Uncertainty

Life is uncertain. 

The one thing that terrifies so many people also gives meaning to the very life we have. 

Uncertainty is when you don't know what is going to happen next or even currently. Uncertainty happens everyday. It's what makes each day exciting. It's what makes this whole thing real because none of us really have control over anything in our lives except what we do with the uncertainty. 

You can view uncertainty as either positive or negative, but you have to accept that uncertainty is the heart of life. There is nothing more depressing in life then knowing exactly what everything will be like everyday at every second at every turn. That would make this life a living hell.

For many people who try to control everything in life in search of peace, it actually creates a life that is full of angst and suffering because what they are trying to achieve is the opposite of what life is. 

For many people, they wish for that predictability or certainty in life but in my own experience when I start to have that sort of mindset, it's telling of something deeper in my life that I haven't learned to accept or be able to sit with in a peaceful manner. 

Often times uncertainty is associated with change. Our culture has conditioned us to be a "set it and forget it" type of people. When change happens we are told that it's bad.

This happens because with change brings uncertainty, and with that brings fear, and with that brings anxiety for many people as it means they will have to decide if this will be something they resist or accept.

It means they will probably have to shift somethings around, change a routine, learn something new, grow, stretch, and maybe even struggle to continue forward in life. 

Resisting uncertainty only draws attention to all the fears you may have about it. Accepting uncertainty in life releases all the anxiety and worry. You can't control much in life. You can't stop yourself from having to go to the bathroom, you can't stop the earth from rotating, or the sun from rising and setting each day. You can't control a hurricane or a natural disaster. You can't control whether or not you're company will shut down or lay off people. You can't control if you get a flat tire or not. 

Life is full of uncertainty and it's great. 

When you begin to embrace that life is uncertain, growth happens. It opens up a whole new world. It begins to expand what you can experience in life which creates lots of joy and excitement.

For many people, being bored is the cause for their misery and poor choices. Being bored comes from essentially saying, there is nothing more in this world that could possibly be new for me to discover. Being bored happens when you no longer have curiosity, no more questions - it often means you have built up such great walls to keep out the things you fear so that you can live in comfort.

For most, at the end of the day, as much as we want pleasure and comfort it leaves us empty, bored, and wondering... "is this all there is?"

In my life, I have tried to plan things out for years. I like to control things and I have had to learn to kill that part of me. Owning your own business is something that is full of uncertainty. I have tried to plan for things over the last eight years since I started doing music and I can pretty much say that my life is 99% different then what I imagined, and not only that, it's better then what I planned. But this came from learning to be fine with uncertainty. It came from lots of hours of talking to people who are wiser than me, going to counseling, giving up things, changing habits and facing all my fears.  

Today I was scheduled to master an album. I am writing this blog because the client ended up having to make two adjustments to two songs. I had my day planned out and then it changed in an instance. This was fully out of my control. I didn't know what I was going to blog about this week, and then... poof...the album getting bumped allowed me to have uncertainty, which lead to me writing about what just happened as uncertainty is the heartbeat of life. 

Now you're reading this. Which you didn't plan on reading this today but it's probably helpful on some level, which affirms that uncertainty is good, it leads to growth, it leads to excitement, anticipation, what gets your heart pumping, it gives butterflies and feelings and emotions. If you take that away then you don't have life. 

Somehow I went from playing guitar in a pop rock band to eight years later mastering full-time, married, living in Nashville and really enjoying life. This came from lots of hard work and choosing uncertainty. My music journey in a nutshell came from playing music with some dudes and one dude knew another dude who could produce our album in Chicago, so we moved there, and then that dude met a guy at apple who worked at a label, and then that lead us to have some momentum and then the band broke up and I moved back to my hometown, and then a guy from high school who was way younger then me hit me up about making rap tracks because he saw it on Facebook one time that I made beats, and that lead me to becoming a producer at a studio which then lead me to starting to engineer, which then took me eventually to Florida where I worked at a church where I met a guy who had a music teaching studio that my wife worked at which lead me to doing artist development and then some guy from twitter hit me up about producing for a label.. then a guy at the church told me to do Mix With the Masters and people gave me money so I could go..... and that lead me to a whole new world of people which lead me to being affirmed to move to Nashville and I got connected to a guy in town with a studio where I did my first country thing and that lead me to another thing and some where along there I had my whole world flipped on it's head and had to deal with a lot of anxiety, and fear, and figuring out what works in life and what doesn't work anymore, which is a whole book....then my wife who is the reason I have a career somehow lands the most sweet people in the world for nannying and those people give me chances to work on music and that lead to ..... you get it right.... uncertainty.... I am so grateful for uncertainty.

I could go on and on and on and on and on and on about the millions of steps that I took with the help of others encouraging me to keep going. All of it uncertain. All of it making me weak in the knees a lot of the time, but all so so so so so good and life giving. 

I live for uncertainty. I live for the unknown. This doesn't mean that uncertainty is easy for me, but I have learned to be in harmony with it, because in all of the uncertainty, I have never once been hurt from it. I have had hard times and terrible things have happened along the journey but once again pretty much all of it no one could have stopped. Life is uncertain. 

Living in harmony with uncertainty means choosing action over emotions. It means when you have the butterflies you become friends with them and begin to appreciate the beautiful colors of the wings on the butterfly and how they fly so random and are blown about in the wind. It means when your mouth goes dry in front of people you just start talking, you clear your throat, take a swig of water and go.... forward..... there is no turning back, there is no running away... there is only uncertainty and embracing uncertainty in your life will lead you to some of the best moments you'll ever experience. 

So this week start small and just think of one thing that is uncertain to you and become friends with it. Start small and soon uncertainty will be running along side you in life instead of keeping you from moving forward in life. 

Peace

If you enjoyed this blog at all, please hit the like button below.