Do You Think You’re the Only One Feeling Uncertain?
Spoiler alert – you’re not the only one.
Though we tend not to talk about it in this way – COVID-19 changed the world.
First, we learned that many people, in the face of a public health crisis, will take extraordinary steps to protect themselves, those they care about, and even total strangers.
We also learned that many people will take advantage of a public health crisis for personal gain, are horridly selfish, self-centered, and that they couldn’t care less about the greater good.
Secondly, we learned that many of the in-office jobs could be done remotely, with greater efficiency, without the stress of commutes, and allowing more time for things not work-related.
We also learned that returning to the status quo pre-pandemic, micromanagement, and pointless oversight means more to many employers than the health and wellbeing of their employees.
Thirdly, we saw that social media, Zoom/Google Meet/MS Teams, and various other online media made it easy to stay connected – even when we needed to be physically separated for our wellness and wellbeing.
We also learned that social media and online conferencing software are inadequate replacements for human contact and interaction. Further, they tend to separate and divide us more than connect and unite us.
Here we are – a few years after the pinnacle of the crisis – and find ourselves left with the above paradoxes. For every good thing learned in the pandemic, a bad thing was learned, too.
Rather than address these things and use this as a growth opportunity, more often than not attempts are made to go back to how it was before. That has caused a largely ignored and unaddressed mental health crisis for nearly everyone.
That’s why – more likely than not – you’re feeling uncertain.
Feeling uncertain? You are utterly not alone
I had high hopes that maybe, just maybe, we’d emerge on the other side of the pandemic with a new sense of ourselves.
We’d all have a better sense of self, of being self-empowered, and of having control of our life experiences. Choosing to quarantine ourselves, maintain social distance, and masking would open us to seeing how interconnected we all are.
Maybe I’m naïve, and maybe that was overly optimistic. But I’d thought we might just learn a thing or two we could carry forward.
While some of us did – and have – others haven’t. All you have to do is look at the ongoing WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike to see the truth of the latter. The unadulterated greed of the studios and streaming services lacks basic kindness and compassion that everyone – especially the artists without whom they wouldn’t exist – deserves.
The result of this – and the extreme highs and lows so starkly realized during and post-pandemic – have exponentially increased feeling uncertain about life, the Universe, and everything. When you get the extremes so blatantly and loudly exposed – and the middle ground between them ignored, disregarded, or simply left invisible – it’s no wonder uncertainty is dominant like it is.
One of the most distressing elements of the lessons that were learned from the pandemic was how easily uncertainty can be weaponized to disempower us all.
When you are bombarded with conflicting info you can’t help but feel uncertain
Extremism was spotlighted during and immediately after the pandemic. Good and bad, extremes were highlighted as if they were directly in front of us all, in ways humanity has never experienced before.
The George Floyd murder and Black Lives Matter versus Trump and his cultist supporters. Scientists, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies versus anti-vaxers, science deniers, and politicians. The uber-wealthy versus everyone else.
Never before have we as a society had the technology for instant information. The immediacy of news and information gets used and abused to spread messages of fear, hate, distrust, and other negative emotions to make you and me uncertain.
When you get uncertain information poured over you like a never-ending waterfall, feeling uncertain will take root in your head, heart, and soul.
Why is nobody talking about this? Because uncertainty also says that talking about this could make you an outcast, pariah, or in some other way shunned.
Even the most introverted people need some degree of human interaction. Feeling uncertain means how that interaction might go is unknown. Thus, if it goes poorly – you might get less interaction in the future.
Fortunately, there is a way to alleviate feeling uncertain.
Active conscious awareness
Everyone has at least passive beliefs, values, and habits. These exist in our subconscious minds. Many are rote, routine, or just accepted by us as being what’s what.
However, everyone also has a conscious mind. That is where you can be actively aware of the world around you, where you are, who is with you, what you are taking in, and so on.
But more importantly, your active conscious awareness makes you aware of yourself. Specifically, your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. That opens you to being more actively consciously aware of who, what, why, and how you are.
To do this takes effort and ongoing practice. But becoming actively consciously aware of yourself is genuine mindfulness practice.
All it takes is asking yourself – right here and now – questions including, but not limited to:
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- How am I feeling?
- What am I doing?
- What is my intention here?
Each of these questions can only be truly answered here and now. And that makes you actively consciously aware.
Mindfulness from this place can provide you with certainty. Because here and now you can see who, what, where, how, and why you are.
The biggest downside to this is that it’s not instantaneous, nor one-and-done. Inundated as we are by things that make us uncertain, it’s up to us to take it upon ourselves to practice mindfulness. Because it’s a practice, you must do it again and again, over and over.
However – it gets easier the more you do it. And the more you’re actively consciously aware, the less you’re uncertain about your life. Since your life is the only thing over which you have genuine, actual, factual control – this is a massively worthwhile practice to take up.
Facing towards positivity
Feeling uncertain tends to lead down a path of negativity. For lots of people, uncertainty leads to anxiety, insecurity, fear, depression, and other negative feelings and emotions.
This can, will, and does happen all the time. You can’t avoid it, disregard it, ignore it, or pretend it isn’t a thing. That – FYI – is what toxic positivity is (and does).
I view positivity and negativity as opposite extremes. Between them is a flexible cylinder where we all exist. Why flexible? Because positivity and negativity are not necessarily set in stone. What is positive today might be negative tomorrow and vice versa.
This can be utterly innocuous. For example, going to bed before midnight used to be hugely negative for me. I’d be up at 4am or 5am if I went to bed that early. Now, however, going to bed before midnight is hugely positive for me. I wake up without an alarm between 6 and 6:30am no matter when I go to bed. To get more beneficial sleep – it’s better for me to go to bed before midnight now.
Finally, because we exist on that cylinder between positivity and negativity, we can choose which way to face. Look and move toward the negative or look and move towards the positive? We have the power to choose.
You are worthy and deserving of making choices and decisions that alleviate feeling uncertain. When you and I work to do so actively, that can impact those around us. I believe that logic and reason – being applied via mindfulness – are good for the health, wellness, and wellbeing of all.
Moving away from feeling uncertain isn’t hard
It’s all about working with mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, and intentions to direct your actions.
When you practice active conscious awareness – mindfulness – for you and your life experience, you can develop greater certainty to combat feeling uncertain. Knowing that feeling uncertain is often weaponized to disempower you, you can choose to use your active conscious awareness to work with your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions to find certainty for and in yourself.
This empowers you – and in turn, your empowerment can empower others around you.
Taking an approach to positivity and negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you are of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the five-hundred and first (501) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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