productivity flowing.

It will totally reinvigorate your body and mind and have you ready for the day. 

If you live in a quiet neighbourhood, you can step outside so long as it’s safe and you’re allowed to do so.

Or else you can just walk back and forth in your hallway or try some exercise indoors if you have a routine there.

This whole process will activate more of the powers of the subconscious mind and bring your creative energies to the surface.

It makes you more productive for the day and will bring you out of a negative or lazy mindset.

This too will pass, but while we’re waiting, we have choices.

Choose well. 

It will be a defining time for everyone.

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