BOO537 – Encore – Ideas for Living in Uncertainty

I had an inspiring conversation with Jennifer Garvey Berger, a co-author of a book, Simple Habits for Complex Times.

So I thought I would share just a few of the tips that she shared with me that are essential for us to navigate an uncertainty.

What she calls our ability to focus on the possible.

That's what we need to navigate uncertainty, the focus on the possible.

The three key practices we spend a lot of time talking about are asking different questions, seeking multiple perspectives, and seeing systems.

So let's go through those.

Asking different questions.

Most of the time, we really don't ask questions out of curiosity.

Instead, we ask questions to confirm what we already think or ask questions to show you what we know.

Now, this is nothing to beat yourself up over.

It's a pretty natural thing.

Our minds want to keep things simple.

So one way to keep things simple is to look for affirmations, things that support our current assumptions, our current worldview.

We would go crazy if we took in every bit of stimulus that we have.

So we tend to narrow our focus to what we expect to see.

Well, this can serve us really well day to day, but what it doesn't do is enable us to see things anew, see things with fresh eyes.

That's why asking different questions is so important.

So the first part of that is being conscious of the questions we're asking.

That's probably why kings had jesters, someone who could ask the silly or nonlinear questions or could turn a question on its head.

Asking different questions opens our minds to other possibilities.

The second habit that she talks about is seeking multiple perspectives.

There's a great possibility that what people do and why they do it makes a lot of sense to them.

So can we take the time to try to understand? I remember one time having a coach say to me, talk to that person as if they were from a different planet and really try to understand what is their world like? With that kind of curiosity and openness that there might be, at least in their mind's eye, a really valid way of looking at the situation, it would broaden my own perspective.

So seeking multiple perspectives instead of spending our time defending our own or staying in an echo chamber of people who think like us, how do I get out and broaden my worldview? That's going to increase my capacity to live in times of uncertainty.

And the third one is seeing systems, which means this.

I had an inspiring conversation with Jennifer Garvey Berger, a co-author of a book, Simple Habits for Complex Times.

So I thought I would share just a few of the tips that she shared with me that are essential for us to navigate an uncertainty.

What she calls our ability to focus on the possible.

That's what we need to navigate uncertainty, the focus on the possible.

The three key practices we spend a lot of time talking about are asking different questions, seeking multiple perspectives, and seeing systems.

So let's go through those.

Asking different questions.

Most of the time, we really don't ask questions out of curiosity.

Instead, we ask questions to confirm what we already think or ask questions to show you what we know.

Now, this is nothing to beat yourself up over.

It's a pretty natural thing.

Our minds want to keep things simple.

So one way to keep things simple is to look for affirmations, things that support our current assumptions, our current worldview.

We would go crazy if we took in every bit of stimulus that we have.

So we tend to narrow our focus to what we expect to see.

Well, this can serve us really well day to day, but what it doesn't do is enable us to see things anew, see things with fresh eyes.

That's why asking different questions is so important.

So the first part of that is being conscious of the questions we're asking.

That's probably why kings had jesters, someone who could ask the silly or nonlinear questions or could turn a question on its head.

Asking different questions opens our minds to other possibilities.

The second habit that she talks about is seeking multiple perspectives.

There's a great possibility that what people do and why they do it makes a lot of sense to them.

So can we take the time to try to understand? I remember one time having a coach say to me, talk to that person as if they were from a different planet and really try to understand what is their world like? With that kind of curiosity and openness that there might be, at least in their mind's eye, a really valid way of looking at the situation, it would broaden my own perspective.

So seeking multiple perspectives instead of spending our time defending our own or staying in an echo chamber of people who think like us, how do I get out and broaden my worldview? That's going to increase my capacity to live in times of uncertainty.

And the third one is seeing systems, which means this.