How to Ride the Waves of Uncertainty
Joe Weisenthal, executive director of Business Insider magazine, wrote last September that “the latest data makes it clear that across the Eurozone, a comeback is happening”. However, many people are still struggling to recover from the worst financial downturn in several generations; a crisis which has left behind insecurities in those who found themselves on the sidelines these past few years.
How does someone feel after having lost everything he/she worked hard for years to achieve? While the range of emotions we might experience will be closer to anger and fear than joy and happiness, the best way to stay motivated is to manage to keep trust in stock.
We can deny the uncomfortable situation, resist change, go on with life as if nothing has happened and deal with the consequences later. Or we can rise to the occasion and accept the reality of change. Each crisis is an opportunity to undertake a powerful journey of self-discovery and personal growth.
As the writer John Gardner once wrote, “
Life isn’t a train ride where you choose your destination, pay your fare and settle back for a nap. It’s a cycle ride over uncertain terrain with you in the driver seat, constantly correcting your balance and determining the direction of progress.”
Our ability to successfully navigate through insecurity depends on many factors, the most important of which is trust. When we feel that our world is going haywire, our trust in ourselves is being heavily solicited. To be able to really leverage trust, we need to reassess our understanding of what trust really is. Without trust in ourselves, today’s challenges will be close to impossible to overcome
The dictionary defines trust as ‘having confidence in the character, ability, strength or truth of someone or something’. In common usage, the word trust refers to relying on someone or something for a future action. But what do we mean by trust and how can it help us overcome life’s challenges?
The first type of trust we use in our daily lives is called
Transactional Trust. Based on mutual self-interest, Transactional Trust involves acting according to common agreement. This type of trust is the backbone of our personal and professional lives. For example, every company’s success is dependent on how much it can trust its employees and to what extent its employees trust its management.
The second type of trust,
Inner Trust, is not based on the future performance of another but rather upon how we can live in the present moment and not worry about the outcome. It is about trusting our ability to find our way through life’s challenges even when we are feeling confused and insecure. We experience inner trust when we live in our own hearts and minds right now without the interference of the past or the future. Inner trust is about knowing that life will unfold the way it supposed to and being at peace with the result.
We start this journey by reconciling both transactional and inner trust within our lives, by clarifying what is important to us, be it our family, our health, the purpose of our lives and the kind of life we want to live, and having faith in our inner self to orient us in the right direction.
Once we do that, we can ride the waves of uncertainty with more confidence in ourselves and in our ability to overcome the temporary roadblocks the global economy crisis has created.
