Now and then, I experience a mixture of fear and frustration when things don’t go as planned. I desperately try to fix the situation, worrying and going through multiple what-if scenarios in my head.
I start drowning in the negativity until I manage to stop and taste my own medicine: Accept what is beyond my control and lean into what is without judgment and wishing for things to be different,
I give in and let go of what-ifs, acknowledging that I don’t know what the future holds.
It requires both courage and strength to:
Accept what is when we face the reality that is difficult and uncomfortable.
Choose discomfort over resentment.
Release all that was and all that I thought should be or wanted to be. Let go of expectations. After all, expectations are what hurts you.
Accept not knowing and uncertainty.
Accept the fear of what will happen if things will not go as planned.
It is not easy but I promise, you’ll double the suffering if you keep on resisting something that IS and is outside of your control.
The crisis is an inherent living condition.
The word ‘crisis’ comes from the Greek word ‘krisis’, which means sudden change, or disturbance. The crisis is, among other things, characterized by experiencing a loss. It can be very concrete, such as losing a person or a job, or it can be loss of meaning or direction, etc — something that gives the experience of lack of control and uncertainty about the future.
The course of the crisis is often described as the following 4 phases:
Shock
Reaction
Processing
Reorientation
How you go through these phases, especially phases 2 and 3, has great significance for both the length of the crisis but also for your reorientation phase.
First, most of us find it difficult to acknowledge that ‘crisis’ is a part of life to a greater or lesser degree. We have become so fixated on ‘happiness’ that we can no longer bear the grief, the loss, the pain at all. We swallow pills, subdue our bodies, and run as fast as we can to avoid feeling anything.
When, for one reason or another, we lose direction in life, then the automatic reaction for most people is to try to act out of it, to think out of it. Because it is so uncomfortable to be in the state of ‘not knowing.
YOU can not map out your true path in life. You can not climb it. On the contrary, in fact.