All of us have had to come face to face with uncertainty in the last few weeks. At every level of our lives—the professional, the personal, the collective—we’ve had to rethink not only how we do things but who we are.

When we first conceived The Intuition Series and its theme of: navigating transitions and learning to trust ourselves, we had no idea a pandemic was headed our way. But that’s the point, right?

Life always exceeds our ability to understand, predict and control it.And yet we spend so much time and energy shoring up our sense of what’s certain. 
What if we were to court uncertainty instead, and develop an ability to not just survive, but thrive there?

We want to share three guidelines that have been helpful to us in this pursuit.

One. Practice transparency, and build trust.

Cooperation trumps competition in uncertain times and requires us to communicate carefully and openly. 

Whether with family members, co-workers, or “that guy on Twitter,” it’s very important that we seek common ground, and show good will in our exchanges and negotiations. 

By being honest about where we’re at, respecting each others’ differences and seeking win-win, or at least fair, solutions, we turn uncertainty into social capital, and possibility. 

Two. Focus on the desired outcome and take baby steps towards it.

At The Postcard Edit, we’re obsessed with intention-setting, and for good reason. It’s all too easy to become stuck in a cycle where we’re simply reacting out of, and to, our anxiety, rather than harnessing creative tension to actualize our goals and dreams.  

It’s easier to complain and criticize from the cheap seats than to create and challenge in the main arena. 

That’s why we like to say, everything begins with an intention.

What’s yours? And what’s one small action that moves you closer to it?

Three. Find the beauty in the breakdown.

Inside every crisis is a chance to reinvent our vision of the world. And finding beauty in the breakdown, whether in the form of a small kindness or a major epiphany, is an important part of imagining a new reality.

As Arundhathi Roy has said about the pandemic, “It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

Whether, in the spirit of The Intuition Series, you’re called to let go, break through or be still, we hope that you will embrace the uncertain, and emerge on the other side with greater wisdom, humor and compassion.