Episode 73: Certainty in an Uncertain World

Welcome to the 100% Awesome Podcast with April Price. You might not know it, but every result in your life is 100% because of the thoughts you think, and that my friends is 100% awesome!

Hello podcast universe! Welcome to episode 73 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price and I want to welcome you to this episode of the podcast, and the ongoing saga that is 2020. It just keeps going, doesn't it? Maybe there is going to come a day when we are no longer surprised at our current reality, but for the most part my brain still hasn't gotten there yet, and I find it constantly wanting to argue with reality. And I'm going to talk to you a little bit about this today, and hopefully give you a few thoughts that will help you, help your brain.

But first I want to remind you that this is the last week to submit questions for episode 75 that is coming up. If you haven't heard, or even if you have and you haven't had a chance to submit a question, you can go to the show notes, and click the link there, and it'll take you to a page where you can record a question for me. And I'm going to be answering listener questions in a couple of episodes, and I'm going to be playing your question on the podcast, and then answering them. I love the questions that I received so far, and I'm excited to get you some really specific help with the things that you're dealing with. So again, if you want to leave me a question, go to the show notes, and click there to submit a question. It's going to take you to a page, or you can just push record, and leave me a message.

Okay, so yesterday David said, "Hey I could use some coaching." And so, he dumped out his brain, and he told me some of his thoughts, and we did a little coaching, and when we finished, David said, "Don't you just hate your brain sometimes? Like it just makes things so hard, and it makes you feel so bad. And do you wish sometimes that it would just stop, and give you a break." And I know exactly what he means of course because my brain is just like his brain, and it's just like your brain. And it never stops telling us that everything has gone wrong. That we're doing it all wrong. And that danger, and death, are right around the corner. So, as he said that I just kind of laughed and I said, "Yeah, but then remember like we really do need it, like if our brain wasn't doing its job we'd just like run out into traffic, right? Or put ourselves in harm's way." We would never survive without our brains, and I'm not just talking about the fact that they run the apparatus of our physical bodies, right? But the mechanisms that are there that tell you to eat, and tell you not to jump off bridges, and tell you to sleep at night are necessary. Those survival instincts are absolutely necessary for an Earth-life experience, and we need that part of us. We need that very human part of us to allow us to have this experience at all. But at the same time it's just good to remember that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience, and as spiritual beings we have a need to grow, and become, and contribute, and we have to overcome our brains in order to do that.

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And the point of all this work is not to vilify our brains, or wish that they work differently, or wish that they didn't make things so hard. But the point is to be aware that while these pleasure seeking, pain avoiding, energy saving, mechanisms are critical for survival, they don't serve us when we're trying to do more than just survive, when we're trying to thrive, when we're trying to grow. And that's when we need to use our awareness of our brain to be able to get different results in our life. Like it's not a problem that we have a brain, we need a brain, right? And it's not a problem, even that the default parts it gives us are negative. We only really have a problem when we take these thoughts as the truth, and we aren't aware that there's other ways to think about things. In other words, it's not a problem that we have a brain, the problem is when we leave it completely unsupervised, right? Because if you want different results, results beyond survival, then we're gonna have to take charge of our thinking. And this is what I do with my clients as I coach them, and I want each of you to have that experience to be able to try that, to be able to really look at your own brain, and learn how to manage it, and if you want to try that for yourself you can sign up for free coaching session at my website.

Okay so, today I want to give you some awareness of one of the things that your brain might be offering you right now that it thinks is super necessary for your survival, but it might not really be giving the results you want in your life. So, I think for most of us, we have probably noticed that our levels of anxiety, and worry, have gone up this year. And it's mostly because our brains are reacting to all the uncertainty that exists around us right now. And one of the things that human brains really don't like is uncertainty, right? It likes to be right. It likes to know what's going on. It likes to think it can predict what's going to happen. But you might have noticed that there is not a lot of certainty in our world right now, right? Most of our predictions are not working out. And so, for a minute I want you to think about all the things that we don't know, that we're uncertain about, that we can't predict.

For example, we don't know if this virus is ever going to go away. We don't know if we'll find a vaccine. We don't know if a vaccine will be effective. We don't know who's going to be elected in a couple of months. We don't know what's going to happen after that election. We don't know if our kids, if they're going to school, if they're going to be able to keep going to school, and we don't know if they aren't in school, if they're ever going to be able to go to school again, right? We don't know the path of the latest hurricane. We don't know whether or not we're going to be able to get the wildfires under control. We don't know any of it. Like I've been thinking about how there are all these memes out there right now about how we just have to make it to the end of the year, and then things would get better, right? And how if we can just skip to New Year's Eve, and get it over with, things will be better.

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But notice how like, we don't know that, we just hope that, right? But our brains don't really know that it's going to be better next year. We don't know much at all. And our brains hate this. This awareness of not being able to predict what's going to happen next, makes the brain feel threatened. And so, it offers us all kinds of thoughts that increase our anxiety so that we can be on high alert, and be aware that we might be in danger. Like I want you to think about that list that I just gave you, and notice that if you knew the answers to all these questions, right? Even if they weren't answers that you liked, some of your anxiety would decrease just from knowing the answer, right? Like if I could tell you, "Okay, this person is going to get elected, and then there's going to be three days of rioting, and then things are going to settle down. Or I can tell you that like the virus is going to last exactly one more year, and then it's going to take six months of recovery, and then everything will be back to normal." As disappointing as that would sound, some of your anxiety would be alleviated just by knowing what was going to happen, just by being able to predict what is going to happen.

But I want you to know something, you have never lived at a time when things were certain. You have never lived at a time when your brain could accurately predict what was going to happen. Right now, it sort of feels like this uncertainty is a new occurrence, that we used to live with certainty, and now we live with uncertainty. But in fact, we never had any certainty, and we will never have any certainty, ever. Uncertainty is in fact the human condition. Now your brain has made all kinds of predictions about the sun coming up tomorrow, and your house being there when you get home from work, and the Earth rotating, and the people you love living, and the fact is all of that is uncertain. The truth is that anything can change at any moment. Uncertainty is the human condition, it is the way things are. And for some of us we are just starting to become aware of this, and that's what's been so disconcerting about this year.

So, I want to share a story with you that I hope will illustrate this point, that things have always been uncertain, and we just didn't know it. So, at the end of 2005, during the holidays, over Christmas break, we took a trip with our kids to see my husband's family in Michigan. And while we were gone, our house got robbed. Now, the details of that robbery aren't really relevant to the story, but I know that David will really want me to tell them to you, right for him, this is the most important part of the story. So, I'm going to share these details with you because I know he really wants you to know that. So, our house was broken into, and robbed, but they didn't just break a window, or force the door open. They actually climbed up on our roof, and they went through this small vent in the roof, and got into the attic, and from there we had some skylights, and they put a hole in the drywall of the skylight, and then using our garden hose, they tied the garden hose to the rafter of the attic, and let themselves down into the house, through this hole, and disabled the alarm system. And a few days later when my brother went to bring in our mail, and check on the house, he went in the house to find this garden hose hanging from the ceiling, and this huge hole in the ceiling, and then all the drawers in our house dumped out, and the TV, and the computer, and the stereos, everything gone, right?

So, he called us on New Year's Eve to let us know all of this. Now, the part of the story that is relevant to what we're going to talk about today is still coming. We arrived home to find our house a mess. Some of our stuff gone, and this huge hole in the hallway right next to our children's bedrooms. And this was disconcerting, as you can imagine, right? We were scared, and David in particular had incredible amounts of anxiety about this. Over the next week I would wake up in the middle of the night to find him standing at the window, like staring out at the yard watching the road. He and some guys in the neighborhood even took shifts at night patrolling our neighborhood for suspicious cars, or suspicious activity. And he just couldn't shake the feeling that his family was in danger. And he had a lot of anxiety about it, right? It took a long time for his brain not to be on high alert.

Now, for the purposes of this podcast I want to point out a few things here. First of all, we got robbed, and David's anxiety levels went up about our safety. His brain was telling him that his family could die, that his family was in danger, that he could die, right? That this was a problem. But what I want to show you is that nothing had actually changed in our world. We were always in danger. We were always vulnerable. There was always the possibility that we could be harmed or killed, we just didn't know it like we knew it. After we got robbed, up until that point while the danger had always been there, and nothing had actually changed, our brains had been making up a story that we were safe. He had made up a story that houses were secure, and doors, and windows, kept scary things out, and alarm systems protected you from harm, right? Our brains had predicted that this house structure would keep us secure, and until this moment of this robbery, our brains had given us this sense of certainty, as a way to deal with the actual uncertainty of life. But every moment of human life is uncertain, it's just that most of the time our brains are pretending that it is otherwise for us. Our threat level hadn't actually changed, but our awareness of those threats had gone way up, and in much the same way this is exactly what is happening to each of us this year in 2020.

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The uncertainty of our world, of our life, our security has not actually changed. As humans we are always vulnerable, we are born vulnerable, and we live our lives in uncertainty, we just don't always realize it. Our brain has predicted what's going to happen, and for the most part when life goes along that predictable pattern, we feel secure, because our ideas or our predictions are matching up with reality. But this year, life isn't really lining up with our predictions, and so it feels uncertain, and a little scary. But notice that life is actually no more uncertain than it has ever been. So perhaps you have said, or you've heard someone say, "I can't wait until things return to normal." But there is no normal, there is just life that sometimes follows our brains predictions enough, and follows it the way we thought things would go enough that we call it normal.

But there has never been a moment of your life that was normal, that was certain. Your brain might have predicted things, and life might have closely followed those predictions. But there was never a time when it was actually certain. And admittedly, we all have moments where we are reminded of this. Tragedies happen, and we are often confronted with the knowledge that we have no control over anything, and any control that we thought we had was all just made up. It's all an illusion that our brain makes up to help us feel secure in an insecure situation.

Okay so, maybe by now you're like, "April, this isn't making me feel any better knowing I have never had any control is increasing my anxiety not decreasing it." So, let me speak to that right now. Notice how our anxiety is not caused by the fact that we can't control things. Our anxiety is caused by the idea that we should be able to control things. We have never been able to control things. But when we think we should be able to, that's when we get anxious. We're anxious because things are uncertain, and our brain believes that is bad, that we should be able to control things, and that's the only way to secure our happiness, and guarantee our happiness. Just like David believed that he should be able to keep his family safe, and suddenly he was confronted with the knowledge that he didn't control anything at all, that it was impossible to keep us safe. And thinking he should be able to protect us is what was creating his anxiety. What I want to offer you is the idea that our anxiety increases when we think our feelings are caused by things outside of us, right? If things outside of us can create our feelings, cause us to feel bad, then we need the things outside of us to be certain, in order to feel safe, and to feel okay.

Like David thought his feelings of security were created by the house, and by the alarm, and by the nice neighborhood, but those things never create security, because nothing outside of us can ever create feelings inside of us. So, David's thoughts that his family was safe made him feel secure, in his thoughts that we were in danger, made him feel anxious. And even though it didn't feel like it, both of those thoughts were a choice, they weren't created by the world he lived in. Notice that when we think the world, or the people in it cause our feelings, then we give ourselves the impossible job of having to control the world. We give ourselves the impossible job of creating certainty, which is a job we can't ever do. In this case, when David thought his feelings were created by the world outside him, he had to patrol the neighborhood, and watch the yard at night, and watch out for all the bad guys, right? So that he could feel safe. And that is a job he just can't ever do. We can't control what happens to us, what happens to our kids, what happens with our job, what happens in our country. And we feel anxious when we give ourselves the job of controlling that because we just can't fulfill it.

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But the very good news, and it is good news, is that your feelings are never caused by things outside of you. Everything that happens in the world, and everything that other people do or say, must first be filtered through your brain, before it can create a feeling inside of you. And that means while your sphere of control outside of you is small, right? Way, way, way, way, smaller, than you ever thought, your sphere of control inside of you is limitless, and boundless, and vast, and literally endless. So, while David can't control what happens to his family, he does have unlimited control over how he responds, no matter what happens to his family. And for each of us, this can be an incredible realization. Yes, we are vulnerable, and we always have been, but also, we are infinitely powerful, because we are always in control of our experience. And how we respond to the uncertainty of our lives is going to change our whole experience.

So, today I just want to give you a couple of thoughts to help empower you, as you respond to being a human, and living with uncertainty. So, the first thought is that life is uncertain, and you were never supposed to be able to control it. What would it change for you if you could accept uncertainty as the human condition? What would it change for you if you didn't give yourself the job of controlling the world so that you could feel safe, or secure or okay? And then, the second thought is that while it is true that we live lives of uncertainty, who you are, and the control you have over your own experience, is always certain. You can be 100% certain that you have everything you need inside of you to handle whatever comes your way. You can be certain about that. So here's the thing, bad stuff happens. I know that's not news. Unpleasant, undesirable circumstances are going to happen, but we don't ever have to be protected from those, because we have everything inside of us, to handle anything outside of us. Of that you can be absolutely certain.

And those are the only two things you need to know, life is never certain, and you can always be certain about your ability to handle it. And when you really understand your power to create your experience, no matter what, right? That you're the director of it, then you no longer need to control anything else. You no longer need life to be certain, because you are certain about you. We don't have to control the people. We don't have to control the world. We don't have to worry about bad things happening, we don't have to be scared about anything. It really is the most powerful you can be. And even though your sphere of control has shrunk way down, your depth, and breadth of control over your own experience has never been so large.

So, I just want to show you a few ways that you can apply this in real life that I hope will help you. So, the first is when it comes to making decisions. So, sometimes we're trying to make decisions in our life, and in order to make those decisions we want some certainty. We think it would be easier to make these decisions if we could have some certainty. So, like maybe you're trying to decide if you should move, or trying to decide if you should buy a house, or go back to school. Maybe you're trying to decide if you should have a baby, or if you should quit your job, and we think we need to control the circumstances of life in order to create a good outcome from those decisions, right? Like, we'd like to know how each decision works out, so that we can make the right line. We'd like to know that the housing market is going to go up before we buy. We'd like to know that we're gonna be able to make money if we go back to school, or we'd like to know that we can handle whatever challenges our children have before we have them.

The only problem of course is that life is uncertain, but no matter what your decision is, you can always be certain about you, and your ability to handle whatever comes. We don't need life to be certain, and predictable in order to make our decisions right. Because we have the power to make every decision right, regardless of what happens, because we're in charge of that. We're in charge of how we think about our choices. We're in charge of how we think about our decisions, and we're in charge of how we believe in our own ability to handle whatever comes, and to be able to grow, and meet challenges. And when you tap into this certainty, then any decision is okay. You don't need to control the housing market, or the job market, or the toddlers in your life, right? You just need to control your own response, and believe in your ability to handle whatever comes.

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For example, I have a daughter right now who's supposed to graduate college this semester, right? Who knows what's actually going to happen, but that is the plan. And this part of her program, she is required to do an internship after she graduates, and her degree is in theater. And because of Covid, you might know that most of the theaters have been closed down, and it would be really nice she thinks if she could predict what was going to happen, right? So, that she could feel like everything was going to be okay, and that everything was going to work out for her. It would be nice if she could control viruses, or public policy, but she can't. She's a theater major. And if she thinks she has to control the world to feel okay about her future, then she's going to feel anxious. She's going to be in trouble, right? But what if she doesn't give herself the job of needing to control the world, or the virus, or theater openings, and just gives herself the job of controlling her. What if she just opens herself to whatever is going to happen, and believe that she has everything within her to create a beautiful life. That she will be okay, and that no matter what everything is going to work out for her. In this situation, she only gets to control how she thinks, how she feels, and what she does.

So, acceptance doesn't just mean giving up, right? Acceptance means allowing life to be uncertain, and deciding that it was never her job to control any of that. Her job is all internal. Acceptance doesn't mean she just gives up. It doesn't mean she doesn't apply everywhere she can, and use all the contacts she has, and get creative about where, and how she'll do her internship. But it does mean that she can give up all of her anxiety while she does those things. And it means that she doesn't tell herself that she made a mistake in the major she chose, or the career path she designed. It means that she is always the creator of her life, and she controls herself in every circumstance. She's allowed to believe in her choices, and to love those choices. Meaning the future was always uncertain, before Covid, and after Covid, but her capacity to create the life she wants is unchanging, and always certain.

Okay, another way to apply this is when it comes to our relationships. So, there is always a risk that when we love someone that we can experience loss, right? Love, fidelity, friendship, are always uncertain in that we never get to control what other people do. Not when we're dating, not when we're married, right? Other people have agency, and other people can make choices, and also other people are humans, and they have human bodies that can get sick, or injured, or die. We don't get any guarantees of health, or safety, or fidelity when we are in relationships. And sometimes this can feel scary, right? I am the parent to three young adults right now. And they tell me how scary this is, right? My son has said to me before, "I just want to know how it ends before I start." Like does it work out? Like if I know it's not going to work out, then I won't start. Like when we love, there is always the possibility of hurt, and our brains would like to be certain. They would like to be certain that we won't get hurt, and that our spouse won't leave us, or that we're both going to live to be ninety-five, and die on the exact same day together. But none of that certainty is possible. The nature of every relationship is uncertainty.

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David gets to make any choice he wants at any time, and I don't control that. He's also susceptible to accident at any time, and I don't control that. But I only have anxiety when I think I need to, when I think I need to control it in order to feel safe, and secure, and happy. My feelings of true security are created inside of me when I realize that whatever comes I have the capacity to handle it. That yes, in those moments I will feel incredible amounts of devastation, and negative emotion, but that is okay. I will be okay. I will handle whatever comes, and I get to choose to think about it in ways that hurt me, and keep me stuck, or get to think about it in ways that teach me, that are compassionate, that helped me grow, and work for my good. It's not that we want undesirable circumstances in our life, it's just that we don't control it. Either way we don't control any of the circumstances, and wanting to control them to prevent the undesirable outcomes only increases our anxiety. Peace, and security are found in accepting that all control is me, and that in the end, that is all I need to control.

Okay, finally the last way I want to apply this is in terms of just the world itself. The world, and our future, right? We spent a lot of time trying to control the world like we would like to control the robbers, right? Some of us would like to control the Republicans. We would like to control the rapists, and the racists, and the radicals, right? But notice that we only want to control them so that we can feel certain. We think their actions, or the actions of anything, or anyone outside of us, make our life and the enjoyment of our life uncertain. And our brain wants to be able to predict that everything is going to be okay again. Our brain thinks that if the circumstances are okay, then we can feel secure. But real peace comes from knowing that regardless of uncertain circumstances, I am always going to be okay, no matter what happens.

Every feeling I ever have is created by me. Nothing happens inside of me without my say so, I am never the victim. I am an agent that acts. The people that robbed our house did not make us feel insecure. Our own thoughts made us feel that way, and that doesn't mean that we don't want to choose to feel that way. Perhaps it served us in a way, but it does mean that we are always in charge of how we feel. We are always in charge of our experience, so I mentioned that David wanted a little bit of coaching yesterday, and his brain was filled with anxiety about all kinds of future disasters. And when we finally got all of this out, and really looked at them he was able to get relief. When he noticed first of all his brain is right, all of it is uncertain, all of those things could go wrong, right? Everything could fall apart. The worst-case scenario could happen, but the powerful part is recognizing that even if the worst case scenario happens, we will still be okay.

We would figure it out. We would learn, and grow, and feel our feelings, and do what was required of us, and we would be oaky. That thought gives me so much confidence, and reduces any anxiety I have about the future. So, some of you right now might be really anxious about the future, and what's going to happen in our country, right? Some of you have some really strong political beliefs, and you would like certain outcomes in the upcoming election for example. But how would it change things for you, if you didn't give yourself the job of controlling all those things outside of you, right? Of controlling the election, of controlling what other people think in order to feel okay about your future. Now that doesn't mean that you just give up, and say, "Well whatever will be, will be, there is no certainty. I can't control any of it. There's nothing I can do, right?" It means that you show up in the way that you want, a "you" campaign, and you persuade, and you work hard, and you petition, and you do all the things you want to do. But you do it knowing that no matter what happens you will be okay, and that you are always creating your own experience of the world.

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You get to find love, and joy, and security in any circumstance no matter what happens. You get to choose confidence, and hope, and faith no matter the situation. And it doesn't mean that you will always want to choose those things, but nothing outside of you can take those choices away from you. You are always in charge of your experience, and that is the ultimate certainty. I think that anxiety increases when our brain suddenly gets confronted with the realization that we don't control anything, and we think we should be able to. We think we need to be able to control it in order to ensure our happiness. But the best news that I can give you is that you don't need anything outside of you, to be anything other than it is, in order to be happy.

Your happiness, your joy, your Earth-life experience, whatever it is, is created inside of you. You can always be certain about you, and your unlimited capacity to handle anything that comes, and create whatever experience you want to have. And that my friends is, 100% awesome! I love you for listening, and I'll probably see you next week!

Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. If you want to take the things I've talked about and apply them in your life so that you can love your Earth-life experience. Sign up for a free coaching session at aprilpricecoaching.com This is where the real magic happens and your life starts to change forever as your coach. I'll show you that believing your life is 100% awesome is totally available to every one of us. The way things are is not the way things have to stay.

And that my friends is 100% awesome!