Life is all about uncertainty!
And I have never been more aware of this reality, than during my stint as the founder of Obino, a health-tech startup that I conceived, launched, ran, got funded multiple times and then finally sold to strategic investors.
The last 8 years – since I left my cushy corporate job at Airtel, have been a roller-coaster of ups and downs!
I’ve sweated through nights of uncertainty with bootstrapping the business and of struggling with the development of our product & the building out of the sales and traction of the business! And all this was done, while doing the regular activities of hiring and building a team, while chasing the fund-raising train and getting a crash course in investor management.
It’s been over 8 years of facing uncertainty on a daily basis related to many areas, including but not limited to business outcomes, cash flows, relationships with team members and investors and more.
And that’s why I can say with complete certainty – learning to deal with uncertainty is the single biggest life skill, we can develop!
And that’s why – for your benefit – I have penned down the 3 simple hacks that I use personally to deal with uncertainty on a daily basis and keep it from taking over my mind-space.
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1. Make peace with the outcomes!
Whenever you undertake a journey – in your student life or your career – which is not a conventionally trodden path, while you are not quite aware of how the journey will really play out, you will be able to identify what success looks like. And accordingly, what failure looks like.
It is CRITICAL to be able to identify these two outcomes. And visualise in detail what they look like. What the bright sunshine of success looks like and what the gloomy despair of failure will feel like!
And this is because the awareness will take the guesswork out of it. You can contemplate it, ruminate over it…experience it in your mind until it stops delighting you or scaring you! Essentially, once you are aware of the best and worst that can happen, you can make your peace with it and it loses the power to distract you!
I find that the best way to do this is to write down and answer these questions?
- How will I know when I have succeeded? OR failed?
- What will success/failure look like, in terms of my bank account, lifestyle, impact on relationships with family, friends and colleagues?
- How will success/failure make me feel about myself?
- How will success/failure make my family/friends feel about me?
These questions and the subsequent answers will give you a pretty good idea of the best and worst situations. And once you’ve dealt with that, your imagination can stop working overtime.
2. Always have a plan!
Most of us…have a plan.
Most of the time anyway.
Being an organised soul by nature (ok, tending to OCD if I’m honest), I have always had a plan. But this stint with my startup has taught me to write it down.
Plans in your head, are formless creatures…loose, uncertain, changing shape and identity with every new idea that floats into your head.
NOT A GOOD IDEA!
Put your plan down in black and white.
Pick the ONE key annual goal you want to achieve (and no, not more than one – you won’t achieve it anyway) Break it up into quarterly goals. Break those up into monthly micro goals.
Then put down the steps/activities that you need to do to achieve these micro-goals every month.
Then do them!!!
It really is that simple.
I do realise that doing this DOES NOT ensure that things will go according to plan. Nothing ever does. But this will allow you to make sense of the uncertain landscape of your current world & retain a sense of control amidst all this chaos.
It will help you visualise your journey as a series of smaller paths that you need to walk. And if you lose your way on one particular path, it will give you the opportunity to look up, re-orient yourself to the nearest goal and start walking again!
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3. Relax into the uncertainty!
I don’t know if you’ve done any yoga or stretching but this was the best way that I could think of to explain it.
You know when you do any challenging stretch and the part of your body being stretched protests…it basically hurts?
And when it hurts, you automatically hold your breath and tense up. Your entire body tenses up in sympathy for the pain that the afflicted muscle is struggling with.
And your yoga teacher will then tell you…relax into the stretch. Breathe out. Relax all those tense muscles. Instead of pulling away from the pain, lean into it. And the pain lessens.
It actually flirts with pleasure occasionally!
Uncertainty is like that.
If you tense up and pull away from it, it hurts more.
You have to lean into it…relax into it.
Learn to enjoy the pain.
And you can learn to do it because uncertainty is actually quite beautiful. And addictive!
The beauty of uncertainty is that it is NOT BLACK & WHITE! And that is the best part! And that’s because Black & White has no room for negotiation, for compromise.
But the grey of uncertainty does.
Grey has possibilities, room for growth and evolution.
And so, grey can be beautiful. It can be liberating, inspiring, exciting and everything that’s not real, practical or sensible.
So, if you’re struggling to deal with uncertainty, with situations that are not black or white, take a deep breath and enjoy the uncertainty.
Go with the flow.
See where it takes you.
Because life can be uncertain. But that’s ok!
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