If you have
watched terror movies, you probably have noticed there are several types of
fear. The fear of gruesome scenes or wild animals, maybe the fear of masked
people or a contagious illness is terrible enough to get you paralyzed.
But what
about the fear that does not come from a movie: the fear of losing a job,
getting sick, being alone and lonely… It is the modern urban fear that keeps
people awoken at night and does not allow them to have a healthy normal life.
That fear
comes from a not so sweet formula:
Disruption
+ Uncertainty = Fear
It means we
are afraid when our normal life is interrupted in its core, when the paradigm
we are living is broken. Disruption is
being experienced right now worldwide and it is not fun; it is requiring lots
of resilience by most people, some Netflix and Zoom by others… An image you can
use to understand disruption is to think of a ladder you are climbing normally
until you reach a point where the steps vanished and you are unable to reach
the other side, your destination.
Disruption paralyses
the person because of its absurdity or unexpected (and unwanted) emergence. In
the case of a human stairs it is however different than the former example, as
there is no way to go back in time and escape from it; you can stay stuck or you
would have to build the steps yourself, probably with the help of others.
Now imagine
that not only the steps went missing; when you look further to the place where
you were heading to, it also went missing! Uncertainty
is prevailing, forcing people to live the day-by-day and not planning too far
ahead.
It is not
something new of course as any company, football team or professional is used
to live on uncertainty, but the modern uncertainty – Will I still work there?
Will my children be able to have their own house? Will we be married with the
same person in five years? – joined by disruption generates a very deep
ingrained fear.
Can we
overcome this type of fear? We can’t fight disruption as it is often out of our
control, but we can control the effect of uncertainty. And the solution is very
simple: certainty.
Just have a
few things clear in your life and you will feel you are a surfer in the waves
of life. These are a few powerful questions that may help you to have a sense
of what is happening in your life, a sense of who you really are and your beautiful
purpose:
- Who am I?
- Why am I doing what I am doing?
- What is the best of me and how to share it with others?
- Where am I heading to and how I am building it day by day?
Whenever you
feel uncertainty taking over you, just stop for a moment and ask yourself those
questions. Let the answer comes into your mind like a light during a dark
night.
Remember: even
a small candle can break the darkness.
