How to Live is written as a love letter to my daughter to share all the things I hope might help her live a better life … though I suspect others may also find it valuable.
Dear Giana,
I don’t mean to brag, but I’m basically an expert at living with uncertainty. I’ve done it pretty consistently for at least the last 13 years since your dad left and I was 5 months pregnant with you and self-employed. That was an unexpected time for sure. And since then, I’ve mostly worked for myself, which offers flexibility, yes, but also a potentially paralyzing amount of uncertainty. Here’s how I’ve learned to live in the unknown without letting it drive me crazy.
Ground Yourself in the Present
When your future is uncertain — you don’t know how your bills are going to be paid, you don’t know if your relationship is going to work out, you don’t know how an important conversation will go — I find it’s helpful to focus on the here and now. Ground yourself in your five senses: what you can see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. Take a deep breath. And another.
Ask yourself if in this very moment you are safe. Have clothes to wear. Food to eat. Somewhere to live. Right now, are you okay? Maybe not ecstatic with how things are going, but okay. The answer is almost always yes. Take another deep breath and let it out through your mouth. Then close your eyes and repeat to yourself, “All is well. All is well. All is well,” until you feel calmer.
It doesn’t change your circumstance, but it changes how you feel in that moment. And in my experience, this tends to keep you from completely spinning out. So that’s good.
Do Something Small
What is something you CAN do right now? Complete a homework assignment? Start some laundry? Do it.
When bigger parts of our lives are uncertain, we tend to obsess about them and forget that there are plenty of things still in our control. So start doing them and try to focus on being present in the moment while you do. If nothing else, you’ll check off a bunch of random tasks on your to-do list.
And in a bigger sense, it puts you back in the driver’s seat of your life, reminding you that you aren’t powerless about everything. There’s always something you can do, no matter how small. It’s the showing up in the little things that gets you through until the bigger things sort themselves out.
Get Comfortable with Discomfort
I am sorry to have to tell you that life frequently interferes with your plans for it. No one is immune from this. It’s just part of the human experience. I don’t happen to love this part, but here we are.
Buddhist philosophy says that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. This means that pain is par for the course if you’re a living, breathing human. But the degree to which you suffer because of that pain, in part, depends on how much you resist it. Now I’m not going to say you should throw a party when something terrible happens. That’s kind of psychotic. But spending all your mental energy on the why of it all is pointless and will only make you feel worse — it increases your suffering.
Often, there is simply no good reason why things are hard and really important parts of your life are uncertain, unsettled. It just sucks. Acknowledge that, then tell yourself that even though you don’t have all the answers now (spoiler alert: you’ll never have all the answers), you will be okay. You will get through this time. It won’t always be like this. And you have the resources within yourself and around you to tolerate the discomfort of the unknown in the meantime.
Take Advantage of the Down Time
I have frequently found myself in between work projects, looking for jobs … basically having some (albeit unwelcome) free time. Once you’ve done all you can reasonably do for a situation, take advantage of the down time and do some of the things you never have time or energy to.
Read that book. Take walks. Hang out with friends. Bake cookies. Get quiet and really listen to what your soul needs right now, then write it down.
View this in-between time as a gift and use it to fill up your tanks in whatever way feels good to you.
Remember, It Won’t Last Forever
When you’re living in uncertainty, it honestly does feel like life is always going to be this way, but the truth is, it won’t. The one constant of life is change, which means that the thing you’re uncertain about now, at some point will come into focus. You’ll have an answer. You’ll know what happens next.
This is just a moment in time. A hard moment. Uncomfortable for sure, but it is not a permanent state of being. I promise.
Hold on to that hope because it’s real. And until it comes, surround yourself with love and support and little things that make you happy.
I know you can do this because I’ve done it a million times and I’m still here and, as annoying as it is to say, I truly am stronger because of it (though I really do wish growth and strength didn’t hurt so damn much). I’m in your corner, cheering you on. You’ve got this.
Love,
Mommy
What’s Giving Me Life
British crime shows on Netflix.
I seem to have gone down a rabbit hole of random British limited series mysteries and I’m not mad about it.
It started with Michelle Dockery and Sienna Miller in Anatomy of a Scandal, which I binged as fast as I could. It was SO good it and I love the fact that they seem to have teed it up for a sequel.
Then Netflix suggested I watch Collateral with Carey Mulligan as a police detective (who oddly sounds just like Lady Mary herself, Michelle Dockery). I got sucked into the twists and turns of the storyline. Definitely recommend.
Next up was The Stranger with Hannah John-Kame, who I knew I’ve seen before but couldn’t place until I looked her up. She was the girl in Ant-Man and the Wasp who was hit by radioactive material or whatever and is cellularly pulled apart and put back together at random at all the time. Anyway, in this show, she is the stranger in the title who randomly shows up in people’s lives, drops a truth bomb on them about something terrible they or a loved one did, then either bolts or tries to extort money out of them to keep it quiet. It’s a wild ride and I was here for it.
That’s it for this week!