Uncertainty
John Cassidy【ツ】
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Happy Thursday!
Are you in need of a bit of Mental Sunshine to brighten things up a bit as we head into the weekend?
This week’s tip is to embrace uncertainty.
Typically, the human brain hates uncertainty. It will do anything to avoid it, often sabotaging situations just so that it can know what’s happening.
It encourages us to avoid anything different - because it’s not certain.
But also: when you’re certain of what’s going to happen next, life is boring.
And when you get stuck in a loop of only doing things where you know what the outcome will be… that’s really boring and can make you quite miserable, without you necessarily realising it.
We can end up floating through life on autopilot, with no need to pay attention because we know what’s next.
Uncertainty is actually something that happens most of the time in our lives, but we tend to believe it’s not.
Realistically, most of what we think is certain is really just probable.
If something happens 90% of the time - or even 99% of the time - that’s still not a certainty.
Those are odds you’d bet on… but your horse might still lose!
Certainty is an illusion; it gives us this false sense of control, and that makes us mindless.
We think we know what’s going to happen, so we don’t need to pay attention… and when we’re not paying attention, we’re not mindful.
If you’ve already seen a movie four times, you don’t need to have your full attention on the screen; you know what’s coming.
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But your life is not a movie!
You have no way of knowing what’s going to happen next!
That might sound a bit terrifying - but isn’t it also a bit exciting?
Just think of the possibilities!
It’s easy to get stuck, sticking with what we know; what we are certain is going to happen.
We go through our day on autopilot, with no need to pay attention - we know what’s next.
When we embrace uncertainty, we can become unstuck.
When we are not certain what’s going to happen next, we have to pay attention - it makes us more mindful.
And as we’ve talked about a lot in these weekly emails: mindfulness helps to bring Mental Sunshine into our lives.
Where is there some uncertainty you can embrace today?