Through uncertainty, trust the instruments
There seems to be a feeling in the air at the moment.
I hear it in conversations with friends and family. I see it on LinkedIn and across social media. I hear it from business owners and people in workplaces.
Life feels hard.
Jobs are being lost. Businesses are under pressure. People are questioning what AI means for their future. The cost of living continues to bite. There is uncertainty about what comes next, and underneath so many of these conversations, I hear something else.
A fight for safety and certainty.
If I secure the job, make the business work, earn enough, and get through this period, will things feel better? Then the thoughts of: should we work harder, push longer hours; will that maybe make it all okay again? If I am completely honest, I have felt some of that myself.
Life has felt harder lately than I imagined it would, and I noticed myself doing what so many of us do when things feel uncertain.
Doing more.
Thinking more, trying to solve more problems and looking for the next answer. All while trying to figure out what needs to change to get the outcome I'm looking for.
The irony is that only recently I stood in a room here in Brisbane, teaching our NLP Practitioner Certification - and I watched an incredible group of people challenge old beliefs and expectations about who they should be, what they should have achieved, and what success was supposed to look like.
Every morning we brought it back to something incredibly simple:
Who do I want to BE today?
How do I want to show up?
What do I want to DO today to make sure I am being that person?
Then I went back into my own life... and it slipped my mind to ask myself the same questions.
On Sunday morning I went to church, and sometimes you hear something at exactly the time you need to hear it. The pastor started talking about pilots and spatial disorientation.
When a pilot becomes spatially disoriented, their senses can tell them something about the aircraft's position or movement that simply isn't true.
Here's the part that caught my attention: pilots are trained for this.
They can be put into situations where they can't simply rely on what they see, so they have to learn to fly by the instruments. In that moment, everything inside them might be saying one thing... but the instruments are saying another, and they have to decide what they're going to trust.
I immediately wrote in my notes:
It's not about trusting your senses more. It's about trusting the instruments.
I don't know why, but that sentence stuck with me, perhaps because I'd been doing exactly that. I'd been looking around at everything happening in my world. Trying to join the dots, and because things felt hard, I had started building a story from the evidence I could see in front of me.
Maybe I need to do more.
Maybe this isn't working.
Maybe I need another strategy.
Maybe I should be further ahead.
Maybe I'm missing something.
The more uncertain things felt, the more I wanted to find something that would make them certain again. Yet sitting there listening to this story about a pilot, I realised something.
Sometimes we join the dots in life, but we don't necessarily join the right dots.
Our senses aren't lying to us; the fear, disappointment, uncertainty and circumstances in front of us are real, but the meaning we create from them is still our interpretation.
I started thinking about how much of my confidence had quietly become attached to what I could see happening around me.
That's when another part of the sermon hit me. Before a pilot flies, they check the aircraft. They do a weight-and-balance check to make sure everything is where it needs to be before they take off, and the pastor brought that back to us.
Deal with home first. Your heart is your home. That one made me sit with myself for a moment because perhaps I'd been trying to change everything outside before checking what was happening inside.
What was I carrying?
What had I become dependent on?
Where was I placing my confidence?
Had an outcome become necessary for me to trust that I was on the right path?
Was I relying on my own capability to create certainty rather than trusting my faith when certainty wasn't available?
They're uncomfortable questions. Especially when you're someone who believes deeply in taking responsibility, creating change and doing something about the circumstances in front of you.
Perhaps there is a difference between acting on faith and acting out of fear of what will happen if you stop pushing.
I had to think about that one because maybe all of my "doing" wasn't only about progress; maybe some of it had become about trying to feel safe?
Then the pastor spoke about storms and opposition. About the circumstances that inevitably make us question things, and that faith isn't about allowing what we see and feel in those moments to become more powerful than what we believe.
I wrote another sentence: Faith keeps us steering while fear takes us off course.
What I loved about this sentence was that this wasn't about pretending not to be afraid. It wasn't blind positivity; it was about having faith even when afraid. Trust even when I can't see the outcome. Continuing to steer even when everything around me made me question the direction, I suddenly found myself back to the question I'd been asking those students in Brisbane every morning.
Who do I want to BE today?
Except now it felt different. I'd realised I had been so busy asking myself what I needed to DO to make things better that I'd stopped checking who was doing all that doing.
Was it the version of me grounded in faith, belief and knowledge, or the version of me fighting for certainty?
Maybe that's what I'd forgotten. Not the NLP tool, or how to solve problems and take action; I had forgotten to come home first.
To check where my confidence was sitting, to remember what I believed, to reconnect with who I wanted to BE before deciding what I needed to DO.
This is where what we teach in NLP, namely, BE–DO–HAVE, stopped feeling like a training model and became a very personal learning and mantra this week.
So much of what I had been doing was the other way around. I was looking at what I wanted to HAVE.
The outcome. The success. The certainty. The evidence that everything was moving in the right direction.
Then I was asking what else I needed to DO to make that happen.
More work? Another strategy? Another conversation? Another idea?
BE–DO–HAVE asks us to start somewhere completely different.
Who do I choose to BE first? I think that's where the church message and what we'd been practising in that training room suddenly came together for me.
The 'BE' part of this equation isn't dependent on the outcome.
I don't have to wait for certainty to choose faith. I don't have to wait for everything to work out to choose trust. I don't have to wait until life feels easier to choose how I want to show up in it.
I get to decide that first.
Then I can ask:
If this is who I choose to BE, what do I want to DO from here?
That doesn't mean I stop working or stop looking for solutions. It doesn't mean I ignore what is happening around me and hope everything magically works itself out.
I still take responsibility, make decisions, and have conversations. I still do the work. But there's a mindset shift I've had to recognise in myself.
Am I taking action because I'm aligned with who I want to be? Or am I taking action because I'm desperately trying to escape uncertainty?
Same person. Sometimes even the same action. Completely different place to act from.
At the end of the service, I went up to the pastor. I wanted to thank him for his message today, and I told him that I had really needed those words that morning; his response was simple.
"Well, let's see what you do about it now."
I smiled, of course, because hearing something isn't the work. Knowing something isn't the work. I teach NLP. I know BE–DO–HAVE. I'd literally just spent days asking other people to practise it, and I had still forgotten.
Maybe that's part of being human.
We forget; we get caught up in what's happening around us; we get scared, and we start looking outside ourselves for the thing that will make everything feel okay again.
Sometimes we need something, or someone, to remind us to come home.
So that's what I'm practising again.
Each morning: Who do I want to BE today?
Not when things are easier or when I know the outcomes, but today.
Then I ask myself: How do I want to show up? And what do I want to DO today to ensure I am being that person?
Perhaps in a world where so many of us are fighting for certainty, the answer isn't always more certainty. We cannot guarantee anything, but we can come home first; we can notice what we are carrying and question where we place our confidence, faith and trust.
We can remember who we want to be before deciding what we're going to do, and when everything around us feels uncertain, and what we see and feel starts telling us we're off course... perhaps that's exactly when we need to remember to trust the instruments.
With love,
Me
In this blog, I've shared just a glimpse of a few NLP concepts and techniques. If this sparks your curiosity and you'd like to explore more, or even consider becoming an NLP Practitioner yourself, we'd be delighted to welcome you to our in-person NLP certification training. Our next sessions are scheduled to run both in person and online in 2026 and 2027. We'd love to see you at one of these NLP training sessions.
Click here to learn more about our NLP Certification Training and secure your place.
__________________________________________________________________________________
DISCLAIMER FOR GENERAL HEALTH CONTENT
The information and recommendations provided in our videos, presentations, webinars, e-books, online courses, blog, website and all other digital materials (together ‘Content’) are based on our own research, experience and views. The information is intended to be general information, covering general health issues and common life. Whilst we try our best to ensure that the information in our Content is accurate, sometimes there may be errors, inaccuracies or new research that has not been included.
We hope you find this information helpful but please be aware that any information, recommendations or comments may not be suitable for your particular circumstances and you should not take anything in our Content as personal advice. The information in our Content is offered in good faith and it is not specific to any one person or any personal circumstances.
For this reason, we cannot be held liable for any decisions you make based on any of our Content, information, recommendations or views. Any decision you take based on information in this Content is done at your own risk and any consequences, as a result, are your own. You shall indemnify this website, business, its directors and employees for any and all claims, whether resulting directly or indirectly from your actions based on our Content.
Comments by the moderator are the views of the person posting only and are not intended to be taken as advice for you personally. The persons posting and providing the information are not necessarily health professionals and should you need specific advice for your circumstances, you should consult your own health or medical professional.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
This Content is the copyright of Vikki Da Rocha and Jorge Da Rocha t/a Momentum Growth Coaching © 2026. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the Content in any form is prohibited.
You may not share, copy or redistribute this Content in any medium or format at any time. Our Content is for your individual personal use only and may not be used for commercial purposes. You are not permitted to make any derivative material, including but not limited to copying, reproducing, transforming, sharing or building upon the Content in whole or any part thereof. For any other use or distribution, you must have express written consent from Momentum Growth Coaching.
