Uncertainty is much better than its reputation. This is why.

wouldn’t you agree

that

not knowing what’s going on

what was going to happen next can make

you feel uncomfortable

so how are you doing how was that

strange little pause

did you feel a little bit impatient

maybe irritated

thinking oh boy she forgot what she

wanted to say

so what to me it was very uncomfortable

i can tell you that

standing here on this stage

doing basically nothing for about 30

seconds

ignoring what everybody would tell you

to do at a tedx to use the first 30

seconds to make a smashing appearance

but instead of only talking about

uncertainty i wanted to

invite you into uncertainty and if it’s

just

for a brief moment because

not knowing what’s going on or what’s

going to happen next

can cause discomfort irritation

stress even and we in our culture of

optimal

optimization and efficiency and planning

and insurance and perfection

we are so uncomfortable with uncertainty

that we’re trying to avoid it

by all means and we quickly jump to

reasons and explanations and to answers

and to

solutions and skip this foggy

fuzzy murky muddy space of not knowing

of uncertainty and yet

there’s something there something in

that

space between certainties in that

liminal space

and that’s valuable and if we skip that

we are missing out it’s worth

sitting with not knowing and if it’s

just for

a little while even though it might feel

uncomfortable and seem inefficient

and i’m going to tell you why but first

i’d like to take you

on a journey on my journey of how i fell

in love

with that space between certainties

so i was always drawn to adventure

drawn to newness i love to jump in

headfirst but i didn’t realize because

to me

that was just normal until about

eight years ago when my favorite person

and i

had this idea to buy an old sailboat

fix her up sell everything take the boys

out of school move to the boat

sail the world and from the reactions we

got

from telling that to our families and

friends

wow isn’t that dangerous

what about the storms aren’t you worried

about the kids and the boat and

the school and the money and the jobs

and what about the storms and aren’t you

scared

and we’re like um

not so much and not that we hadn’t

thought about these questions

we just weren’t that worried

and it was only then that i discovered

ha there might be something there

something that needs to be explored that

there must be strategies to deal with

uncertainty

and that apparently i had already been

using some of them without even

realizing

and i only needed to identify what these

strategies were

and show them to others easy

well i still had much to learn

and soon enough i found my teacher

sailing because we did go through

with our plan you know of buying a boat

and fixing her up

and taking the boys out of school and

untying the lines

and sailing was a very good teacher and

i think it’s fair to say

that i did learn a lot but there was one

thing in particular

that i’d like to share with you today

and sailing taught me to let go

to surrender and

sailing also had two very potent

teaching assistants

and the first teaching assistant was my

body

i get seasick quite a lot actually not

the best

pre-requisite to go live on a sailboat

you might think

what a terrible idea in fact and you

know how they say

that there are two stages of seasickness

the first stage where it’s so bad that

you’re afraid you might die

and the second stage where it’s so bad

that you’re afraid you might not die

i’m familiar with both in fact

i’ve discovered a couple of more stages

i should write a book

anyway i will never forget

that first night out at sea we were

leaving

thessaloniki for the greek islands it

was our first overnight

passage ever and it was a new moon night

and we were all alone in the middle of

the ocean

except we weren’t really was just in my

head because the mediterranean is no

ocean and we weren’t alone either

there were ships and fairies and

freighters and we didn’t even

lose sight of shore but it was still

terribly exciting and i remember

being so new to the boat movements that

every time we were healing over i caught

myself

worrying about my tip

i was very seasick that night and

in the many many nights to come

and the days so after much

suffering i realized that my seasickness

wasn’t something

to fight not even to control

and someone recently shared that

buddhist proverb with me

suffering is pain times

resistance and i had been resisting

resisting the movement of the boat the

back and the forth of the wave

the rhythm of the sea i wanted to be in

control

but the more i wanted to be in control

the more seasick i

got i needed a different approach

i needed to learn how to live with my

seasickness how to accept

my seasickness as a part of me so from

then on we only

try to leave for passage under the best

possible conditions

so that my vestibular organ the

troublemaker the inner ear could slowly

adjust

to the boat movements and i also allowed

myself to not

feel responsible for anything not

sailing

not cooking not boat schooling until i

was feeling better

and to my surprise the world didn’t end

no one staffed

and the boat didn’t think and after a

day or two i

was feeling better and i still get

seasick to this day

sometimes but it was nothing nothing

compared

to what i was experiencing in the

beginning so my body taught me

to not control what i couldn’t control

and there was teaching assistant number

two

nature one more thing to know about me

is that

i might be an uncertainty enthusiast yes

but i

love to plan and i love complex projects

the wackier the more impossible

the better and i can imagine the wildest

adventures but the first step would

always be a good

solid plan and our project managed the

out of this one in our hallway was a

three meter long kanban board with to

do’s and doings and dance and we had the

map and we had the route

everything was organized it was perfect

until we went sailing any of you guys

sail here

you see sailing and

planning not a good match

the wind and the weather and the waves

just don’t do what you want them to do

they don’t bend to your wishes not to

mine anyway

and i had to learn this the hard way and

i don’t remember how many times i was

angry and sad or frustrated disappointed

crying even because we couldn’t go where

we wanted to go

we couldn’t stick to our beautiful plan

nature would not let us or something

broke down on the boat so i

learned that i couldn’t change the wind

or the weather or the waves

only adjust the sails and the course

and i also found that some of the most

beautiful

memories were made outside of our plans

so sailing taught me to let go to

surrender

to listen to my body to

trust that we will be okay and that it’s

a good idea to have

plan b cd and enough canned tomatoes

and that boats are in essence many

graves

and sailor sailing also initiated me

into the

realm of not knowing into the art of

embracing

uncertainty instead of just skipping it

by using some

strategies and there are strategies

and they do help make no mistake but

only using strategies to deal with

uncertainty is a bit like trying to

dance by

analyzing the rhythm versus

feeling the rhythm and letting the music

guide you so that’s why today i’m not

going to give you any strategies in this

short 18 minutes

i’m going to instead give you something

else

what i feel is much more valuable than

any strategy

i’m going to give you a word an idea

which is also the key to be able to

dance with

uncertainty humility

humility is the attitude of not taking

ourselves and our beliefs and our

assumptions too seriously

it’s knowing that assumptions are just

that

assumptions and the thing with

assumptions is

that they do help us we constantly make

sense of the world around us by making

assumptions about it

and that’s great because without that

we’d be screwed and pretty lost

on the downside assumptions

can also trick us we always try to take

every piece of information

and put it into our world view to try

not to let go of any of our certainties

so assumptions are also the source of

our

biases something else i learned on the

boat

so when i started this whole sailing

thing i took a course

in marine navigation and we had to

memorize the signs and the signals

the meaning of the lights and the buoys

and there were a lot

so for example we had to be able to tell

the distance of a nearby ship at night

the direction it was going

and whether it was on collision course

just by looking

at some colored dots on a black

background

so that could be a potential threat

really not good

and i remember looking at that black

square in my sailing theory textbook

trying to make sense of some tiny red

and white and green dots

convinced i’d never be able to do that

in an actual situation

but in fact after being on night shift

after a couple of nights on the boat i

was

in i was in fact able to do exactly that

i could tell from staring into the black

knight

whether a ship was approaching which way

it was going

and if it was a potential threat just by

looking

at the tiny position lights our brains

are amazing and i was getting better

with every night at sea

fast forward two years in our first

atlantic crossing

i was on my third night shift maybe and

i had what on the door and on the boat

is called the dog watch

between midnight and four in the morning

and it’s the person on shift’s

responsibility

to take a 360 degree look around outside

the boat

every 20 minutes because that’s about

the time it would take

a big ship to approach from beyond the

horizon and get

near us and being a tiny and small

and slow sailboat made us vulnerable so

it was very important to be attentive

so i was tired but i dutifully stepped

outside

into the cockpit every 20 minutes to

check the black knight

for switches lights and as i went

outside

maybe the third time i suddenly

noticed a white light quite close behind

us

and i jumped what was that had i missed

something

didn’t i wasn’t i paying attention and i

quickly went

below deck to check the ais which is

similar to radar

and call the unknown vessel radio the

unknown vessel

but strangely there was nothing on the

ais

the screen was black except for the

small dots that was

us and no one answered on the radio

so i decided to change course

nevertheless

and get out of the way of whatever was

behind us

but before i got all geared in i quickly

went

back outside to check again and

as i was looking at the light i realized

very puzzled that the light had moved

not to the side not closer but further

up it didn’t make any sense

and one in the morning is not my peak

time

but after a while it hit me that light

was no ship approaching

that light was venus rising

my trained brain had totally tricked me

no wonder no one had picked up on the

radio that might have been an

interesting conversation though but

i was very very impressed

and from then on now when i catch myself

make an assumption

i try to stop to question it

because it might be venus i might be

wrong

and this kind of humility this wondering

this questioning is what we need in

order to be able to not only endure

uncertainty but also to actually

appreciate it

because this space of uncertainty is the

only space where actual

new information can come in

this is where the magic happens

this is the home of creativity of

serendipity

you know when you find stuff you haven’t

been looking for

of um like columbus did with america of

epiphanies of randomness

where new ideas can emerge where

anything can happen

and yet in times like these

when the ground underneath our feet

feels like it’s shaking we tend to hold

on to our

certainties and

try they’re trying to lure us in and

make us feel we’re safe there

but the more furiously we

insist that we are right and the others

are wrong or stupid and not getting it

the more rigid and polarized we become

as a society

the more fragmented and fragile the more

barren of

fresh ideas and creativity the common

ground that we so desperately need in

order to tackle these

immense challenges that we are facing as

a collective

that common ground that shared reality

lie at the margins

off and in that liminal space between

certainty

rumi the sophia mystic once said

somewhere between right and wrong

there’s a garden

i will meet you there and we tend to

think that we need certainty in order to

feel safe

but the feeling of safety comes from the

inside it comes from

humility from being open to other

perspectives from trusting

that anything will always emerge even

though we cannot control it

from falling in love with saying i don’t

know

so to quote hannah gatsby

confidence makes you stupid

i’m very confident in this opinion thank

you