uncertainty

3/8 — the third rule of her way club (aka: how to change your life in 6-12 months)

Continuing our 8 rules of her way club series. If you’re just joining, begin here:

1/8 — deciding to play by your own rules
2/8 — subtracting what doesn’t belong
3/8 — the natural consequence: uncertainty
interlude — her way deep rest
4/8 — trust yourself
5/8 — inner life
6/8 — outer life
7/8 — life design
8/8 — creator

Without inherited structures, you’re floating.

If the first rule of her way club is making the choice to play by your own rules, and the second rule is subtracting everything that doesn’t belong to your life, then, if you’re doing it right, ultimately you will be led to the third rule as a natural consequence: uncertainty.

Uncertainty acts as a doorway.

You’re supposed to feel like you have no idea what you’re doing.

The moment you stop living by borrowed rules and strip away everything false, you feel lost. The familiar timelines and “shoulds” vanish. And in their absence, uncertainty arrives.

This is an initiation.

It might feel like failure or danger. But it’s not. It’s the proof you’re on the right track.

This is the part where you lean in and learn what is actually meant for you on a moment-to-moment basis. This is what being truly alive feels like.

Your potential is determined by the amount of uncertainty you're willing to embrace.

If you’ve been journeying alongside me for a while, you will know that I spend extraordinary amounts of time in uncertainty, which I call by various names: the unknown, the void or the magic dark.

Here are some examples:

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Career/Work

I figured out pretty early on, in my early twenties, that the status quo career path was not going to be able to offer me the kind of life that I wanted. I had concluded that school was never meant to teach us how to learn effectively. It was to train us to be obedient.

Apropos nothing, but a side note I want to venture down briefly: Now, with the rise of AI, this truth is becoming impossible to ignore. The stable, predictable career paths of our parents and grandparents that promised safety and security are dissolving. The world now demands agility, responsiveness, and creativity. It’s an exciting opportunity. It means we get to consciously and deliberately choose (in true her way club vibes) how we spend our time, how we create value, how we resource our lives. The cost is that it requires a willingness to linger in the discomfort of uncertainty, sometimes for long stretches of time.

I had to carve out a path of my own.

At the time, I didn’t know what direction I wanted to go in. I had a psychology degree, a love for writing and a personality. Those were the three things I had available to me.

It was 2012.

I used my writing hobby to start a blog.
I used my psychology knowledge to provide a lens.
I used my personality to build connections and relationships.

Over time, I learned how to trust my own rhythm, built a successful personal brand and saw how clients, ideas, and opportunities began to appear because I was willing to hold steady in the uncertainty.

The journey of uncertainty often looks like:

• Letting go of control

• Trusting your intuition

• Embracing failure as a learning opportunity

• Discovering your true passions and strengths

In 2022, ten years later, I became complacent.

I lost my drive, my direction was diluted, I forgot what I stood for, and I burned out.

After many mini cycles of uncertainty throughout my career up to that point, I entered one large period of uncertainty that lasted almost two years. Until recently, I spent a lot of time in confusion, feeling lost and being on the verge of giving up.

This is where the magic dark comes into play.

I had to spend enough time in uncertainty for the right amount of vision to form, for clarity to arrive, to be able to launch myself into a new way of life.

I have been promising you that I will share what this journey is all about, and I will. I already have an essay drafted, but keep editing, adding to it, and rewriting it because there’s a lot to say. And today, here in this space, is not the place.

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Home/Travel

If there’s one area of life where I seem to have an unusually high risk tolerance, it’s where I place my feet and call home.

In the past decade alone, I’ve packed my life into a suitcase or two and moved to a small town in Canada, a village in Mexico, a coastal city in the UK, then Mallorca, and most recently, New York City, each one chosen without ever having visited before.

Sometimes these moves worked out beautifully, sometimes not. One thing has become abundantly clear:

There is no perfect place.

Every place will offer you something. A piece of yourself you hadn’t yet met, a lesson you didn’t know you needed, a relationship that will shape you.

If you can choose a place that supports the season of life you are in and leave it when it no longer does, you are doing it right.

Landing in a new place with no safety net, no mapped-out plan, just a suitcase and the decision to trust your instincts offers a peculiar kind of initiation. There is a mix of thrill and terror as you wander strange streets, question if you belong, and feel the weightlessness of having no context.

But there is also something else: a sharpening of your senses.

Living without inherited structures forces you into presence. You notice what food you crave, which streets feel friendly, who looks you in the eye, and the natural rhythm of your creativity and agency. Belonging drips in slowly, one kind stranger, one favourite café, one new friendship at a time.

Each place I’ve lived has stripped me bare and handed me back to myself with greater clarity. They’ve offered me relationships I never could have imagined and moments of beauty that would never have happened if I had stayed still.

It’s not that relocating is easy. It is often lonely. It is unmooring. But if you can stay with that discomfort long enough to let the edges soften, if you can learn to resource yourself from within while waiting for the puzzle pieces to fall into place (or don’t, and then you get to choose again), what comes from that space is unmatched.

My career, friendships, and creativity all have roots in the decision to keep moving until I found places that matched my internal world. Without those leaps into the unknown, I suspect my life would be much, much smaller.

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Personal Connections

If you’ve been with me a while, you know that I just went through the most brutal breakup of my life, so I am keeping this section brief. And… I am glad it happened.

(If you want to catch up, the whole story is tucked inside the archives; a breadcrumb trail from the day we met a year ago to the day it ended two months ago.)

In truth, there isn’t a single romantic relationship or friendship I regret releasing. Because what has grown in the fertile soil of those endings has always been worth it: deeper intimacy, clearer boundaries, a closer relationship with myself and others.

It is never easy.

There is always a deep and terrifying ache right after an ending. The kind that empties your chest, keeps you up at night, and makes you question every decision you’ve made in your life. The mind spins a million scenarios about how this is the end of love, the end of goodness, the end of belonging.

But on the other side of that ache, there is something else, waiting. Usually, exactly the kinds of personal connections you have been yearning for. The ones that needed you to be ready for them.

You can’t skip this stage. You can’t think your way through it. You can only live it. Floating in the unknown until the ground reappears beneath you. You can never arrive here without being in the uncertain in-between.

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Creativity

Creativity is your unique contribution to the collective. But letting yourself be seen in your creative expressions can feel life-ending.

Many of you reading this are here right now: standing in that moment of decision. Should I start a Substack? Should I release the thing I’ve been dreaming about? Should I show myself more fully online, or dare to call myself an artist, a writer, a maker, a founder?

This year, my biggest leap of uncertainty was finally admitting to myself that I am a creator and giving myself permission to share what I create in a way that feels aligned, meaningful, and honest.

For more than a decade, I’ve been publishing writing for mostly free. I had it drummed into me that content marketing was a single file path and that I couldn’t deviate from it. I couldn’t bring myself to put a paywall around the tender, personal parts until just a few months ago.

And then, the moment I did, when I went all in, in valuing my writing and my memoir-style expositions, everything shifted. The work deepened. The readers who stayed became more engaged. As of today, I am only ten subscriptions away from becoming a Substack bestseller.

There are other projects: courses, offerings, collabs that I sometimes sit on for months because I am scared no one will value them, that they won’t be well-received, that they’re not good enough, that they will vanish into the void.

But I’ve learned that if I can stay in that liminal space, uncomfortable as it is, something happens. The edges of the idea sharpen. The delivery deepens. The work becomes more potent.

And the things that don’t work out feed into things that do, which, as a counter-effect, become better than anything I have created before.

Uncertainty is a creative pressure. It forces me to listen more closely, to refine, to make sure what I’m bringing into the world is the truest version I can offer.

And with every round of staying with that discomfort, my capacity grows. I get better at holding myself in the unknown. Better at waiting for clarity to arrive. Better at trusting that what emerges from that space will have more depth, more resonance, more impact than if I had rushed to get it out just to soothe my own anxiety.

The act of creating while uncertain is the transformation. It is what gives the work its aliveness, its resonance. When I let myself create from that place of risk, readers feel it. Clients feel it. I feel it.

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You’re supposed to feel like you have no idea what you’re doing.

But when it comes to living an extraordinary life, which is the only way to live a life that is truly your own (and what her way club is all about), most people interpret “feeling uncertain” as a sign they have taken a wrong turn. So they give up. They run back to the familiar and comfortable life that was planned for them. The one the system approves of, even if it’s the very life they were trying to escape.

And maybe that’s why you’re here, reading this.

Because deep down, you know you want more for yourself than the version of life you were handed. And to enjoy your life. Not just one day, but now, and into the future.

To enjoy your life, you have to keep learning, growing, evolving, and changing. And there is no way to change your life without spending time at the edge of the unknown.

Uncertainty is the doorway.

It’s the signal that you are in the exact place where transformation can happen.

If the first rule of her way club is deciding to live by your own rules, and the second rule is subtracting everything false, then this… this floating, this disorientation, this not-knowing, is where the magic happens.

Stay here.
Stay with it.
Stay long enough for your new life to appear.

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Some related articles you might enjoy reading:

the unknown playground

Here’s a little thing I love doing when life feels murky or uncertain. I call it the unknown playground. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a space to intentionally step into the things you don’t have answers for. The questions, decisions, projects, or feelings that make your chest tighten a little.

Grab a notebook, a sticky note, or your phone. Set a timer for five minutes. Write down:

• One area of life where you feel lost or unsure.

• One tiny action you can take right now in that space, even if it feels scary or ridiculous.

• One thought or belief you’ll release about needing to know everything before you act.

It could be huge: “I’ll send the email I’ve been avoiding.”
Or tiny: “I’ll open the blank page and write one line.”

Every action you take in the face of uncertainty is like planting a flag in the unknown. It’s proof you’re willing to explore, to grow, to trust yourself.

a micro-vow:

Before you close this tab, pick one thing today you will do without having all the answers. Say to yourself:

I step into the unknown. I act, even when I’m unsure. I trust my own guidance.

comment below:

What’s one “unknown” you’re leaning into this week — big or small — and one action you’re taking to explore it? Share below so we can cheer each other on.