How to take back the wheel when life feels uncertain
The first time I tried surfing, I learned something surprisingly quickly:
"Stability has very little to do with standing still!"
The ocean is constantly moving beneath you.
The board moves.
Your body reacts.
A wave approaches differently than expected.
You finally manage to stand up — and a second later, you are back in the water.
And then you start again.
Paddle out.
Wait.
Try to catch the wave.
Stand up.
Lose your balance.
Fall.
Get back on the board.
Within a surprisingly short amount of time, I moved through excitement, fear, frustration, determination, uncertainty and those tiny moments of triumph when something suddenly worked.
At some point I realized:
Maybe stability isn't about creating circumstances in which nothing can throw us off balance.
Maybe it is about learning how to find our balance again and again.
✨Because life, just like the ocean, doesn't promise us still water.✨
The illusion of stability
We often associate stability with predictability.
A secure job.
A functioning relationship.
Our health.
Financial security.
Familiar routines.
Plans for the future.
And there is nothing wrong with wanting these things.
External stability can give our nervous system a sense of safety and orientation.
But there is a vulnerability hidden within this idea of stability:
"What happens when the conditions change?"
A relationship ends.
Someone we love leaves.
Our health changes.
We lose a job.
A plan doesn't work out.
We have to make a decision without knowing whether it will be the right one.
Sometimes nothing dramatic has even happened yet.
We simply don't know what will happen next.
And uncertainty alone can be enough to make us feel as though we have lost the ground beneath our feet.
We start looking for certainty.
We think more.
We analyze.
We predict.
We try to control circumstances, people or outcomes because somewhere inside us there is a very understandable hope:
"If I can finally know what will happen, I will feel safe again."
But life rarely gives us that guarantee.
Perhaps this is why inner stability cannot only be built upon certainty.
It also has to include our ability to live with uncertainty.
When life becomes unstable
During difficult periods, something interesting can happen to our perception.
Our world becomes smaller.
Attention gravitates toward whatever feels threatening, unresolved or uncertain.
What if this goes wrong?
What if I lose this?
What if I make the wrong decision?
What if things never get better?
Suddenly, the problem seems to occupy the entire horizon.
It can feel as if fear, sadness, frustration or helplessness has taken over the wheel.
And this is an important distinction:
"Feeling unstable doesn't necessarily mean that we have lost all of our stability."
Sometimes we have temporarily lost access to the parts of ourselves that know how to navigate.
The part that remembers what we have already survived.
The part that can pause before reacting.
The part that can tolerate not knowing.
The part that can make one small decision instead of solving the entire future.
The part that still has hope.
It may still be there.
It is simply much harder to hear when the storm gets loud.
A hypnosystemic perspective: Where is your attention?
One of the people who has deeply influenced my thinking about this is German physician and psychotherapist Gunther Schmidt, one of the pioneers of the hypnosystemic approach.
Hypnosystemic thinking combines ideas from systemic therapy with hypnotherapeutic approaches.
One aspect I find particularly fascinating is the role of attention.
Our experience is not only shaped by what happens around us, but also by what our attention repeatedly selects, amplifies and connects with meaning.
When we enter a state dominated by fear or helplessness, our attention naturally begins to organize around potential danger.
We notice evidence for what might go wrong.
We replay certain thoughts.
We imagine possible futures.
We become increasingly disconnected from experiences, memories and inner resources that would create a different state.
From a hypnosystemic perspective, the goal is therefore not simply to tell ourselves that everything is fine.
That would often be neither believable nor helpful.
Instead, we can become curious about how our current experience is being created — and how we might regain access to other possibilities within ourselves.
The question changes from:
"How do I finally get rid of this instability?"
to:
"What helps me regain access to myself while instability is still here?"
That is a very different kind of control.
Not control over the ocean.
But influence over how we meet it.
And perhaps this is where we begin to take back the wheel.
Back on the surfboard
When you learn to surf, nobody promises you a calm ocean.
In fact, without movement there would be no surfing.
The challenge is not to eliminate the waves.
The challenge is to gradually develop a different relationship with them.
At first, almost everything feels unpredictable.
You don't know which wave to take.
You stand up too early.
Or too late.
Your body becomes tense.
You fall.
You swallow half the ocean.
You get frustrated.
And then you paddle back out.
With every attempt, your body learns something.
Timing.
Balance.
Awareness.
Adjustment.
Trust.
Eventually, you may still fall — but falling means something different.
It no longer automatically means:
"I can't do this."
It becomes:
"Okay. That wave threw me off. Let's try again."
And I think there is something beautiful in that.
"Falling off the board doesn't mean you've lost your ability to surf."
The same can be true in life.
Having a difficult day doesn't erase your progress.
Feeling anxious doesn't mean you have lost your courage.
Feeling overwhelmed doesn't mean you have lost your strength.
Feeling uncertain doesn't mean you are incapable of making decisions.
And losing your balance doesn't mean you have to start from zero.
Sometimes stability is simply knowing:
✨"I know how to come back."✨
The Tool: Take Back the Wheel
When life feels unstable, we often ask questions about the outside world:
What is going to happen?
Will this work out?
What will the other person do?
Am I making the right decision?
...
Some of these questions simply cannot be answered yet.
So instead of trying to solve the entire ocean, bring your attention back to the small space you can actually influence.
Take a moment and ask yourself:
⚓ Who is at the wheel today?
Fear?
Frustration?
Anger?
Helplessness?
Hope?
Trust?
Curiosity?
You don't have to judge the answer.
Just notice it.
Then ask yourself:
🌊 What can I influence right now — and what can't I?
Where might you be spending energy trying to control something that simply isn't yours to control?
🔦 Where is my attention going?
Is your attention constantly searching for danger, certainty or answers?
What can put the focus back on you for the next 5 minutes?
🤍 What already helps me feel 5% more grounded?
Not completely calm.
Not perfectly confident.
Just 5%.
A walk?
A conversation?
Breathing?
Movement?
Nature?
Writing?
Music?
Silence?
🧭 Which resources have carried me through uncertainty before?
Think about previous storms.
What helped you then?
What did you learn about yourself?
What abilities did you discover that you may currently have lost sight of?
🌿 What does my body need right now?
Sometimes we try to solve uncertainty entirely through thinking while our body is asking for something much simpler:
Rest.
Movement.
Food.
Warmth.
Breathing.
Connection.
Space.
A hug.
⚓ What would taking back the wheel look like today?
Not for the next year.
Not even for next month.
Just Today.
Maybe taking back the wheel means making a decision.
Maybe it means postponing one.
Maybe it means asking for help.
Maybe it means setting a boundary.
Maybe it means stopping the endless search for certainty.
Or maybe it simply means allowing the wave to pass without immediately reacting to it.
✨"Taking back the wheel does not mean controlling everything.
It means consciously choosing how you want to respond to what you cannot control."✨
Stability in motion
Perhaps we need to rethink what stability actually looks like.
Maybe stability isn't a perfectly calm nervous system.
Maybe it isn't knowing exactly where life is going.
Maybe it isn't never feeling afraid, overwhelmed or lost.
And maybe it isn't standing perfectly still on the board.
Real stability might be much more dynamic than that.
It is noticing when fear has taken the wheel — and gently returning to the driver's seat.
It is recognizing when our attention has become trapped inside one frightening possibility — and widening our view again.
It is remembering our resources when we temporarily lose access to them.
It is knowing when to act and when to wait.
It is allowing ourselves to wobble without immediately believing that we are falling apart.
And sometimes it is falling completely into the water and knowing that we can climb back onto the board.
Maybe the goal was never to find perfectly calm waters.
Maybe it is to become someone who knows:
"I can feel afraid and still move forward."
"I can lose my balance and find it again."
"I can experience uncertainty without immediately needing to escape it."
"I can fall off the board and climb back on."
Inner stability doesn't mean that life stops moving.
It means that somewhere along the way, you begin to trust your ability to move with it.
✨"You cannot control the ocean.
But you can learn how to surf on it. "✨
With Love
Annabelle
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