At your core, as a human, you want to know you are safe. Depending on your life experience if there is currently a lot of uncertainty in your life and/or in the world this can trigger old memories held unconsciously within you.
You can feel uncomfortable and/or unstable and not really know why. The feeling of insecurity can also be amplified during a career transition, where the familiar rhythms and routines as an employee are disrupted, making the need for inner stability even more vital.
I can appreciate the desire to want certainty. I was a child growing up in the troubles in Northern Ireland where there was always the need to be certain and vigilant about where you went, to ensure that you didn’t unwittingly put your life in danger.
Table of contents: |
The Courage to Embrace the Unknown |
The Spectrum of Reactions to Uncertainty |
Cultivating a Healthy Relationship with the Unknown |
Moving from Outer Seeking to Inner Grounding |
A Development Map: Your Guide to Inner Stability |
Awakening Your Inner Wisdom: To stabilise yourself |
Navigating Your Inner Landscape |
The Courage to Embrace the Unknown
When you venture out to pastures new, whether by choice or because life has given you a curveball, e.g. to leave a job that you had, an industry that you loved, a steady income that you had got used, it takes courage to step into the unknown and trust that you will be ok.
During this transition phase, sensitivity to your own needs becomes essential. You may notice heightened stress levels as you adapt to new roles or environments, which makes it crucial to develop an understanding of your inner emotional landscape. The feeling of stress may not only come from the change itself but from a lack of understanding about what this change truly means for you.
The Spectrum of Reactions to Uncertainty
Uncertainty reminds you that life is the great unknown. For some this feels like a great adventure into the unknown. For others it can be a terrifying experience that robs you of the ability to function and enjoy your life. A continuum of reactions that will be context dependent.
Everyone responds differently to these challenges based on their own sensitivity to change. Some find that their level of stress increases, while others feel a transition into something new brings relief. An essential part of managing these reactions is gaining a deeper understanding of how your own past experiences shape your present responses.
Cultivating a Healthy Relationship with the Unknown
You will have your way of how you relate to and deal with the unknown. Exploring and maturing this relationship is one direct way to stablise yourself, through becoming aware of and clarifying what you require to support yourself when facing uncertainty.
If you are undergoing a career transition, this might mean acknowledging the stress and feeling of vulnerability that comes with it. By cultivating sensitivity to these internal signals, you can begin to navigate these shifts with more clarity and understanding.
To explore the unknown is the inner development work. Intentionally developing on purpose.
Self reflection + Self study + Being in conversation = Developing on purpose
Activating these core stabilisers will ground you.
Self reflection supports you seeing and getting to the heart of how habitual patterns of personality have formed within you. Discovering historical ways you deal with uncertainty can bring you new understanding. You formed these coping strategies when you were young and many of these can be refreshed and updated when you learn how to do that. The purpose of self reflection is to expand your self awareness and understanding of your inner world.
Self study about how human development works helps you to learn new ways to reframe old habits and become more resourceful as you step into the unknown. When you have increasing self awareness and understanding gained through self study you are creating strong foundations for personal resilience when facing uncertainty. This can be especially beneficial for navigating a job transition, where stress can often feel overwhelming without a grounded sense of self.
Being in conversation is a way to gain additional feedback and insights from other perspectives (as well as your own self reflection perspective). Gaining additional data points about yourself, can help you to appreciate deeper aspects of your nature and innate intelligence. It is often hard to see your own habits. Being in conversation with a coach gives you access to an independent perspective.
Up to now, you may have some blindspots about yourself. Your gold in the shadows, as yet unseen. Coaching conversations bring to light all aspects about you. You then get to choose what and where you want to focus to help you deal more easily with uncertainty and change.
Intentionally learning ways to effectively deal with uncertainty is a useful coping strategy because if there is one thing you can be certain of in life, it is that life is uncertain. Learning through self study, coaching and mentoring can help you to see where you have come from, where you are now and what is possible from here.
Moving from Outer Seeking to Inner Grounding
As a child you watched and learnt from what others were saying and doing around you and all this got internalised. Images and sensations became part of your interior terrain. Thinking and feeling happen in your interior too.
From childhood you developed the habit of looking out to the world for answers. In reality, there is nothing stable out in the world. To find stability and grounding requires you to look within. Your natural operating system functions inside out, not outside in. Everything you long for, are driven to achieve, is a calling from within.
The deeper aspect of feeling unstable comes from a common human misunderstanding that something out in the world will fulfil you and make you feel whole. The human condition of suffering is to think something is missing within you and that you are not enough as you are.
A Development Map: Your Guide to Inner Stability
Intentional development work is a bridge to the inside. It offers teachings and practices that cultivate awareness and understanding of the human development process. Once you have a human development map, it is so much easier to locate where you are, where you have been and what’s up next in general terms. Having this certainty, allows you to relax and become more skilled at using a development map to explore your interior which in turn helps you to navigate yourself out in the world.
Awakening Your Inner Wisdom: To Stabilise yourself
The inner development work is about exploring what is in there, what no longer needs to be there and awakening to the deep pool of wisdom that is the essence and core of who and what you are.
As a sensitive soul seeking certainty when you dive into this deep, mysterious pool within you, what becomes possible is that you discover the qualities of your nature that can support you through these uncertain times.
These qualities, although always there, were not something you realised you had access to. This re-orientation to look within becomes a practice of how you get to know the inner capacity you have to support yourself, which in time stabilises you.
You may realise that your sensitivity is not a weakness but a strength that allows for deeper understanding and connection within you. This self awareness can be your anchor during a career transition, turning potential stress into a growth opportunity.
Navigating Your Inner Landscape
As you deepen your self awareness, you may find that what you once viewed as stress can transform into a feeling of opportunity. For instance, understanding that your sensitivity to change is not just about external factors but also about how you interpret these changes internally can shift your perspective. Developing a robust understanding of your emotional triggers helps you better navigate both your career and your life.
With more stability and clarity you feel more able to face all that is happening in your life and more easily bring your light out into the world. Each feeling, each moment of stress, and each transition can be an invitation to deepen your understanding of yourself, becoming more grounded and more at peace with uncertainty.
Eimer Boyle
Conversational Coach & Teacher of Human Development
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