I love how my Apple computer dictionary defines uncertainty, as a range from “a mere lack of absolute certainty” to “an almost complete lack of knowledge.”

Where are you on the uncertainty scale these days? For the last year and a half, I’ve been living nearer to the latter, rather terrifying, category, as I faced an almost complete lack of knowledge about my life, my future, my desires and my family.

I spent a lot of time attempting to climb out of a parched well, scale glass walls, plant seeds in barren ground and then dig those seeds up to see if they’d sprouted yet.

I spent a lot of time trying to get going, creatively and professionally. But nothing “took” but a feeling of being utterly lost, unmoored and deeply uncertain.

I always thought I loved change, that I embraced not knowing, that my biggest fear was being bored. Ha!

After a year of living on the edge of the abyss, an abyss created by the death of my father, my marriage, two dear friends and seemingly all my creativity (which is how I make my living- gulp), I realized that I loved change and uncertainty when I had a stable base to change from and when I (thought) I knew what the future held.

But stable isn’t always easy to come by these days (I wonder if it ever was?)

When that stable base dissolved – through the same sort of changes you may be experiencing – that’s when I had to learn new ways to live with uncertainty, ways that weren’t based on being married or my work going well or whether I was afraid to get out of bed that morning.

Ways that weren’t based on the illusion that I knew what the future would hold.

The recent changes in the economy have shoved many of us to the same realization: uncertainty is the most enduring fact of life. We never know what the future holds. Change is the only thing we can count on and learning how to live with that truth, even thrive, when all we want to do is cower under the covers or try vainly to recreate the past, has become a very, very important skill to cultivate.

Because whether you thought you loved change or you always knew you hated it, the result can be the same: you can get stuck in a miasma of fear, anxiety, overwhelm and worry and that miasma can keep you pinned down for years.  Years!

I feel a little like Rip Van Winkle or some other mythical character who has woken up after years of being asleep — I never saw how the fear was limiting me, shaping the way I thought and what I thought was possible.  I didn’t know I was afraid.

In search of a “safe” place, I didn’t know I was making a smaller and smaller box to live in until I couldn’t create, couldn’t write – which has always been the “something is seriously wrong” warning in my life.

I discovered I was searching for the wrong thing.

What I was really creating in my life was illusory safety- rather than learning how to return to feeling calm(ish) and centered no matter what was happening. It reminds me of that old story about the drunk who searches for his lost car keys under a lamp post – not because he lost them anywhere near the lamp post but because that’s where the light was.

When we feel lost, when life’s topsy-turvy, it’s so tempting to grab on to anything that feels familiar – from trying to recreate the past to beating ourselves up for choices we made to staying relentlessly busy – even when it’s not getting us anywhere near we want to be.

What I noticed in my uncertainty was a thought process that went something like this, “If we were still a family, I would feel like my old self and then I would be able to write and create again.” Other versions included if I had only moved all the retirement money into Treasury bills like my friend than I would feel safe and want to seize the day” and “I just need to get organized and get more done and network more and then everything will be great.”

Those thought patterns didn’t help me at all.

Here’s what I’ve come to know, in a way that is far deeper than intellectual knowing:

Feeling safe enough to go forward with your life is not dependent on anything outside of yourself nor on knowing what’s going to happen–which is good, since that would mean you could never, ever get off the couch. Instead, it resides in increasing your trust in yourself, your resiliency and your ability to return to your self, no matter how long you’ve spent searching for your keys under the lamp post.

In other words, it has nothing to do with what’s going on “out there.” It’s an inside job and while that is so obvious as to perhaps make you roll your eyes, it took not having much of anything to hold on to discover it for myself. Still, I can find myself forgetting, falling back into the old patterns of hoping for something to change before I can feel good or take action.

If you do too, you might find the sessions Overcoming Fear, Gaining Peace by best-selling author and meditation teacher Susan Piver and Overcoming Money Fears (and Creating Money “Self Esteem”) by master coach and author Steve Chandler in my upcoming Comfort Queen’s 2009 Virtual Retreat particularly helpful. (Of course, you get all 10 experts and all 14 sessions plus all the extra goodies when you join us – see below for details.)

Stay tuned for tomorrow when I’ll talk about how fear, anxiety and overwhelm don’t have to go away for you to move toward your desires and dreams.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post: How To Take Action When Fear Is Paralyzing You

Related posts:

1. Comfort During Uncertain Times Blog Posts
2. Making myself Feel Better
3. Comfort During Fearful Times: Fear of Creating

Even all the dogs played nice.

It was the true spirit of Christmas: being our kindest, most patient selves. Tending the light in the midst of the dark. Accepting what is here now and being grateful for the miracle of love. Tender, imperfect, sweet and glorious.

And I’m exhausted. So I’m declaring today “Mini-Retreat Day” and asking you if a few hours–or even minutes–relaxing and recharging is appealing to you?

Note I did not ask if you thought it was possible to take some time alone. First connect with your desire.

• Do you desire some time alone this weekend to rest?
• Do you desire a walk alone in the woods and then some time by the fire or in the sun writing or drawing in response to, “When in the last week did I feel most alive? When did I feel least alive? What am I most grateful for? What am I ready to forgive myself for? What am I ready to celebrate myself for?”
• Do you desire a few hours to art journal or read and scribble poetry or call a friend you’ve lost touch with (I chatted with my friend Jodie, we haven’t spoken much in the last two years, today and it was wonderful.)
• Is your yoga mat calling to you? Or a novel? Or knitting? Or?

Let that desire draw you to it, let it part the waters of “But I should” or “I have to” and “But if I don’t…”

Come home to yourself this weekend, even if only for a few minutes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
P.S. This is your last chance to get on the preferred buyer’s list and save 50% on the The Comfort During Uncertain Times Virtual Retreat: Finding Calm, Confidence and Contentment no Matter What. I’ve created a world class line up of teachers and lots of extra goodies so that you can actually make a real retreat for yourself, in the midst of your daily life, January 16th- 19th. Info here.

Related posts:

1. The Not Quite So Daily Dollop
2. Not Quite Daily Dollop
3. The Not Quite So Daily Dollop

What I loved about our conversation was getting to talk about fear openly. I feel like I’ve come out of the closet about fear and like someone who just stopped smoking or discovered they love fruitcake, I want to tell everybody I can what I’m learning about fear.

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

• Shame and fear are linked; we can feel ashamed for feeling afraid because we should only be happy and grateful, especially if we have done a lot of inner work or have a roof over our heads. It can be very hard to admit we are afraid.
• We can feel we are doing something wrong if we feel fear or anxiety. If we just ate better, meditated more, trusted in the Universe more, had invested more wisely, we wouldn’t feel this way
• While we are each afraid of different things (money, illness, aging parents, getting our creative businesses off the ground, finding love), we all need the same thing: a way to access, to source, calm and comfort, that is not dependent on what is happening in our lives. We each get to that source comfort in different ways but we all have the capacity to experience comfort no matter what.
• While it imperative to let yourself realize and feel you are afraid without pushing it away, it’s equally vital to  remember that you are the queen / king of your life; You are the one who gets to choose. Fear does not have to impress you nor does it automatically get to run your life.
• Letting yourself be afraid without running a big story about how bad you are for being afraid or how you will always feel this way or if just this was different, you wouldn’t be afraid, prolongs the ick.

I’m working away on the Comfort Summit and the new membership site… today had the idea to turn the Summit into more of a four day retreat… more comforting and safe feeling, me thinks.

Back at it!  Love love love!

Related posts:

1. Comfort During Fearful Times: Don’t Forget the Comfort (Doh)
2. Comfort During Fearful Times: It’s Not About Self-Improvement
3. Comfort During Fearful Times: When You Make A Big Fat Hairy Goal

But not this year. This year I seem to want to do nothing, see nobody, hardly even talk on the phone when friends call to say Happy Another Year.

I know part of my mood is because I caught a bug Thanksgiving evening and feel crappy. But even before that, when Bob or my Mom asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday, I felt this odd, wonderful sense of wanting to be alone.

And so I have been. Bob even took the dogs. Lilly is with her Dad. Even my neighborhood is unusually quiet with lots of families away for the holiday. I wish I weren’t sick but it’s a dreamy sickness, not a horrible one, and it feels like a cloak I’ve drawn around me, an imposed but welcome retreat.

I’ve been reading and dreaming and thinking- about fear mostly - which sounds awful but actually has been most liberating. Making millions of notes about what I want to create this week to help us lean into and learn from and not be ruled by fear.

You know, fear is a big deal. It’s really a formative force in the world. How did I miss that little fact?

I’ve also been reviewing the last year, which I like to do on my birthday, as it comes near the end of the calendar year, and thus doubly feels like the beginning of my new year.  Here are some of what I learned / did / love about my 45th (really 46th) year:

• I fell in love with a wonderful man. Unabasedly. I played, I giggled, I shaved my legs a lot. I let myself love full out, grabbing the grace of love.
• I grieved mindfully, holding the tension of immense love and soft grief, often in the same breath.
• I grappled with a big deep sinkhole of neediness and spent some a lot of time at the edge of the sink hole just being there.
• I got acquainted with my victim side and how, with the help of fear, I had lost a lot some of my resiliency and momentum.
• Oh, yes, let me not forget fear. I realized I am, have been, and always will be, afraid. Of not creating truly and deeply enough. Of not relaxing and enjoying life and being present enough. Of not being smart enough. Of more loss. Of being a failure. Of not thinking clearly. Of all the misspellings in this blog. Of not loving strongly and honesty enough.
• And then I realized that is not bad, does not mean I’m permanently screwed or that anything is the matter.  That fear is not mine, it just visits and it can teach me but never rule me,
• I kept up a pretty darn regular breathing and prayer and yoga practice until I hurt my back this summer and then I kept up a pretty darn regular breathing and prayer practice and then a pretty darn regular Dance of Shiva practice.
• I got a heck of a lot better at trusting my instincts and acting on them faster. Instead of working with or employing the wrong people for months, this year it only took weeks to say, “Sorry, this isn’t working.”
• I began creating again, blogging, a little art journaling, and now recording audio experiences and making notes for this fear hope thing I’m calling Comfort During Uncertain Times.
• I began to see the wisdom of making a what-can-I-actually-produce-this-year plan and a how-will-I-reliably-and-effectively-get-the-word-out-plan instead of the willy nilly do a little of this and not enough of that plan non-plan like I have done for the last few years.
• I owned the fact I want to create something about transitions and change and decided to create a) a Comfort Learning Cafe Playground for those who want to join me monthly b) then a book and ) a performance / workshop. And I’m very afraid I can’t do any of this. And that’s okay.
• I got to see how speediness has helped me override fear most of my life and that slowing down to grieve made it so speediness could not work so well anymore and that explains a lot. (At least, I think it does.)
• I learned (with that great guy I fell in love with) about birding and how amazing a way it is to see.
• I lead groovy retreats and coached awesome clients (including the best writing groups!) and delivered inspiring keynotes. I planned my first international retreat for the coming year

AND MOST OF ALL

I experienced that when I gently allow myself to stop where I am and lovingly notice what I am feeling and experiencing and thinking without letting it define me or own me nor without fighting or denying or getting all dramatic about whatever is going on, I experience that I am safe, I am capable and gosh darn-it, I like me.

So Happy Birthday to me. I can sure be one super-earnest do-gooder learn all the time girl and so my invitation to myself for 2009 is lighten up while getting some friggin work done!  Here’s to light resiliency. (Not to be confused with light armour).

Thanks for reading.

Related posts:

1. Lying in Bed
2. Measurements

That is progress, dear sweetie Jen, that is progress. Big pat on heart.

And On to the List Thing

I’ve got a thrilling announcement (okay thrilling to me, hopefully to you, too) and it’s a direct result of all my writing and reading and thinking about fear and uncertainty this last six weeks and all these blog posts.  I’m working on an audio series and e-book and maybe a virtual retreat.

It’s all about helping ease and be with and not be stopped by fear and uncertainty, and I got waylaid for the last two weeks by this groovy project:

Comfort Summit 2009: How to Find Courage and Success When Uncertain Times Make You Afraid

(This is the big fat hairy goal I was talking about earlier.)
It’s a virtual summit of the world’s best self-care and self-acceptance experts (and really, I mean the world’s best), an online comfort-fest conference slated for early January – and it’s going to give you the targeted wisdom you need now to stay aware and awake and even (is it possible?) (yes it is!) thrive in these  uncertain times.  This is a once-in-a-life time opportunity to learn the most beneficial and effective methods, insights and ideas from my friends and colleagues–each expert selected because they can give you right now exactly what you need to dissolve fear and embrace change.

Best-selling authors like Geneen Roth, Barbara Sher, destuckfication expert Havi Brooks, effortless success coach Michael Neill, master coach and interfaith minister Laura Berman Fortgang, and great work guru Michael Bungay Stainer are on board for a fantastic event that’s is aimed at giving you the tools, the inspiration and the support to navigate these uncertain times so you can be part of the positive change we each crave.

It’s going to be as incredible as it is affordable.

And as a heart-felt thank-you to you for reading my blog, I’m going to offer a big fat discount when we start taking registrations to everyone on my Preferred Subscriber list.  If saving money on this life-changing, fun, comforting event interests you, then please sign up for the Preferred Subscriber list below so you’ll be able to get the limited-time discount.

Sign up here - just takes a minute.
And if you already signed up on this blog for a special list, we’ll transfer your name for you. And if you aren’t sure you did, then go sign up. Just to be sure.

I love you!

Related posts:

1. Lottery Update
2. Comfort During Fearful Times: When You Make A Big Fat Hairy Goal
3. A Whole Bunch of Groovy Stuff