Embrace uncertainty. Some of the most beautiful chapters in your life don’t have a title until much later." - Bob Goff

Have you ever found yourself in a place or a season of change that left you with more questions than answers? How do you navigate through the uncertainty when you just don’t know what the future holds?

I’m currently finding myself in this exact situation. While everyone else is busy chasing their new year resolutions and seems to have their 2019 plan of attack perfectly mapped out, my world has been turned upside down.

Long story short, but essentially Phil’s and my Australian visa runs out on the 15thof March and we don’t have a backup plan. Our initial hope was for me to get sponsored through my work, but that fell through as my current job in a brand entertainment/social agency isn’t relevant enough to my Bachelor studies. I found out the week before the Christmas holidays, and ever since I’ve been in literal panic mode. We have talked to and met with multiple lawyers, thought through every single option, drawn up pro and con lists for each scenario…

Major life decisions to be made

I’m just not ready to leave Australia! We came here almost three years ago on a complete hunch, with no job, no real plan and only one person we knew. Since then, Australia has become home, and I’ve honestly never felt more ME anywhere in the world. With all the moving around that I’ve done, this is the first time I feel like I’ve truly found “my place”. The thought of leaving Australia makes me want to ugly cry. And I have, I’ve done lots of crying the last few weeks actually. I’m not sleeping well, I’m having all these crazy dreams and my eating was all over the place for a little while too. I feel lost, confused and honestly just really exhausted. Definitely not how I envisioned 2019 to start off. Blaaah. 

Conversations with Phil have been intense, and the Skye conversations with my parents even more full on. Questions go like this: What do you want to do? Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Are you sure this is the right thing? And all I want to do is scream I DON’T KNOW from the top of my lungs.

Technically the options are endless – keep trying different ways to get sponsored, Phil extends his student visa by studying another semester, I do a Masters (only a casual unexpected 90k expense, no biggie), or we could move anywhere in the world! But all of these options leave me feeling anxious and uncertain. Uncertainty/anxietyàFear àLack of action. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s been paralyzed by this predicament. It’s emotionally, mentally and spiritually draining. At the moment I wake up every morning consumed with worries and an immense sense of pressure and urgency. Exactly how I didn’t want to feel coming into 2019.

I think as a generation, we’ve got this invisible pressure on us to identify e-x-a-c-t-l-y what we want do with our lives and to then pursue those goals with no mess ups along the way. According to my parents, I already effed up once. I did a Bachelor at the worlds most prestigious and expensive Hospitality Management university in the world, and once finished I decided I didn’t like hospitality and never wanted to work in the field. I don’t blame them for being concerned about my sense of judgment; at this point I don’t even know if I can trust my decision-making.

I’m not going to lie, this whole situation has really screwed with my mind and it’s been an incredible difficult start to the year for me…I kind of just accepted that for the next two months I’ll be living in fear and just be miserable. Because, how else could I be?

Then, the other day, I saw a quote from Mastin Kipp that really struck me:

"The quality of your life is directly related to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with." 

Becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable

I could go through life for the next two months completely loosing my shit over all of this. But imagine if I ended up having to leave Australia, and that’s how I chose to spend my last valuable moments? I’d forever regret that. I’ve decided that I need to level up and work through this whole situation. A mindful approach is just what the spiritual doctor ordered. And so, I am trying to become comfortable with the uncertainty. At the end of the day, there is no adventure in certainty amiright.  How boring would it be if our lives were tightly scripted according to a master plan?!

I am allowing myself the patience to marinate on these unsolved questions and to sit in the unknown-ness of it all. I am trying to take small steps, tiny actions that will help me realize that things are easier than the seemed like from a distance. And I am trying to find certainty in sticking to my daily practices – training, eating well, meditating (I’ve been meditating daily which is a breakthrough for me) and staying open-minded and vulnerable in all conversations with Phil, family and friends. It’s a conscious effort I’m making in order to merge my head and my heart, so I can move through this decision more aligned and in tune with my intuition. 

At the end of the day, I just have to trust that all will work out all right. All I can do now is trust my intuition, trust in my relationship with Phil, and trust that we will be just fine no matter what we decide. I’m I’ll be sure to keep you posted on what’s going on. One of my goals for 2019 is to share quick and candid thoughts on my blog, so I hope you enjoy this format of honest mind dumps.

If any of the above is hitting home with you, just know I'm here in it with you too. 

Stef x