In recent years, planning anything more than three days ahead has started to feel like a sports lottery. Morning coffee, a clear to-do list on your laptop — and within an hour the news or some circumstance completely rewrites your day. The first thing that comes to mind is to grip control even tighter: refreshing the news feed every minute, checking work chats, micromanaging every little thing at home. But, as coach Olena Mohilna points out in a conversation with Wave RBC.UA, this is an illusion. Trying to control a storming world is like trying to stop a tsunami with your bare hands. The real secret weapon in times of chaos is not some superpower to predict the future, but an inner anchor: what stays with you even when everything around you is changing.
Inner Anchor Instead of External Anchors
We used to be taught to lean on the external: “find a stable job,” “build up savings,” “surround yourself with the right people.” These are wonderful things, but life has shown that any of these external elements can change overnight. When we rely only on external circumstances, we become fragile — any strong wind breaks us. An inner anchor is something entirely different. It is a deep, calm confidence in yourself: “I cannot predict what will happen tomorrow. But I know for sure that I will cope. I will be able to adapt, find a solution, and support myself.” It is precisely on this formula — not on control, but on adaptability — that you should restructure your thinking during periods of prolonged uncertainty.
Four Signs That Your Anchor Has Been Lost
Loss of an anchor rarely happens suddenly. According to Olena Mohilna, it is worth checking yourself against four markers. The first is “life on pause”: you catch yourself thinking that once the uncertainty is over — then you will start going to the gym, launch a new project, sort out your career. The glass of life is waiting for better times that are constantly being postponed. The second is doomscrolling instead of breakfast: the news become the first thing you see in the morning and the last thing you scroll through before bed, and every new post brings not a sense of safety but a fresh wave of anxiety. The third is devaluation and mental noise: the feeling of “what can I even do? Nothing depends on me.” The fourth is the body signaling first: clenched jaw, shallow breathing, shoulders raised toward the ears, chronic fatigue even after sleep. If you recognize yourself in at least two of these points, it is time to bring your focus back home — to yourself.
Five Daily Practices for an Inner Core
You do not need to radically change your life starting Monday. An inner core is built from small but daily actions. The first is bodily grounding: anxiety feeds on thoughts about the future, while the body always lives in the present moment, so when you feel that “the ground is slipping away from under your feet,” take a few deep exhales, go for a short walk without earphones, take a shower and feel the water on your skin, drink a glass of warm water. The second is an information detox: attention today is the most expensive currency, so choose two or three trusted sources and do not read the news for the first thirty minutes after waking up or for an hour before sleep. The third is leaning on your own values: circumstances may adjust your plans, but they cannot change who you are, and even the smallest decisions made through the lens of your own values provide enormous resilience. The fourth is daily small wins: in a crisis the psyche notices only the negative, so every evening write down three things you managed to do — these are proofs to your brain that you are influencing your life. The fifth is support instead of self-criticism: replace the inner critic with an inner friend, and in a difficult moment ask yourself what you would say to your best friend in such a situation — and say it to yourself.
An Emergency Algorithm for Panic
If you feel panic or an acute wave of uncertainty, Olena Mohilna suggests using a simple grounding algorithm called “5-4-3-2-1”: look around and name five objects of one color, four sounds you are hearing right now, three tactile sensations, two smells, and one taste. This exercise switches your attention from the catastrophic scenario in your head to the physical world, where the body is always “here and now.” The practice takes less than a minute, but it gives the nervous system room to reset and restores the feeling that you are in your own body, in your own time, in your own life.
