Thriving in Uncertainty by Being Your Own Person

We love and need certainty, don’t we? To know what to expect in returning home and walking through the front door. To know that the super-market shelves continue to display an abundance. To know that drinkable water flow through the tap. Much of our lives revolve around assumed certainties and securities – from relationships to oxygen in the atmosphere.

And then, one day – suddenly, with no warning – something changes, from a status of a long-standing certainty, into a small or big uncertainty. Perhaps pick an aspect of life/world trend that you have already experienced or that you see coming.

Change – a big, radical change – is in the air. We are changing and evolving. In the seen worlds, the last 100 years delivered incredible leaps in technology that have profound impact on our lives. Consider a world without the Internet. Well, this was the case only 30 years ago… In the unseen worlds of human development, our mental and spiritual capacities are rapidly evolving, engendering a non-linear creative impulse that gives birth to all that we witness in the seen; with mind-boggling more awaiting discovery in the unseen, especially where it concerns the process of giving birth to our future selves.

Every sector of society needs to now develop ways to cope with increasing uncertainties brought about by change. Agriculture with unpredictable, extreme weather; information technology with new forms of human interaction; the financial worlds with the consequences of mass-scale reckless practices; governments with the consequences of not caring for the individual; humanity as a whole with the breakdown of old forms and paradigms, and the emergence of non-linear evolutionary events… And then, there is you and me. What do we need to know to be aware of, to be able cope and thrive, regardless of today’s flavour of volatility and uncertainty?

Our ability to cope, respond, and progress is directly proportional to our distance from ourselves: The greater the distance – for many, to the point of disconnection – the greater the struggle. Personal development is a journey of discovery and integration with our natural self, liberating us towards becoming a self-determining, self-leading, future-based, forward-thinking individuals.

It starts with being able to think, feel, and perceive for oneself, to a point that when we think, no-one else’s influence does the thinking or feeling in us. When a person surrenders themselves to another person’s – or a crowd’s – persuasions, large parts of their thinking and feeling space is invaded and occupied by it. So decreasing portions of one’s thoughts and feelings are original to them, and their reactions are therefore disconnected from their core. Often a person may be aware of it, but is unable to access the know-how, will-power, and inner skills to break away from it.

Let’s take this a little further. Every day, we make hundreds of micro-decisions. To what degree are our decision-making processes being directed or governed by someone or something else’s influence?

Consider parent influence, hereditary influences, childhood experiences, new and old friendships, teachers, mentors, ‘celebrity influencers’, impactful encounters with strangers… The human system is imbued with a huge range of potent influences, from high to low, that live in different parts of our minds, brains, psychology, all the way to DNA formations. What is shaping your decisions, convictions and opinions? “My parents wanted me to be a something” – and indeed, many even become quite successful at being that something, but at what hidden cost to the buried wishes of their natural self? This doesn’t imply not learning or ‘catching the way of it’ from others, which, as we live our lives, we cannot do without. The question is: How does exposure to someone else’s radiation and behaviour leave you feeling when you walk away from the encounter?

The core of a human is a still, quiet place, that is connected to profound Creational realms. The greater the distance a person is from their core, the greater the emotional roller-coaster and stress factors; with the mindfulness that stress is the most lethal disease of the 21^st century.

Being one’s own person is a never-ending journey of personal growth. It is also a deeply healing, awe-inspiring, liberating, and connective process; a journey of self-realization, with perpetually unfolding new developmental horizons.

Let’s come at this from another angle. What is the first thing that happens to us when we wake up? Unless we know how to side-step it, we get invaded by the pressures and demands of the day, which is essentially an ever-repeating carry-over of our yesterdays. Before you know it, something else is already in charge of your life in a new day. A new day, however, is yet one more building block opportunity of our future self. If sleep had a voice, it would say: “Hey, I worked for a few good hours to clean you up and energize you, to make you refreshed and ready for a new day, and so much of my work is gone in the first few minutes after you wake up”.

What do you want to fill the vacuum in your mind with first thing in the morning?

All too often we end up making too much space for the unimportant, and too little space for the important. The task at hand is to reverse this fatality.

Ask yourself:

•  What is important – really, really important?
•  What is important to me?
•  What do I value?
•  What do I really, really want?
• What makes me feel good?
• What do I love doing?
•  What do I need to improve, and how?
•  What little change will create the biggest impact at this time?

The task is to create a process continuity clear from alien influences and persuasions. As an example, occasionally spending a bit of time – like 20 or 30 minutes – contemplating these and many other related questions. This practice creates space for inner lives, voices, and natural connections that are suppressed by the daily rush of fulfilling to do lists. If you are not already practicing this, you may be surprised by what it yields, and where it leads to, which is deeper into the minimally explored worlds of the human possibility and your evolutionary opportunity therein.

Note: This is not about formulating fixing answers to these questions, but to rather engage in a process continuum that keeps opening up new realisations, perspectives, small understandings, little and perhaps not so little aha moments… a process leading to a process leading to a process…to gradually form up your own mind about what matters and what does not matter; what is and what is not important; nurturing a developing mindset that perceives what is happening in and around you with growing wisdom and impartiality.

In the worlds of human development, on every 10% genuine effort, you get multiples in return in ideas, enhancements, energies, and in time, new skills and capabilities.

This connective practice creates space for rains of small discoveries and self-realisations, and a deepening union between you and the many lives that together make up the self of the human, gradually becoming a harmonious inner choir, rather than a host of inner lives lacking harmony and congruity.

It’s a seemingly simple practice that will challenge your habits in many ways. The front brain programming may resist it with its wanderlust programming. Don’t try to fight your own brain. Train it into your new-found developmental ways and good habits by making them interesting to you, so it becomes interested as well. Because the brain is not you, it is an incredible organ that lives in your head, that needs on-going training into what you are about as an emerging, self-determining human. So that it learns to trust you and deliver the flow of perceptions and hidden knowledge that it is made to provide its master – you, the being in the body you occupy.

Our greatest self-realization is that we are already so much better and more capable than we think we are or are conditioned to think that we are – each of us in her or his fascinating, unique way.

The more integrated we are with our natural self and what it is connected to; the more we seed, nourish, and nurture self-determining processes in the space that we occupy; the more we exhaust and leave behind influences that pull us away from our natural selves; the more we become connected to the promise of the human opportunity. This, in turn, makes us better equipped to handle the increasing chaos and uncertainty of the madhouse of the 21st century.

There is of course a great deal more to the developmental processes of becoming one’s own person. But this is an important component of it.

With best wishes,

David Gommé

World Copyright 2024 © David Gommé