One Traveling Companion Of Change

Change...

Sometimes you can see it coming. Other times you just get a feeling inside, the vague sense that something big, something different is coming down. But now and then it takes you totally by surprise. Regardless of how it approaches, though, change usually comes with a traveling companion: Uncertainty.

This uncertainty often blankets us well before the actual changes arrive. Like a descending fog that marks a shift in weather, uncertainty reduces visibility into the future, blurs the situation at hand, and raises a whole new set of questions.

Moving through this field of ambiguity, you may be tempted to insist on clarity ... to demand solid answers ... to push toward closure. Or, let’s put it differently: You might be intent on “managing” the uncertainty—you know, determined to eliminate it, to force it out of your life and career.

That’s not likely to be a winning strategy.

The defining feature of uncertainty is its very unmanageability. Seeking to control it is like trying to rearrange fog. What is manageable, and what you should focus on, is managing you. That is where your power lies, because that is what you’re free to control.

We are all the product of chance and choice. Working in tandem with circumstances that life puts before us, we choose our moves, and so become co-designers of our future.