Uncertainty in whether their surgery will allow them to walk normally again, uncertainty in where their next pay cheque is coming from, uncertainty on whether their role will be eliminated in the corporate reorganisation.

How much uncertainty you can handle has a dramatic impact on the quality of your days, weeks, and life. There are a few powerful distinctions that you need to make to survive times when you don’t know the outcome or how things will get resolved.

Myth: Uncertainty causes anxiety

Fact: Uncertainty is part of life, how you respond (think, feel) is a choice

When we think safety, security and stability are necessary for our happiness, and get anxious and fearful when they aren’t guaranteed in our current situation, we must realise that we can ALWAYS choose how we respond.

Some things we can’t control. But what we always control are our attitudes, thoughts and which resources and people we draw on to keep us moving forward and our heads held high.

For example, two people get made redundant from the same jobs in the same company. One person freaks out, convinced they will never find anything else in this ‘bad economy’. The other person quickly updates their CV (resume) and starts making contacts in their network, confident in their abilities and looking to gain an even better job. Same ‘job uncertainty’, very different choice of response.

Myth: Uncertainty is a bad thing

Fact: Good and bad depends on your perspective and what you choose to focus on

If you’re going through a tough time, and are worried about the outcome, remember there are always two sides to any situation.

If you feed your fears with all the negative possibilities, it definitely will seem like a very bad situation. But when you seek out the positive, you will always find it – the good is always there when you look for it.

This could be new opportunities that you hadn’t considered before, new skills you’re going to learn as you solve the problem, new lessons you’ll learn that will dramatically, and positively, impact your decisions going forward.

A case in point – someone very close to me recently found out they were a victim of an investment fraud and lost a considerable amount of their life savings. Their immediate response was “I’ll guess I’ll have to create more value in my business to earn that all back as soon as I can”. No panic, no depression, no anger, no ‘why me…’

They chose a powerful path to not only to focus on earning back that loss, but it challenged them to think bigger and wider on how this will spur them on to growing their business in whole new ways.  Sure they were in shock and saddened by this very ruthless crime but they chose not to dwell in that negative state and quickly shifted their energy to build empowering momentum for a profitable future.

Myth: Uncertainty must be tamed

Fact: The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can handle

When you accept that life is one big bundle of uncertainties, and quit trying endlessly to prevent events outside your control, you open up to the wonders of learning, growing and an abundance of happiness that is always there for you.

The next time you are hit with a situation leaving you uncertain about the outcome, make sure you stop and review how you are responding. And more importantly, decide how you would really like to respond…then choose wisely on what happens next.

How do you handle uncertain times? What strategies or experiences have you had that worked really well for you? Leave a comment to let us and the other readers know. We’d love to hear from you and you might just change someone’s life in the process.

Yet like all words, ‘curiosity’ is as open to individual interpretation as the rest of them. We have our own unique definitions for words, regardless of how commonplace or highbrow they are; and these meanings we imbue words with are influenced by the context we see them in, our personal experiences and memories, and particularly what we need or feel at the moment of hearing/reading them. For example, what comes to mind when you hear ‘I really need some money.’? Each of us will have a different reaction to the word and sentence, depending on things like:

• your childhood circumstances and the predominant beliefs you were taught – ‘money can’t buy you love’, ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’, ‘work hard and you’ll be paid well’, ‘money gives you choices’, ‘saving money for a rainy day’ etc.
• your current financial state, and how comfortable or stressed you are about your investments, bills and income.
• and the context you read the word in as well as the influence of the Media – For just $x, you get…You’ve just won… or You owe… Millions lost… etc.

It could mean ‘I’m desperately broke and can’t pay my bills’, or ‘I don’t have any cash and they don’t take plastic’, or ‘I can’t wait to buy that latest x’ or even ‘I really want to sponsor that child/animal/fundraiser’.

In this age of electronic communication, we’re all likely to have been party to misunderstandings related to emailed, blogged or even Twittered text – whether we were the one misunderstood, or the one who reacted to an unintended tone or connotation (which Emoticons can only begin to address). However, communicating face-to-face or verbally doesn’t ensure immunity either.

Spoken words are not susceptible for exactly the same reasons as text – where tone and body language are largely absent – but rather because the way your listener processes the words you say may not match the way you intended them.
Assumptions can be risky at the best of times, but how aware are you of the dangers in assuming someone assigns the same meaning to a word that you do?

Let’s play with this a little: (take a moment to consider) what does curiosity mean to you personally?

A Twitter friend, @deltalady, described it as a ‘renewal of your younger self to be more open to current experiences’ after establishing for herself that my @CuriosityCoach title wasn’t simply facetious!
I think of curiosity as being in a state of childlike wonder & awe, of asking lots of questions (usually avoiding starting with ‘Why?’, & most requiring me to let go of being right/having all the answers), of being willing to see the extraordinary in ordinary things, and ordinary in extraordinary ones, plus handfuls of other nuances – some of which I’m sure I’ve not even discovered yet!
The dictionary offers even further connotations including prying, meddlesome, and inexplicability!
And one person possibly interpreted it through his hormone-filters to be ‘I’m interested in getting to know you intimately!’ …which is one I’ll certainly need to be more aware of going forwards!

So, what does this mean for you?

Start by noticing the assumed meaning you give to words that you hear or read. After a while, you’ll find it easier to pick up on times when a word shared with someone has different definitions for you both… this can help you maximise your understanding of what you’re hearing, and minimise the scope for someone else’s interpretation of what you’ve said to remain unaddressed.

You may even find yourself getting curious about what particular words can mean to a range of different people!

I received a tweet this week which quoted a young girl. This young girl is battling cancer and going through chemotherapy. She told her parents “”Everything will be OK in the end; If it’s not OK, it is not the end”. She also says her mum worries too much.

There are so many ways to view that statement and so I choose to see the reminder that we always have the power to choose the meaning in any situation. Yet, so often we forget that we have that choice.

Take, for example, something in your life right now that you are worried about, big or small. You’re uncertain about the outcome, or you’re expecting a painful experience, or you’re simply not getting the results you want and don’t see a way to change it.

Think about the specific element, the tip of the pin, the little nugget that has you really worried.

How often you do indulge in that state of worry?
How long do you choose to indulge in that state of worry?
What are you really worried about in that situation?
Does the specific element — that ‘tip of the pin’ — honestly warrant and deserve that frequency and duration of emotional worry?

So often we get trapped in our own self-induced fog of worry that we can’t see anyway out of it (…or that it could even be anything but something to worry about). We build up a huge story in our minds about the terrible outcomes that will inevitably arrive and conveniently ignore the fact that we always have the power to choose the meaning we give something, or someone. We expend a lot of energy on the ‘worry’ part of the situation, rather than choosing to spend our energy on the ‘wonderment’ and ‘gratitude’ of the situation.

If you find yourself in a consistent state of worry about some element in your life, remember that it’s not the end. Only when you release the worry, see the situation as it is (and not worse than it is), and choose a more heartfelt, empowering meaning, will the situation be OK.

If it’s not OK; it’s not the end. And you always have the power to make it OK.

Sam and Paul talk about their definitions of love, and different ways in which you can tell the special people in your life how much you care for and appreciate them!