EP27 The Messy Middle (#1) : What To Do When Life Feels Uncertain
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[00:00:00] You're like the stars in outer space. Something about you radiates. And it feels so nice, and it feels so nice, yeah
Welcome back everyone to the Starlit Success Podcast. I am your host as always, Jessica Gaines.
Okay, so our last miniseries was all about some of the most life-changing, or I would say most impactful lessons that I've learned on this journey of self-discovery, on this journey of, self-development. But after going through that miniseries, you know, I thought to myself, " I'm not done learning.
I haven't completed all of my lessons." And if you think about it, I mean, do we ever? Are we ever done learning in life? I mean, even if you take some of the most successful, wealthy, famous people, I don't think anyone is ever done learning lessons.
You know, that's kind of part of this whole game of life is learning and, and growing and facing our own [00:01:00] challenges and kind of getting to the next level. So that's kind of what inspired this miniseries, and I'm titling this The Messy Middle, because I feel like sometimes I might come across as though I've learned this and I wanna teach you.
But I wanna be clear that I am still learning every day. I'm still encountering my own challenges every day.
, Because I mean, we're all human, right? None of us are perfect. None of us are experts.
And I still have a hard time with things. And right now our family is in the middle of a major relocation from Wisconsin all the way down to sunny Florida. As you can imagine, it's a lot to deal with You know, it's not like we're just moving from one city to another. We've done that before. We've lived in southeastern Wisconsin our entire lives, but we've never made this big of a move before. I mean, this is a huge transition for us, And while I'm super excited about it, it presents a [00:02:00] lot, a lot of unknown. And honestly, it brings up a lot of I don't wanna say negative, but it brings up a lot of uneasy feelings like worry or fear, um, anxiety just thinking about everything. they're just uncomfortable. They're, they don't feel good
You know, I don't, I don't know how everything is gonna come together. I don't know how everything's gonna play out.
And I feel like everyone has gone through this. Everyone who's experienced some major transition in their life where it's felt a little scary, where you weren't really sure what was gonna come next, whether that is an end of a relationship or a major career change or having a baby or, um, sending your kid off to college, you know, major move like myself. and honestly, sometimes it's all you think about, right? You're always thinking about how everything is gonna play out, how things are gonna unfold for you.
It's not comfortable to not know what comes next.
So in today's episode, I wanna talk about why the unknown feels so scary [00:03:00] why our minds react the way they do
and some of the lessons that I'm learning in real time as I navigate this major transition myself
so the problem I'm facing now, you'd think I'd learned this already, 'cause I actually went through something similar about seven years ago. So when we sold our last house before we moved here, we lived with my parents for about seven weeks or so, and we were actively looking for a new home.
The reason we decided to live with them was because then we could be a little bit more picky. We could find something that we really, really wanted, and we wouldn't be pressured into buying something just because we, we had to make it fit as far as the, the timing was concerned.
So we moved in with my parents, and I'd say we looked at probably, I don't know, five to 10 houses in the first couple weeks, and we weren't finding anything. We weren't finding anything that we really fell in love with. And I'd say after a couple weeks, I just started feeling, uh, honestly a little depressed, and my mom did not understand it.
She's like, "You know, you have a roof over your head. You're not really paying any major bills right now. [00:04:00] Why are you upset?" , Why are you feeling uneasy?" And at the time I couldn't really explain it, but now being in that same feeling again, it's because you don't know what's next.
You don't know where your life is gonna be a few months from now. So at that time, we weren't moving across the country, but it was the end of the school year, and by not knowing where we were gonna live, not only did we not know, what neighborhood we'd be in or whatever, I didn't know where my kids were gonna go to school.
And honestly, as a mom, I think that is what affected me the most. Like, I had no idea what their future was gonna look like either, and I felt responsible for that. So it just felt like our life was in limbo. Like, everything was just up in the air, and I had no certainty. And if you're someone like me, who I love to plan and just be proactive and always be ahead of things, not knowing what comes next, it's, it makes it really hard to do that
But here we are in a very similar situation, a little [00:05:00] more dramatic, I would say, Obviously a much bigger move from moving, you know, 30 minutes from the city to, I don't know, what is Wisconsin to Florida?
Like 1,500 miles. That's a little scarier. I mean, there's so much right now that I don't know. One of the first things that I didn't know is I didn't know if I was gonna be able to keep my job. As you all know, I still work a nine to five. I do work from home some days, but I go into the office some days, and I didn't know if they were gonna approve me relocating across the country.
So that was a huge question mark. Like, am I even going to be able to keep my job?
So another thing I haven't added is that we plan on living with my parents for the first year.
So they just retired down there. We decided it would make the most sense for us all to live together the first year since we're all kind of figuring out where we wanna end up. And I think emotionally it feels a lot safer to have family very close by, because we're leaving everything that we've ever known.
But are we gonna find a house that works for us? , Is the [00:06:00] layout gonna work? Are we gonna be happy there?
on top of that, we decided not to sell our Wisconsin home. We decided to rent it out. So there's that. Are we gonna find a good tenant? are we gonna find someone who is gonna love our house as much as we do?
is Eddie gonna be able to find a job? Not only just a job, but a job that, you know, pays well, that he likes. . Is Zanden gonna like his new school? Is she even gonna like college? There's just, there's just so much that we don't know, You know, these are all really unsettling feelings to not know what's gonna happen or how it's gonna turn out. And when that happens, your mind just tends to assume the worst
I feel like when you have so much unknown and you have all of these question marks just kind of circling your head, your mind just starts to wander
And unfortunately, sometimes it starts imagining all the ways that things can go wrong
You know, what if my job doesn't approve me to relocate to Florida? What if we don't find the perfect house? What if we don't find the [00:07:00] perfect tenant before we have to move and we have to settle? What if Zanden doesn't like his new school?
What if we uproot our whole freaking life and it doesn't turn out how we planned? You know? You just think, " What if this? What if that?" And it's all usually bad. You always imagine the worst-case scenario
it almost feels like you're being rerouted in mid-flight. , And the reason I'm gonna use this analogy is because my friend was just sharing a story, so I'm gonna steal her story. She was just coming back from Miami back to Wisconsin, and in the middle of their flight, the pilot announced that they were gonna have to be rerouted because of weather or, or whatever reason.
And as part of that rerouting, they were going to just kind of fly in circles because of weather. I- don't ask me why they were doing this. So they flew in the air in circles for hours.
That's kind of a scary feeling if you think about it. So you're up in the air, you don't know when you're gonna land. You don't even know [00:08:00] if you're gonna land back at home where you're supposed to land. You might be rerouted to another airport. Then you're just flying in circles for hours, so you're up in the air, you're still on airplane mode.
You don't have any contact with the outside world, so you can't even text your family to tell them what's going on, So now they might be worried about you because they don't have any contact. They don't see that you've landed yet.
And just the not knowing when you're gonna land,
You don't know if you're gonna even land at your home airport, and then if you can't land there, if you have to land somewhere else, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna have to stay overnight? Are you gonna have to book a hotel?
There's just so much unknown, and then you just have to trust the pilot in the meantime. You just have to hope that he's gonna get you down safely.
So you don't know how any of it is gonna turn out, you just, you just have to trust that it will. And that's what living in the unknown feels like. It just feels like you don't have control over anything. You don't know how everything's gonna unfold. You don't know how the story ends
And that's when I started thinking about why this feels [00:09:00] so different from some of the other scary things that I've done in my life
Because I mean, this podcast alone completely pushed me out of my comfort zone,
but then I realized, you know, what we're doing with this whole relocation, I feel like it's a lot different than just getting out of your comfort zone. Because getting out of your comfort zone is more so you're trying something new, you're trying something challenging, but overall it has somewhat of a predictable result
so let's say maybe starting a new job that you've never done before, or an industry that you've never been in before. Overall, it, it can be a little scary. It's a completely new environment. It's all new people. But at the end of the day, , you know you're gonna have an interview, you know you're gonna learn a bunch of new software.
But in the end, you know how it will turn out. You know you will be working at this new company
You have a, a general idea of what it is that you signed up for
whereas the unknown is more so something that you have no idea how it will unfold
It, it almost kind of feels like you're walking [00:10:00] blindly
I think that's what's so difficult about the unknown. It's that we tend to think that the uncertainty aspect of it is the problem
We believe that having any kind of uncertainty means that we're not safe
We need to know, especially if you're like me, we need to know how everything plays out in order for us to feel okay. At least I do. I love to have a good plan. I wanna know what's coming next. I'm not a real big fan of surprises. I just like to be in the right head space. I like to have all my little duckies in a row.
I don't like to be caught off guard, and that's what this unknown feels like. It feels like I don't know what's coming next
Sometimes when we don't know what's coming next, we start to question ourselves
What if we made the wrong decision? Should we move forward with this? It starts to feel like
It's not meant for you.
Because a lot of our fear comes from the feeling of what might or [00:11:00] what might not happen
But what I find interesting is that is a completely normal response
Your nervous system wants certainty. It wants to feel safe
So sometimes we might think that, "Oh my God, I'm like going crazy," but you're not crazy. You're just human
, Our brains are wired for survival. They're designed to scan for danger, and when you don't know what's gonna happen next, when you're feeling super uneasy and uncertain, your brain is gonna interpret that as danger
' Cause back in the caveman days, uncertainty meant risk. It meant you were putting yourself at risk.
, But now in today's day and age, having some uncertainty could just be a sign of growth
And honestly, having some uncertainty is part of what makes life interesting. Like, if everything was predictable every single day, how boring would that be?
or even let's say you went to see a movie, but you knew [00:12:00] exactly how it ended. It's not as entertaining if you know how it ends. That's why they call them spoiler alerts. there's that sense of what happens next, right? That keeps us interested. It keeps things exciting
Sometimes we just have to trust and surrender. We just have to believe that it's all gonna work out. I've been having to tell myself this every day
This is something I'm struggling with right now. You know, all of these open-ended questions and, and not knowing how things are gonna play out. I just have to keep reminding myself that you just have to trust, you just have to surrender and have faith that you're making the right decision, and everything is gonna turn out the way that it's supposed to.
So I look at it from the lens of whatever desire that you have, whatever major manifestation that you're trying to make in your life, whether that's a big move like us, or if it's a major career change, or if it is a new [00:13:00] relationship, whatever it is, as long as you are clear on what you want and you're taking the necessary action to get it, you just have to trust that it's gonna work out.
So the way I like to look at it is it's almost like placing an order with Amazon. So your, your desire, whatever, we're gonna say that that's the order that you're placing with the universe. So if you place an order with Amazon, you don't question whether it's gonna come. You don't question if it's gonna be exactly what you ordered. You find what you want, you push the order button, add to cart, whatever, place the order, and you wait, and that's it.
You just know that you placed it, and it's gonna show up, right?
Sometimes we can treat what we want in life as though we need to control every single step, and that's not how it works. Sometimes life requires the same amount of trust that you give Amazon to deliver your order, or the trust that you give a pilot to get you, on your flight [00:14:00] from point A to point B.
Some things you just don't question. You just know they're gonna happen the way that they should. And your desires and your manifestations, your goals are no different. Sometimes you just have to believe and surrender to the universe, to God, to your higher power, that everything is just gonna unfold the way that it's meant to.
And it's not really up to you to control every minute detail
, Just have faith that things are happening as they should. And another thing that I like to say to myself when I really spiral, " Nobody's gonna die." I always say that, like, "Nobody's gonna die." That's worst case scenario, right? That's not gonna happen in this case, so why am I stressing?
And honestly, that's what I keep trying to remind myself throughout this whole move. That's why I wanted to record this because I still worry, I still stress, I still get in my head, and I have to keep telling myself, "You know what? [00:15:00] Sometimes not everything will go as planned, but it's going to happen the way that it should
And I've survived uncertainty before. My guess is, is you've also probably survived uncertainty before, , and chances are you got through it, and you'll get through it again
So if you are like me and you are living in the unknown right now, here's what I think you should do. And this is something that, again, I have to do myself. This is almost therapy, like, helping others go through the thing that I'm going through So the first thing is, what are you catastrophizing?
What are you what-iffing to the point that it's like absolutely worst-case scenario? What if this? What if this? You know
Identify that first
So I would like to challenge you and flip that a little bit. Instead of saying, "What if worst case scenario?"
What if best case scenario? What if it all works out better than you even imagined
You can do both. You can use the same amount of energy to imagine [00:16:00] the worst-case scenario as you can to use the same energy to imagine the best-case scenario. So either way, you're making it up in your mind. No matter what you're doing, you're imagining it. So why not imagine the best? Why not imagine it being fun and happy and exciting and all of the good feelings that you want rather than imagining all of the things that you don't want?
I have to catch myself all the time. Like, what if he doesn't find a job that he likes? What if he finds a job even better? What if he finds a job making even more money than he's making now? What if he finds a job that he likes even more than the one he has now? What if we find a house that's even better than we pictured?
What if Zanden likes his new school even more than the one that he likes now? I just have to keep reminding myself to use the same energy to picture all of the best case scenarios
Also, stop trying to figure out your entire future. Stop trying to figure out how everything plays out, because there's only so much you can do. There's [00:17:00] only so much that you have control over, and after that, you just have to let it go. You just have to believe that it will happen as it should. And sometimes we think we know best.
We think we know how things should happen, and I'm gonna tell you, we don't. We don't know all of the little strings that the universe or your higher power is pulling. So think about some things that maybe didn't work out as you anticipated or that you wanted,
but later on you realize it was actually for the better. We just have to trust that infinite intelligence knows more than we do
And just focus on the next step. I said you can't control everything, but oftentimes you just know the next thing that you're supposed to do, and all you can do is focus on that. if you're doing your part, you take the next right action, that's it. You can't control what happens after that
after that, the result is out of your hands. you place your order and you [00:18:00] trust it's gonna happen
And finally, remind yourself that uncertainty is only temporary. You're not gonna feel like this all the time. I went through this years ago. I'm going through it now. I know I'm not always gonna feel uncertain. Eventually, everything is going to fall in the right places,
and we'll get past it, and we'll be done with the uncertainty. It's just a small little blip in time when you compare it to the grand scheme of things. So just picture your life after this phase. Picture your life having already gone through it and how peaceful and happy and content you are now, and how certain you are.
So I hope this was helpful. I hope that if you are in a season of the unknown, that you can use these little tools and understand, number one, you're not alone.
You're on the right path no matter what. You know, focus on what you can control, focus on the next step, and just trust that everything is working out as it should. So I wanna thank you for spending your time and energy with me today, and I will see you on the next episode
[00:19:00] So bright
