Freedom in Uncertainty
Innovate, explore, don’t prepare everything, jump in, figure it out, learn on the go, make mistakes, there is freedom in uncertainty.
For children, all of life is an experiment. Everything, from cucumbers to chicken nuggets, get dipped in honey, ketchup, maple syrup, A1 sauce, whip cream and lemonade – just to see what it tastes like.
What happens if I dump water in the sandbox - or sand in the water table?
Can I go down the slide upside down and backwards?
Most of us, as adults, lose that sense of wonder and the natural instinct of trying things just to see how they turn out. But what opportunities are we missing if we hold back, rigidly follow the formula, and colour inside the lines?
If we can learn to let some of it go,
release that control,
we might go farther than we ever dreamed.
It is an irrefutable fact that life itself is unpredictable. No matter how carefully we plan - what’s that expression about God laughing? - there are no guarantees. Life is rooted in uncertainty (and that’s good thing, because it would be really boring otherwise.) I propose today that you tryto consider everything an experiment in life.
That may look different to you than it does me, but let’s get a little cozier with the concepts rolled into this experiment. Starting with innovating and exploring. In business, this could mean testing the water on your pie-in-the-sky concept. Taking that first step which, in all probability, will lead nowhere – but what if it didn’t. For example, you’d love to partner with a huge brand that seems completely out of reach. Perhaps this week you’ll locate someone at the top on LinkedIn and send them a message. You probably won’t get a reply… but what if you did?!
Don’t prepare everything. We’ve all seen presentations that were overly scripted, robotic, and monotone. Those probably weren’t the ones that got your motor humming. The memorable and the meaningful are usually off-the-cuff and therefore authentic. The next time you have to deliver information, try bullet points instead of writing the whole thing out word for word. Does that alter the degree of impact? And how did you feel in the moment – nervous or empowered?
Jump in, figure it out, learn on the go.
I once worked for an organization that consistently spoke of “building the car while driving down the road” and sometimes, looking at the 30,000 foot view, “building the plane while flying.” It was intimidating, scary sometimes, but liberating too, because no one else had it all figured out and it was okay.
For your experiment, this might look like saying yes to a project outside your comfort zone and filling in the gaps in your knowledge along the way. Expand your repertoire, your portfolio, and your skill set – a win win win.
“But what if I fail?” you might say.
To which I reply, that’s okay too. Someone said to me recently that she didn’t believe in mistakes. Doing something wrong or making a mistake, she said, was just a form of data collection. It didn’t work, so maybe we don’t do it again, or we tweak the approach. Give yourself permission to test and learn until you get it right. This is how children learn that cucumbers DO NOT taste good dipped in ketchup. So maybe we don’t try that again, but at least now we know.
Finally, I encourage you to find the freedom in uncertainty and get comfortable with it. Life itself is an experiment. Cooking is an experiment. Even writing this article was an experiment. Was I successful? Don’t know yet, but I’m interested in finding out! I could have chose to not write, but instead I dove in.
Over the next few weeks, consider everything an experiment and see if that subtle mindset shift makes it easier to find a little bit of calm in this chaotic world. I hope that it does.