Do You Think You’re the Only One Feeling Uncertain? Though we tend not to talk about it in this way – COVID-19 changed the world. Here we are - a few years after the pinnacle of the crisis - and find ourselves left with tons of paradoxes. For every good thing learned in the pandemic, a bad thing was learned, too. Rather than address these things and use this as a growth opportunity, more often than not attempts are made to go back to how it was before. That has caused a largely ignored and unaddressed mental health crisis for nearly everyone. That’s why – more likely than not – you’re feeling uncertain. You are utterly not alone I had high hopes that maybe, just maybe, we’d emerge on the other side of the pandemic with a new sense of ourselves. We’d all have a better sense of self, of being self-empowered, and of having control of our life experiences. Choosing to quarantine ourselves, maintain social distance, and masking would open us to seeing how interconnected we all are. Maybe I’m naïve, and maybe that was overly optimistic. But I’d thought we might just learn a thing or two we could carry forward. When you are bombarded with conflicting info you can’t help but feel uncertain Extremism was spotlighted during and immediately after the pandemic. Good and bad, extremes were highlighted as if they were directly in front of us all, in ways humanity has never experienced before. Never before have we as a society had the technology for instant information. The immediacy of news and information gets used and abused to spread messages of fear, hate, distrust, and other negative emotions to make you and me uncertain. When you get uncertain information poured over you like a never-ending waterfall, feeling uncertain will take root in your head, heart, and soul. Why is nobody talking about this? Because uncertainty also says that talking about this could make you an outcast, pariah, or in some other way shunned. Active conscious awareness Everyone has at least passive beliefs, values, and habits. These exist in our subconscious minds. Many are rote, routine, or just accepted by us as being what’s what. However, everyone also has a conscious mind. That is where you can be actively aware of the world around you, where you are, who is with you, what you are taking in, and so on. But more importantly, your active conscious awareness makes you aware of yourself. You are worthy and deserving of making choices and decisions that alleviate feeling uncertain. This week’s Applied Guidance for Mindfulness Tool: This exercise should create mindful certainty in this moment. Look around you. Choose an object you can reach to, take hold of, and look closely at. Do that. Look at the object and really observe it. Examine, study, notice its imperfections, nuances, and whatever else you can. Does the object cause you any thoughts or feelings? If so – what are they? Don’t overthink this – be here, present, and in the now with your thoughts. Pause. Consider the object. Note how you can be certain that it is, that it’s in your hand. The physical presence of the object, here and now, is a certain thing. Write down your final thoughts and feelings about this. What and how it makes you think and feel related to the certainty of its existence and being. See if you can expand that out to other parts of your life. Author Website Email Instagram Facebook LinkedIn TikTok Blogs: titaniumdon.com and mjblehart.medium.com Cover artist Fe Mahoney: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TaliasInspirations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices