Finding the ground

A practice for moving through the anxiety, doubt, scarcity, and fear that often comes with uncertainty.

The last decade of my life has been about dismantling uncertainty. I’ve made a career out of it. Uncertainty has painfully taught me how to move through the world without sacrificing my soul or doing harm to the people I love. And although I can do that now, I still get stuck in the anxiety, doubt, scarcity, and fear that's a very normal part of experiencing uncertainty. A very normal part of being human.

When I'm unsteady in the uncertainty, a familiar pattern likes to show itself:

• Feeling anxious, unsettled, and afraid.

• Constantly checking my phone for texts, emails, and messages from the outside world.

• Hearing critical voices that I’m not doing enough and stories that I’ll never have enough.

• Picking on myself. Picking at my face.

• Harshly judging and comparing myself to others.

• Worrying about catastrophic endings for experiences that haven't even happened.

• Shrinking, playing small, and feeling powerless.

When I’m here, I have unrealistic expectations of how things are supposed to be. I rehearse the checklist of what has to happen in exactly that form and order for me to be successful. And then, as I do the inventory of my current reality and it doesn’t match up, I keep doing the math. I keep working the logic. I keep digging myself deeper and deeper into the dark hole of suffering. The anxiety weighs my body down. The fear builds in my stomach. My light dims.

I used to try and figure out why I was feeling this way. This is the part where I would go on a search and destroy mission to pinpoint the exact root cause of the uncertainty so I could figure it out. So I could fix it. So I could solve for it. So I could stop it forever and I'd never have to feel this way ever again.

I've taken this path a million times and I have enough evidence to know it's a road to nowhere. Mostly because — whether I like it or not — everything will always keep changing. But also because — even though I still fight it — I cannot think my way through my feelings. I have to actually feel them.

There's no amount of intellect that’s going to bring me any actual relief when I'm feeling ungrounded. I have to interrupt the pattern with practices that bring me back into my body.

I was working with a group last week on fear and it helped me recognize I was stuck. After our session, I was compiling the highlights of our conversation and I shared this poem:

When Fear Takes Hold — I Pay Close Attention
by Morgan Hoog

In seasons
marked by the unknown
there is a call to
relinquish our grip
and flow.

Choose to trust
when you do not know.

Choose to feel
when you cannot see.

Alchemize pain
into gold dust.

Trade fear for permission to
come alive in the waiting.

Gracious is this —
the art of letting go,
the fierce bravery required to
walk towards your dreams
in the midst of
uncertainty.

Coming out of this pattern of scarcity and fear is a choice. I can choose to show up for myself with compassion — and identify all the possible options and choices I have — just as easily as I can choose to stay stuck in untrue stories that deplete all of my energy, confidence, and light.

Choose to trust when you do not know.
Choose to feel when you cannot see.
Trade fear for permission to come alive in the waiting.

Finding the ground — and getting to a place where I can see I have a choice — is a practice. Over the last few weeks, there is a particular practice I've been using as I move through the anxiety, doubt, scarcity, and fear that is the cocktail uncertainty often serves up for me. It goes like this:

1. Find a place that’s quiet
   I go outside to sit in a chair under a tree. I bring a blanket, my journal, a cup of tea, and my headphones. I have my phone with me only for music or guided meditations. I turn off all notifications.
   

2. Settle yourself
   Because it’s been resonating so deeply with me, I've written the poem I shared earlier — When Fear Takes Hold — I Pay Close Attention — in my journal, so I can read it a few times and let it sink in. I read the poem slowly. I take a deep breath. I close my eyes. I exhale all the way out. I repeat until I feel myself start to drop in.
   

3. Listen and release
   Then I listen to a song by Beautiful Chorus called I am Everything. In the chorus I hear:
   
   I am everything I want to be.
   I have everything I need.

   
   As I'm listening to the song, my bare feet are on the ground in the grass. I am breathing deeply. With each in-breath I am pulling oxygen from the sky, above the crown of my head, and then exhaling and emptying out all the way down through my toes.

   
   In the early part of the mantra in the song, I am breathing and listening, and as the harmony comes, I may hum or sing with her. I may let tears come up. I may put my hands over my heart. I allow the words in the mantra to soak in:

   
   I am everything I want to be.
   I have everything I need.

   
   I let the pressure out as much as possible. If I need more time to let go and feel more settled, I listen to this as I continue to breathe and release. Breathe and release. Over and over for as long as it takes to find the ground. I open my palms on my lap. I exhale. I repeat this whole practice as necessary over the next many days whenever I feel myself spinning.

What I've known about myself for some time is that when uncertainty is high, I go straight to scarcity and fear. I look at all the things I don’t have and then I get scared about never being able to create them. What I’m learning is that the fear has become a brutal sense of comfort and a form of self-sabotage.

If I keep practicing being afraid — and yes, it is a practice — I don’t have to practice trusting myself. I don’t have to practice knowing I’m capable. I don’t have to practice risking, learning, growing, putting myself out there, asking for help, believing in myself, or being resilient.

And, if I keep practicing being afraid, I also won’t ever know what it’s like to bask in the energy and beauty of the many things I’m doing right. The many things I’ve been practicing that are aligned with who I am, the impact I want to have in the world, the experience I want my kids to have of me, and what makes me proud to be alive. There are so many things I’ve always dreamt of that I already have. There are many more that are already in motion. And the scarcity and fear is a way for me to avoid receiving the abundance of what’s already showing up and also what’s continuing to unfold for me.

There are so many variations on this practice you could do to make it your own. Maybe walking is your thing. Maybe you want to write in your journal. Maybe you want to send a voice memo to yourself that tells you what you really want to hear: That you're not alone. That you can do this. That it's going to be OK. That you will find your way.

Choose to trust when you do not know.
Choose to feel when you cannot see.
Trade fear for permission to come alive in the waiting.

What I know to be true is it feels a hell of a lot better to practice acknowledging I am everything I want to be — and that I already have everything I need — than it is to practice being afraid. So even if you try this and don’t feel release, keep trying to find the ground in your way. Keep exploring variations until you find what works for you. Doing these embodiment practices is not about getting a specific result every time. The gain is simply making the choice to show up for yourself. And over time, that compounds into an enormous amount of trust and love that pays itself forward in immeasurable and abundant ways.

Give it a try and let me know what you learn.