Finding Stability When Life Feels Uncertain and Chaotic

Now that the all-consuming process of introducing Comeback Boot Camp to the world is behind me, I’ve been able to layer some personal time back into my life, and I’ve been using some of it to binge-watch a British science show.

I saw an episode last week about chaos theory. If you aren’t familiar, it’s an area of study which has revealed that, among other things, even in situations where we know and account for all variables, random outcomes still occur. That’s pretty freaky.

But then I remember how many times I’ve planned for the future, foreseen potential problems and planned for those, too, only to have things work out differently than any of the 14 scenarios I’d come up with. This has happened to you, too, right?

Life is chaotic, and it’s good to get comfortable with our lack of control.

At the same time, that doesn’t mean that there’s no point in trying, or that meaning can’t be revealed within it.

Finding Meaning in Life Transitions

If you caught my recent series of training videos on resilience and post-traumatic growth, you know that, actually, it’s when the details of our life seem most up in the air that we get our best glimpse of the bedrock beneath them.

By which I mean, the values, qualities, and feelings which are consistent over the course of our lives. The ones that energize us and fill us with joy when we’re aligned with them, and despair when we aren’t.

This idea, of order beneath a chaotic surface, is something scientists also find in nature.

For example, consider how trees, blood vessels, and rivers randomly—yet similarly and reliably—branch out into ever-thinner “fractals” as they grow and flow. And the way the simple process of wind blowing across sand produces graceful ripples and dunes.

Order emerges from chaos all the time. We can trust that; we can find meaning in it. And at the same time, here’s where we come full circle: we don’t need to just be passive observers in our lives.

Taking Control of the Things We Can

We do have some say in how those dunes form, and which section of the tree we end up in as we climb. We just can’t get attached to those outcomes or drive ourselves nuts by assuming that we have more control than we do.

We have to stay present with the process and the human-scale influence we do have.

Sand dunes aren’t forced or planned to look the way they do. Their beauty arises naturally when the intrinsic properties of the sand and wind are simply left to interact.

Similarly, we grow best when we just get competing short-term interests out of our way, and allow what’s deeply and intrinsically true for us to inspire our choices consistently, over the long haul. 

One choice and one moment at a time, your life will coalesce as a monument to your best, most authentic self.

So, consider what can you say “yes” to today, that would expand your comfort zone a bit, that you might have said “no” to yesterday out of fear or laziness, and that you’ll be proud of tomorrow.

Want to start finding solid ground, and putting those worries into perspective right now? Check out my FREE Setback Survival Pack download and you’ll be feeling better in minutes.