I came across an ad (for Pricewaterhouse Coopers) in the Los Angeles Times newspaper the other day that said: “Uncertainty is the human emotion that surfaces right before genius emerges.” I stopped and reread this phrase two or three times because it seemed to ring so true. I thought about the fact that every single coaching client I have ever worked with that wanted to make a significant change in their life – to close one stable “chapter” of their life and begin a new one – moved through this interim stage of confusion. And to them it felt like a dangerous place.

Let’s take a tour of the land of uncertainty and confusion that each of us will enter at some point in our lives and explore some interesting questions:

• Why does it feel so dangerous?
• What is really going on in these situations?
• Why is confusion necessary and good?
• How can you get through it to the other side?

Why does it feel so dangerous?

Confusion feels dangerous for several reasons. By its very nature confusion mean you are bewildered, perplexed, and unsure – of what to say or do, of which options to chose, or which path is the right one. Order and predictability are on the way out and chaos appears to be on the way in. Things that used to make you feel happy, secure, energized, and successful no longer produce the desired effect. You become unmoored from the anchor points in your life and begin to drift. And often there is no destination in sight. So the drifting itself is scary – you feel lost. Who in their right mind wouldn’t feel frightened in such a situation and consider it unwelcome and dangerous?