Big Idea #1: Making Love to Uncertainty

With the coming of the new year, take some time to slow down, study yourself and learn to not only face but embrace uncertainty. We’ve got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Your objective for 2014 is to make love to uncertainty! It’s time to jump off the hamster wheel of life, into uncertainty and into possibility. It’s terrifying, liberating and exhilarating all at the same time.

So what can we do when we’re overwhelmed or paralyzed by all the possibilities before us?

Write down this question in your journal:

“What do you feel weighed down by?”

Write down all the things that are weighing you down and reflect on them. Getting these things down on paper will give you the chance to figure out how to work with them and manage them so they don’t weigh you down anymore.

The next question to ask yourself is:

“What would make you feel lighter?”

Really stopping to reflect on this question will help you start to bring the things into your life that lift you up and make you feel light.

Big Idea #2: The 80/20 Principle (Pareto’s Law)

20% of the things you do will account for 80% of the results you’ll get, and 80% of the things you do will account for 20% of the results you’ll get.

So focus on the areas of your life, work, etc. that are going to pay off the most for you- that 20% of input that will give you 80% output. This is a major way to save time and improve your efficiency in all areas of your life. Find a way to outsource that other 80% of work that takes up so much of your time and brings you relatively little results.

This is a great way to reduce stress about the tasks you really don’t want to do, and save you time to do the things you care about. The solution is simply to stop stressing about 80% of tasks, and focus on that golden 20%!

Big Idea #3: Dealing With Things We Can’t Control

Our true freedom in life lies between stimulus and response. We can never control what’s going on outside of us, but we can always control how we respond to those things on the inside.

We call having this an inner locus of control vs. an outer locus of control.

Inner locus of control

I can choose how I respond to any situation. I am a creator, I am empowering myself, and even though I can’t control the situation, I can control my response to it.

Outer locus of control

The world is happening to me, I am a victim to what happens around me and I am very reactive to the outside world.

We can also use some ideas from Chip Connely’s book Emotional Equations to think about dealing with things we can’t control in life. He says that anxiety is what you don’t know multiplied by what you can’t control.

We can also look at this as an equation:

Anxiety = Powerlessness * Uncertainty

Another equation he uses is:

Despair = Suffering – Meaning

When we can add more meaning to our suffering, the despair starts to go away.

HW + Action Steps!

As always, we’d love for you to share your personal favorite takeaways in the private Facebook group.