The power of uncertainty is severely underrated. Don’t get me wrong, I still absolutely hate the feeling in a knee-jerk kind of way, but after that initial feeling, I recognize that this means that things aren’t as they’ve always been. That change is good.
There’s this exercise I do with singers. They sing the song and I begin to call out different emotions to portray different characters and you know what happens? No matter how many times they’ve practiced the song, no matter if it’s been years, they begin to forget the lyrics. They mess them up, they reverse them, and they will sometimes stand still in horror as entire passages are lost to them. Why?
Because they know the song through the way they’ve always performed the song. It’s rote. It’s dead and unmoving.
What this exercise does is breathe a different perspective into the song. It shakes them from the same old same old. And they laugh, they get frustrated, they’re shocked at their responses, and the song changes. It changes because of the uncertainty. It morphs. It takes them to a new level. Sometimes it doesn’t do these drastic things. A sad song will still be sad, but sadness is more than always feeling sad, it’s this complex thing filled with moments of anger, of determination, of joy.
Sometimes we get caught up in the same old same old, we actually avoid the feeling of uncertainty because it’s scary when what we should be doing is running towards it. Seeking it out and challenging ourselves to test our own ideologies. Through this, we begin to grow and sometimes at astounding rates.
Seek challenges. Push yourself into the uncomfortable because in that moment you are growing.