How I’m Learning to Navigate Uncertainty

My path forward has usually been pretty clear. I’ve typically put a lot of forethought and planning into decisions like which country to move to, what job to take, and what development to invest in.

But last December that all changed.

Three days before Christmas I boarded a plane, not knowing when – or if – I’d ever return to New Zealand. This was more than just pandemic-related travel nerves. The future I had envisioned for myself has been irrevocably shaken. And as a result, I continue to feel adrift as I grapple with grief, uncertainty and a loss of that clear path forward.

I’m going through a major transition right now. It doesn’t feel comfortable. But I know that’s normal and it’s okay.

I wanted to share with you this latest chapter in my own personal journey of growth and development because there are lessons I’m learning – and as a leadership coach, I hope my situation can spark some useful questions and reflections in your own life, especially for those times when you feel the rug has been pulled out from beneath you. 

To give you some context, I have lived in New Zealand for the past 13 years. I gained citizenship in 2017 and planned to live there for the rest of my life. My partner is from Austria, and New Zealand is one of the few places in the world we can both legally live and work. We have been looking to buy our first house together for the last three to four years.

Unfortunately, skyrocketing house prices meant no amount of hard work or attempts to save a big enough deposit was enough for us to succeed with our offers. Time after time we were left empty handed. The continual house hunt and ongoing failure was demoralizing and emotionally exhausting. 

My partner and I had been searching for a house that could accommodate us, as well as my parents, since I had planned to bring them over from the United States to live the rest of their retirement years with us in New Zealand. 

Which brings me to my dad. 

On 29th November last year he went into hospital in Boston to undergo a significant surgery. He was on the operating table all day and had multiple blood transfusions. 

Several years prior, he had had another major surgery and my mother later confessed to me (in 2019) how alone and scared she’d felt. At the time I told her ‘don’t worry, you never have to go through that alone again. I can be anywhere in the world within 24 hours’.

Of course, the world changed a lot in those intervening years thanks to COVID-19. So when my mum asked me to fly over in November 2021 to be with her for the surgery, I felt torn.  I’d made her a promise, and what if this was my last chance to see my dad?  But also, Auckland was in the middle of a Level 4 lockdown and New Zealand’s borders were closed.  If I left, when could I get back in?

Fortunately, my brother was able to make arrangements to travel to the hospital to be with my mom on surgery day.  But in those initial post-op days things didn’t look good. My father didn’t regain consciousness immediately and we honestly thought we might lose him. I remember thinking ‘oh my goodness. If I actually am someone who values relationships, what am I doing so far away? Why am I not with them?’

I knew I would regret not being there for my family through this, so even though there was a backlog of tens of thousands of people trying to purchase the limited but mandatory Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) spots to enter New Zealand, I booked my one-way flight out of the country.

Not knowing when I’d be able to return, my partner and I made the difficult choice to give up the apartment we had been renting in Auckland. He took our cat (that we had adopted six months earlier from the SPCA) and flew to Austria to stay with his family, while I flew to New Hampshire to be with mine.

We don’t know exactly when we will be reunited, or when or where we will find our home together, but we didn’t see a path forward that justified not being with our families at this point in time. So we made the decision to step into the unknown and trust we would figure it out from there. 

Walking back into my childhood home has been disorientating to say the least. I left New Zealand just as summer was kicking off, to arrive in the northeastern US where there’s snow on the ground and temperatures are below freezing. I left this home when I was 18 to go to university and so I regularly catch myself wondering ‘wait, where am I right now? What time zone is this? What life am I living?’

I’m so thankful that my father is recovering, but it’s also been heartbreaking to witness the ongoing pain he experiences as well as his loss of mobility. He was always such a strong man, used to tackling big physical jobs during his career as an arborist and carrying out acts of service for others to communicate his love. His limitations are closing in, and he now needs assistance to do simple things like getting dressed. 

It’s humiliating and frustrating for him to feel like his body’s failing or betraying him, and he communicates how worthless he feels because he’s not contributing physically to doing things around the house. To some degree I feel like all my personal development and coaching work has helped prepare me for this point – where I can now support him to practice self-compassion, and hopefully help expand his mindset to see his value and contribution lies way beyond just what he does.  In some ways, this is not so different from the work I do coaching leaders to recognize the importance of balancing the Doing & Being polarity of leadership.

I recognize this is also a special growth opportunity for me. A chance to benchmark my own development. I’m around family dynamics that used to trigger uncontrollable reactions in me but I’ve discovered how much more agile I am now; I have more options in how I choose to respond and interact in those situations. 

It's also been interesting to reflect through the lens I have now on who I’ve been and become, my shadows and behavior patterns. I observe my mom taking so much on herself and wanting to control things. I’ve realized that’s where I absorbed the belief that hard work and independence were the prerequisites for love, acceptance, and worthiness and consequently why it’s always been so hard for me to ask for help. She expertly role models that ‘suck it up and do it yourself’ mentality. And my dad is always so quick to apologize for being a bother. Is that where I inherited the strong urge to be amenable to other people? 

While I’ve been uprooted, temporarily separated from my partner, and busy shoveling snow and supporting my father’s recovery these past months, I have had at least one constant in my life – my business. I’m privileged to be able to continue to work remotely with my coaching clients in New Zealand and around the world (who have been incredibly understanding during my transition) and am fully committed to doing so. It’s been a key anchor I can hang on to. I am so grateful to my fellow Spring Leadership colleagues and network of amazing business partners for supporting me, and I’m learning to lean on them more and delegate where I need to. 

In Auckland my life was optimized for work. I had few distractions and could easily flex to work 10 or 12-hour days when needed. But my circumstances have changed. So I’m coaching myself to recognize that my capacity has changed also. In addition to acknowledging my new reality, I’m trying to give myself the grace to adjust to my new context and accept that what I am doing day-to-day is enough. This is a wonderful opportunity for me to grow and practice relinquishing more control and trusting others to help. 

I’m also practicing sitting with my feelings, being compassionate and reminding myself that it’s okay to not feel comfortable. It’s very hard for me to let go of the vision I’d had for my future in New Zealand. And especially to do that so quickly, without having an alternative plan in place. 

I don't know what I'm looking forward to right now but I do know this point in time feels very developmental for me.  I'm normally a very driven, goal and future-oriented person. Right now I'm being tested to stay in the present, allow things to unfold, and just be with the discomfort of the uncertainty. And I think there is a lot of learning in there for any leader who is faced with uncertainty about the future of their organization.

We collectively need to recognize that it's not going to feel good all the time and allow ourselves space to process that discomfort and to support each other, not just in achieving our KPIs or OKRs but on our journeys of personal transformation. I often hear leaders and executives, when they’re trying to make a change in their organization, lamenting how many people seem to resist it. ‘Why don’t they just get on board with the change?’ But especially when people feel that change has happened to them – rather than is a choice they’ve made, it’s incredibly hard.  

The situation with my father, and leaving New Zealand in such a hurry, has given me a first-hand taste of how tough it can be when you don’t have clarity, and what it’s like to let go of something that feels certain. The positive side is I have even more empathy for my clients experiencing similar things. And I am gaining plenty of insight on how to not only cope but grow through the uncertainty and discomfort.

For me, maintaining and asking for support from personal one-on-one connections has been important. I regularly talk to my close friends and colleagues. I’ve gotten so many insights from being able to share honestly and verbally articulate my thoughts and feelings. Having them be with me (even remotely) and reflect back to me what they’re sensing does wonders for the soul. 

I’m very aware that despite feeling uncomfortable, I’m still an incredibly fortunate person. My father’s recovering, I have a roof over my head, an incredibly supportive partner, and work that I love. I asked one of my friends why he thought I was feeling so much grief and sadness when I’m so lucky in so many ways? His response was that ‘maybe you don’t need to make sense of this right now. Maybe you just need to feel it.’

His perspective resonated with me. So I surrendered to the urge to cry and just let those feelings flow through me. It helped me to process a little bit more and shining a light on my shadows and befriending my fallback is helping me come into a different relationship with myself. 

I’ve also tried to be very deliberate about maintaining some activities that are important to me, like running – even if the ice and snow make that incredibly tricky! I am working on adjusting my personal productivity standards in recognition of my current context and capacity.  And I’m regularly reflecting and journaling as well as trying to be mindful of the difference between self-soothing and self-numbing as I regulate my discomfort.

I’m allowing myself space to not be okay. Reminding myself I don’t have to rush to change or control it. Sometimes things are tough. I know it’s a phase and it won’t last forever. But it’s important to give yourself the grace and space to go on that journey at your own pace.  By giving yourself that gift, how might you transform?  Who might you become?

I have experienced plenty of uncomfortable situations before and know that it is a time in which we can grow. Leaning into your growth-edge and embracing the discomfort – which people often refer to as ‘stepping outside of your comfort zone’ – is a key step in the personal development process, in addition to surrounding yourself with support systems that provide “good company” for the developmental journey, a willingness to experiment, and creating space for ongoing self-reflection.

Having read this far, I’d like to invite you to take a moment and ponder this: how have you personally grown or confronted your own need to change over the past year? In what ways have you resisted? In what ways have you adapted to changes brought about by COVID, new technology or climate change for example? 

Also, what have you been unwilling to feel? 

There is no one “right” path in leadership or life; rather a multitude of different possibilities each with their own benefits and drawbacks.  What subjects you choose to study, what career moves you make, where you choose to live, how you pitch your idea to the board… It’s useful when making complex decisions such as these to adopt a mindset of “experiment and learn”.  You can try something and learn from it.  And you can change your mind.  

I don’t yet know how my current story or situation will unfold, or where I will end up settling next. But isn’t that true of most things in life? While coming up with a plan with milestones and timeframes might give me the illusion of certainty and bring me some temporary relief right now, I do sense this experience is growing me and I’m meant to be in this uncertain “not knowing” space – as uncomfortable as it is – for a while longer yet.

One of the gifts of being a leadership coach in today’s highly mobile and connected world, is that I can continue to support my clients wherever they or I may be. I know the lessons I am learning on a personal, human level will only deepen my professional contributions and empathy with others. And I look forward to sharing these growth experiences and insights one-on-one with you in future.