A Difficult Lesson to Learn
Learning to take action despite a level of, sometimes high level of, uncertainty has been a difficult lesson for me.
The thing is, I favor security. I like being accurate. I want to know that what I’m going to do is the “right” thing to do and will garner the results I desire. And I want to know it ahead of time before I take action.
I’ve discovered over the years there's a number of reasons for this. A few examples include:
Then no one can say, “She should have known better.”
So then I can’t say, “I knew better, why did I do that?”
To avoid making a mistake and having to recover, now embarrassed for the fall.
In order to circumvent the risk of losing a friendship or important connection.
And, last, but definitely not least, to believe I am following the path God has laid out for me. Mostly because there have been so many times that I have not followed where I believed (i.e., knew) he was leading. And of course, regretted it every time.
But the thing is, the life I desire involves risk. It requires moving forward without knowing the specific results. I must do this in order to:
Move forward in business: I must take steps when I don’t know the results but still take those steps.
Experience adventure: I must do things that might cause injury or discomfort but choose to do them anyway.
Feel meaningful connection with others: I must risk being authentic which leaves me feeling vulnerable but be authentic in spite of it.
When you have dreams and goals for your life, you must do things when you don’t necessarily know the result. You must do things that have risk, uncertainty, and require vulnerability.
If you don’t take those steps, life remains much the same as it is now. And that’s OK…. Unless there’s something different that you desire.
It was during some deep-searching journal writing recently that I realized I play it safe more often than I ideally want to be doing.
But the life and business I desire requires me to step forward and out of my proverbial comfort zone. It requires me to do so without knowing if the next step is the right one. I must take that step anyway.
Sometimes I get the exact result I want. Sometimes I don’t. But even then, I discover something equally valuable, i.e., the subsequent step to the one I just took.
It’s been a difficult lesson. And I have fought it; resisted it; tried to find another way.
But it seems it was the next lesson God had lined up on my path. And so, I chose to receive it.
And derive my certainty from my faith that He is always with me.