When the student is ready, the teacher appears and she usually walks into a class already in session.

Today I was contemplating my need for certainty and where that often leads me. I think that’s why I love rituals so much. Just knowing what is going to happen tomorrow morning…what will happen first, second and third, gives me a degree of comfort.

The biggest contradiction in life however, is that we seem to flourish when we learn to live with uncertainty.

We feel more confident perhaps when we know what’s going to happen next, when we know the answers, when we can predict, when we can be right. But sometimes this could lead to us getting way too comfortable with how things are and settling. If we aren’t careful we can get stuck…remain in a rut. Then we settle. For what it’s worth, we become familiar with the terrain. No surprises.

“The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably deal with.”

Tony Robbins

We can’t embrace a new uncertain future when we are fully attached to our old lives or an idea of how we think something should be.

Like my rituals. I’ve followed them blindly for years, without giving much thought as to whether executing these steps every morning was helpful to me in the way I needed them to be helpful. Now I am rethinking my morning, dare I say it…routine. I am only a couple days in so I’m not ready to share – no real results yet, however, I know that I am onto something.

Enter – Dan Rockwell – my teacher for today, whose blog post provided food for thought and added some much needed perspective to my questions around certainty and its opposite.

Abhorrence ignites a desire for change, but it can’t energize forward momentum… Change what you do to change who you become.

DAN ROCKWELL

My takeaway is this: we need to question what we are doing, instead of blindly following a routine, because “we’ve always done it that way”.

Here are a couple questions to reflect on courtesy the Leadership Freak (That’s what Dan calls himself )

1. What are some attitudes or behaviours that consistently bring you to a point of frustration?
2. What drains your energy?
3. What are the time wastes in your life?
4. What actions produce small returns?
5. Is it time to stop petting a pet project?
6. What distracts your from leveraging your strengths?

There will be no growth unless we purposefully abandon those things holding us back.

It’s hard. We need to become more consciously aware – to begin to pay attention and not simply engage in any activity for the sake of that activity. If we are not moving the needle, making progress, or getting the results we are after…doing more of the same is not helpful. Why do we always think that putting in more effort is the answer? Perhaps it’s the way we’ve been schooled, but it’s time to stop…take stock…let go…unlearn…abandon…and grow.