When Uncertainty becomes Mystery

And when fear becomes wonder

There is a lot of talk about uncertainty at the moment.

We talk about navigating and leading in uncertainty, making decisions when we don’t know what is going to happen, and creating clarity when the way forward isn’t clear.

And of course, there is plenty of uncertainty out there and in our lives.

But I’ve become increasingly interested in what happens inside us when we FEEL that uncertainty.

Not because the uncertainty out there isn’t real, or because there aren’t things we need to respond to. There are. But I think we might need to tend to what happens inside us first.

Because if uncertainty activates fear, scarcity, lack or a need for control, and we immediately move into action from there, we may simply keep perpetuating the pattern we are trying to solve.

I see this as one of our biggest issues as humans, and particularly for leaders.

So for me, the inquiry has become less about how to respond to uncertainty out there and more about how I meet it in here, and getting really curious about what’s beneath it.

My relationship with uncertainty

I’ve always been a strong strategic planner, problem solver, creative thinker.

I am very good at thinking through eventualities, often more from a standpoint of avoiding things going wrong. I can create Plan A, B and C, and potentially D, E and F. I can think about what might happen and what I would do if it did.

And for so much of my life I see that analysing and planning made me feel emotionally safer.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this. In fact, these are some of my greatest strengths, and they have served me well professionally and personally.

But over the last couple of years, I have been practising something different.

Rather than automatically taking action that often unknowingly was seeded from fear, scarcity or lack, I have been experimenting with waiting for impulses of creativity, passion, joy and inspiration to pull me forward rather than fear pushing me.

Over the last year, I decided to be all in with this.

And that meant I could no longer so easily use action to move away from what I was feeling.

If I wasn’t going to automatically find a solution for uncertainty, what was I going to do with the fear?

Feeling what is here

This has been the deeper part of the work for me.

I’ve had more space in my work calendar over the last year, which has given me more room for reflection. I’ve been tuning in each day, feeling what is there, tracking it and sitting with what arises.

It hasn’t always felt good.

Sometimes I distract myself. Sometimes I numb out. Sometimes I don’t do it very well. And when that happens, I try to have compassion for myself and come back to it.

Because when I can stay with it, I begin to notice what is underneath the impulse to act.

Insecurity. Fear. Scarcity. Lack. The expectation that something bad will happen. The struggle with not knowing what lays ahead. The need to have a plan and a sense of control.

And sometimes, underneath those feelings, there is grief, anger or tenderness.

When I stay with them, I sometimes reach younger parts of myself. I’ve tracked some of this back to very early life and can feel how these experiences were imprinted in my nervous system.

I can also see how some of the patterns I developed once made sense. They have been intelligent adaptations to what I was experiencing at the time.

I’m not interested in blaming anyone for that.

I’m not trying to undo the past, but allow some of that fear from early life to complete so I don’t keep carrying it with me.

That has meant learning to stay with the feeling rather than immediately turning it into action.

It’s not easy to welcome fear………but I know it is a doorway worth exploring.

The source of our actions

This has made me much more curious about the source of our actions.

Because an action can look exactly the same from the outside, while coming from a completely different place inside — and the outcome can be very different depending on where it comes from.

The question for me isn’t whether I should plan or act. It is becoming more about noticing what is driving the action.

Is this action coming from the right place in me?

Is it coming from fear, discomfort, scarcity or lack — or is it coming from creativity, passion, joy and inspiration?

The certainty I was trying to create

I can see now how much of my life I was trying to create a sense of security about the future. I wanted to feel that, whatever happened, I would have some way of feeling in control and safe.

But many of the things I planned for never happened.

So much of the time and energy I spent preparing was for futures that never arrived.

And gradually I began to see something that I hadn’t fully understood before.

The more I tried to remove the feeling of uncertainty and insecurity, the less present I was for the life I was actually living.

That realisation has brought some deep grief with it.

I’m 50 now, and I’ve lost several people in recent years who died too young. My mother died at only 55, just five years older than I am today. That has made mortality and the finiteness of life much more visceral for me.

It has made me think about how much of life can be spent preparing for what might happen rather than experiencing what is happening in the moment.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life using so much of my energy trying to create safety by controlling what might happen in the future.

From the inside out

What if we take the fear straight into the actions we are taking to deal with the uncertainty?

We’re not always responding to the situation. Sometimes we’re responding to what the situation has activated in us.

And if that is true for us individually, what might it mean for the way we lead?

Because leaders are often expected to provide certainty when other people are feeling uncertain.

But what happens when the urgency to create certainty is coming from the leader’s own fear and discomfort with uncertainty?

What happens when our discomfort with not knowing creates an urgency to decide, rather than allowing the situation the space it needs?

Can I feel the fear and what is beneath it?

For me, this has become one of the central questions.

Not how do I get rid of fear or make uncertainty disappear.

But:

Can I feel the fear and what is beneath it, welcome it, and allow the information in it to be received?

And then,

Can I wait for inspired action to emerge?

What if some of what we call Uncertainty is actually Mystery?

This is where the inquiry has taken me somewhere really exciting.

I’ve started thinking about the meaning we automatically give to uncertainty.

There are things we cannot make sense of. Things where we cannot see a way through. Things we cannot know yet.

And perhaps we call all of that uncertainty.

But what if some of what we call uncertainty is actually mystery?

Mystery still contains uncertainty. We still don’t know what is going to happen.

But it doesn’t necessarily carry the same feeling that something might go wrong.

I’ve noticed a shift in myself from meeting uncertainty with the feeling that something bad is going to happen, towards seeing the future more as a mystery that unfolds.

And perhaps mystery takes right and wrong out of the equation altogether.

The question changes.

From “What could go wrong?‘

To “I wonder what might happen?“

The uncertainty is the same. But the relationship with it is different.

The Audacity of Wonder

I know this can sound naïve. And I understand why.

There are things happening in the world that are genuinely painful and frightening. There is grief, injustice, loss and suffering. Mystery and wonder don’t make any of those things disappear.

I’m not suggesting that we reframe everything as positive or assume that everything will work out. I’m interested in something else.

What if we have become so accustomed to uncertainty meaning danger that we have forgotten that not knowing can also contain possibility?

How boring would life be if we knew exactly what was going to happen?

There would be no need for creativity, collaboration, experimentation or discovery. No surprise. No adventure. Very little emergence.

The things we cannot know are not only the things that can go wrong.

They are also where something new can come alive.

Leading in uncertainty

More often than not, I now feel safer inside, even when the fear comes up and external uncertainty remains.

And that feels very different from creating certainty.

It is inviting me to be more present with life, moment to moment, and from this openness, so much more aliveness can exist.

Which brings me back to leadership. We often ask how we lead when the world is uncertain, but perhaps we need to tend to first things first.

How do we meet uncertainty inside ourselves?

Because if we don’t, we may keep taking our fear, our scarcity, our urgency and our need for control into the very systems we are trying to lead through uncertainty.

How we meet uncertainty internally becomes part of how we create the conditions for meeting it collectively.

For me, this is becoming less about trying to know what the future holds and more about becoming willing to meet whatever is here now.

And it is also about meeting the deeper layers of fear within us, allowing some of these fears to complete, and no longer allowing them to drive our actions.

I don’t know what is around the corner.

And increasingly, I don’t need to.

I hold wonder for what mystery might unfold — and that feels edgy, exciting and alive.