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