How do I contribute to the world amidst increasing uncertainty?
“The root of suffering is resisting the certainty that no matter what the circumstances, uncertainty is all we truly have.”
- Pema Chödrön
As we confront more of our collective wounds, many of us are feeling determined to be of service in creating a more equitable, compassionate, and sustainable world. We are committed.
And yet, a lot of us are unsure of how to move forward, struggling to answer important questions. What is mine to do? What is the best way to maximize my effort given my scarce resources? In our earnest efforts to find answers that we can feel certain about, we are finding ourselves overwhelmed and fragmented by the sheer complexity of the challenges we face, and the parallel noisiness of our minds and media systems.
So, we are at once ambitious, hopeful, and inspired, as well as helpless, stuck, and resigned. If only there was a clear path forward.
In my own ongoing wrestling with these questions, the clearest answer I have found is that there is no clear path forward, and that my desire for certainty is what holds me back from effectively contributing to the world. While this stems from natural, fear-based desires for control, safety, and approval, striving for certainty in an increasingly uncertain world is a futile endeavor. It distracts us from living into our purpose, today, right now. This is especially true for us millennials who grew up in environments that favored strategic, data-driven, approaches to all questions big or small. While there is wisdom in this method, there are also limits when our time is scarce and our collective problems are so complex.
Instead, we must learn to get comfortable with uncertainty. Know how to work with it rather than against it. We must do this not only at an intellectual level (“I know about it”), but at an embodied level (“I experience it”). The latter requires engaging courageously in active reflection and ongoing practice.
Below are 4 practices to effectively contribute amidst uncertainty, based on the teachings of complexity theory, adaptive leadership, and wisdom traditions.
Join me for a 2-hour experiential workshop on October 14th, 2020 to integrate and embody these practices into daily life
1. Ground yourself in your purpose
A clear purpose orients us towards what we care most about, what gives our lives meaning, and what makes us come alive. In the long and messy journey of effectively contributing to the world (or life for that matter), regularly connecting to our purpose helps us remain energized and focused amidst the inevitable distractions and setbacks that come our way.
If your purpose is unclear (or currently reads as “make the world a better place”), I encourage you to write a new version that reflects your unique values. This is a courageous act, as it requires us to stand for something. For example, my purpose reflects what I stand for: creating a world where we continually choose love over fear. What do you stand for?
If you have a clear purpose statement, great! Now create mechanisms to keep it alive so that it isn’t relegated to New Year’s reflections and off-hand trainings. These could be physical reminders (e.g., picture, quote, object) or rituals (e.g., daily statement, weekly journaling, standing conversation with a mentor or inspiring person). What’s most important is that the mechanism(s) help you feel connected to your purpose.
2. Launch safe-to-fail experiments
In the domain of uncertainty and complexity, we cannot predict with certainty the outcomes of a given action. There are so many ‘unknown unknowns’ that we can only understand cause and effect in retrospect. As Steve Jobs said in his famed commencement address, “you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.” Therefore, it is impossible to know in advance the answers to our questions of contribution.
Instead, we must experiment to find answers. With an experimental mindset, we take action to gain new knowledge about our path forward. We are curious and responsive. Failure is welcomed as important learning.
This is easier said than done for the perfectionists among us (myself included) who avoid failure at all costs. We will consume time, energy, and capital designing (the best!) fail-safe experiment, for little upside. At best, we ‘succeed’ but learn little about our bigger questions. At worst, we never take action.
Instead, we can design many safe-to-fail experiments. Small scale, pragmatic actions that address the issue from multiple angles, where failure is of limited consequence. In launching these, we build our capacity to deal with failure, but most importantly we get into energized action. We move in a direction that is aligned to our purpose, learning as we go, with each experiment building on the other.
This article and my upcoming workshop are an example of safe-to-fail experiments to bring my work into the public arena. I originally planned for a 6-week course on the topic and soon realized I was moving in the direction of a fail-safe experiment, so I simplified. I also shared my ideas in smaller groups beforehand to get comfortable with feedback. All of these actions emerged from a prior experiment where I ran a survey and conducted a series of conversations to listen to what was emerging for purpose driven leaders. Failure still scares me, but these small steps help me build the muscles for it and get me into action.
It is interesting to note that scarcity can in fact serve us in designing safe-to-fail experiments. It forces us to think small (e.g., 6-week course → 2 hour workshop). What is a safe-to-fail experiment you can run this week? In under an hour? At zero cost? Now go do it!
3. Get comfortable with paradoxes
Change takes time. It is likely that we will not live to see a world that is entirely equitable, compassionate, and sustainable. And yet, we must commit ourselves to making it a reality. How do we stay motivated and inspired in the face of the inevitable failures, distractions, and complexities that slow our progress?
We must get comfortable with paradoxes. Alongside our deep desire for change, we must also hold acceptance. Otherwise we will suffer in endless comparisons of what could be vs. what is. While the acorn grows into the oak tree, constantly reaching for its potential, it holds unique gifts that cannot be compared. What is the gift of this moment?
“The world is perfect as it is, including my desire to change it.” – Ram Dass
Further, while our aspirations may include a desired end point (e.g., “ending world hunger”), we must orient around the journey of fulfilling those aspirations, rather than the theorized endpoint we may not live to see. It is this journey after all – from seed to tree – that makes up most of our life on Earth.
Holding the paradoxes of change & acceptance and destination & journey requires developing presence. With that comes patience and joy. We celebrate our learning, growth, and actions big or small. We have compassion for ourselves and others. We cultivate playful wonder towards each step along the way.
When we get comfortable with these paradoxes, we start to see that every day – even every moment – can be aligned to our purpose.
4. Dedicate space for reflection
Reflection is the enabler for all the above to occur. It involves looking at your past, present, and future:
Do a retrospective on your past experiments – what are you learning about your questions? About yourself and your purpose? What worked? What could you do differently next time? Incorporate any changes you are seeing in the broader context.
Design your future experiments – what small purpose-aligned actions will open new possibilities for how you impact the world?
Notice your present moment – how are you showing up? Are you open or closed? What thoughts, emotions, and moods are present? How productive are they? Holding our present condition with curiosity, acceptance, and loving challenge helps us maintain the adaptive learning mindset required for uncertainty.
With constant demands on our time, such reflections are often the first thing we deprioritize. It is a tragedy, since it is what catalyzes us into right relationship with our purpose.
If you do not currently have a regular practice of reflection, use an experimental process to create one that works for you. My clients use a range of methods on a daily or weekly basis, such as journaling in the mornings or evenings, setting calendar blocks during the workday, going on ‘reflection’ walks, sharing with an accountability partner, etc.
Ultimately, this practice – along with the rest of them – requires making courageous choices, and accordingly setting boundaries. The reality is that we make choices all the time, often unconsciously and in service of protecting ourselves from failure and judgement. As a result, we limit our ability to effectively steward our lives towards our intended direction. Making courageous choices aligned to our purpose is essential to stepping into more of our innate power.
Each of these practices – ground yourself in purpose, launch safe-to-fail experiments, get comfortable with paradoxes, and dedicate space for reflection – are intimately linked and reinforce each other. Without any one of them, we risk succumbing to overwhelm, burnout, and inaction. They are practices for a reason, meant to be engaged with regularly to account for the inherent uncertainty of our inner and outer worlds.
As we move through this defining chapter of human history, I find hope and solace in the collective rising to create change. The will is here. To sustain it into the future, we must learn the skill of dancing with the ever-growing uncertainty that will accompany us. In doing so, I believe we can make this journey of healing our broken world energizing, fulfilling, and even fun :)