Outsmarting Uncertainty

Create Your Best Life amid Chaos and Anxiety

Mark Valenziano

• Publisher: Mark Valenziano
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781737524410
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Uncertainty can lead to stress, worry, and doubt.

Uncertainty can lead to feelings of inadequacy and insecurity.

Uncertainty can stifle your progress and development.

But uncertainty isn't going anywhere; life will always be full of it. So, what if you could turn uncertainty to your advantage? Outsmarting Uncertainty will help you do just that. Find your Uncertainty Sweet Spot to take charge-and bring balance and composure to your life. Instead of worrying, use your three Pillars of Strength to focus on improvement, accomplishment, and a lifestyle of happiness. And by rolling your inner movie, you will write, direct, and produce the perfect life for you to star in.

Outsmarting Uncertainty won't remove uncertainty from your life, but it will guide you toward acceptance, social intelligence, purpose, and resilience-in other words, toward the powers you already have within you.

Introduction

Uncertainty can lead to stress, worry, and doubt. Uncertainty can lead to feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. Uncertainty can stifle your progress in personal, professional, and organizational development. But what if you could look at uncertainty differently and turn it to your advantage?

Uncertainty can be an empowering tool that inspires and propels you forward, helping you stay motivated and driven. It can be a benchmark indicating where you are and bring direction to where you want to be. When you take charge of uncertainty, you bring balance and composure to your life. When you outsmart it, you find yourself focusing on improvement, accomplishment, and happiness. Outsmarting uncertainty is an ongoing attitude and process. You might even call it a lifestyle. This book helps you start to embody that lifestyle, highlighting the powers of acceptance, social intelligence, purpose, and resilience. It introduces ways to let uncertainty help you take more charge, enjoy more success, and be undeterred by uncertainty.

Later I will introduce my Balanced-Uncertainty Index. You will understand the Uncertainty Sweet Spot is not living in complete certainty. This index asks questions that measure your level of worry or discomfort with general areas of your life. The gap between your answers and the Sweet Spot is your personal opportunity for development and growth.

Let’s first put uncertainty into perspective. There are what I call global, or distant, uncertainties over which you have little or no immediately impactful control. You could spend your time and energy worrying about the actions of our world leaders. You might be worrying about the future in terms of climate change, world peace, the US stock market and economy, or the debris and micro-plastics in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Unequivocally, these are valid and important issues. I am not saying you should be disinterested or not participate in conversations, solutions, or elections. You should! But if you are not going to get actively involved in these sorts of big issues, then I suggest you don’t spend your limited energy worrying about them. If you are not working within one of these silos, you cannot personally control the outcome of the uncertainty. Stay aware and be knowledgeable, but don’t fixate. When a person spends too much of their “worry energy” on the distant uncertainties, they may be filling their life with anxiety and even become distraught. Too much anxiousness and distress can result in stagnation. We each have a finite amount of energy to spend. The first step in outsmarting uncertainty is to accept that premise and to focus your energy on the uncertainties closer to home, the ones over which you have more immediate control. In fact, this book will even encourage you to create some uncertainties in your life. We all need a balanced level of uncertainty and vulnerability to keep us inquisitive, creative, and moving forward. In areas of management, teamwork, personal development, and relationships, absolute certainty may mean you are closed-minded and lacking curiosity, vulnerability, and creativity. This might mean you are rigid and even a bit dictatorial.

When there is uncertainty, leadership becomes crucial. We look to our leaders for guidance, direction, and confidence during times of uncertainty or uncertain situations. Whether they are community leaders, political leaders, business leaders and bosses, or parents or spouses, we look to them to be our beacons. You can tell from that list that we are all leaders, whether it is of only ourselves or of teams of hundreds. Leading through times of high uncertainty is difficult. Our social, family, and work lives can be flipped upside down. In organizations, operations and decisions are more challenging and carry more risk. In some cases, plans and strategies are completely tossed out, and you might feel as if you’re starting over. But leadership is still required.

So, leading through times of high uncertainty is your opportunity to exhibit compassion, empathy, and confidence—toward yourself and others. These important elements of leadership will calm nerves and coalesce your team. When you raise up the sights, achievements, confidence, optimism, and happiness of the individuals, the success of the whole is elevated.

This unique look at uncertainty can be a new growth frontier for you, personally and professionally. This book will help put you in charge of your future, resulting in more accomplishments, less worry, and more happiness.

Please think about your future as any moment in time after this very moment right now. It can be a few hours, days, weeks, months, or years from now. Too often people think about the future as a distant point hovering over the horizon, and they fail to give it any attention since it seems so far away. To help you face a front-and-center future, this book also introduces the Pillars of Strength that I have found fuel my resilience no matter what life throws at me. Each of our lives is its own unique journey, but one thing we have in common is that journey is often along bumpy roads. Let’s face it—life is difficult and can sometimes be downright cruel. Without these pillars to lean on, it could be easy to stumble.

Although the backdrop for this book is stories and insights from my life filled with uncertainty due to challenges, change, adversity, and transformation, this book is about you. It’s about getting you to think differently: about the world, about your future, about you. It’s about what I call the inner movie, you writing, directing, starring in, and producing your perfect life. Reflection is a personal thing, so, executive or administrative, wealthy or wanting, this “you” I’m talking to is, truly, you, no matter who you are or want to be.

How will you turn change and uncertainty to your advantage? The dynamic nature of life makes them unavoidable, so how will you embrace them and gain strength from them?

Reading these words, are you starting to feel a bit of tension in your shoulders or gut? Do you tend to avoid, resist, or even fear change? Let’s think about this for a moment. Whether you realize it all the time or not, you’ve been successfully adapting and progressing all your life, and you are better because of it. You can’t honestly say you are the exact same person you were two, five, or ten years ago, can you? You might not be exactly who you want to be at this moment, but this book will help you get yourself there.

Having the ability to thrive through all types of change and uncertainty is integral to staying grounded and happy. One way to thrive through change is to always stay a step ahead. Let’s start by looking each type of change in the face.

Generally, there are three types of change we encounter throughout life:

• Change that is thrust upon us and is often unwanted
• Change that naturally occurs throughout life
• Change that we desire and initiate

Change that is thrust upon us includes accidents, injuries, and illness and divorce or unemployment, your own or for loved ones. Often, this kind of change is difficult and trying. It alters our mood. Our outlook. And if we’re not careful, it will change the course of our life. We may not possess control to halt, reverse, or avoid these situations and their accompanying uncertainty, but we own the power to control how we respond. How we react. And how we move forward in a positive way. We own the power to be resilient. It is okay to want happiness. It is okay to move forward, evolve, and grow. If a dark cloud hangs just above you, brought on by events such as the death of a loved one, the unwanted ending of a personal or professional relationship, or unexpected financial strain, be kind and compassionate to yourself. Give yourself permission to grieve and feel the pain. Give yourself permission to look to the future and give yourself permission to be happy.

Change that occurs over time is inevitable. Friends and neighbors move in and out of our lives. Jobs change. Our political leaders change; some we like, and some we don’t. Marriage. Births. Disappointments. Victories. We make money. We lose money. Our youthful agility is replaced with aches and pains. It’s all part of life. But again, we possess the power to control how we respond. How we react.

And then there is the change that we seek. That we desire. That we initiate and implement. I like to think of this transformation as development and growth. And although change often carries uncertainty and trepidation with it, this type of change is backed with excitement and enthusiasm. Even when this change is extraordinarily difficult, like kicking a bad habit out of your life, I urge you to consider the process of change as a positive step forward in your life. With each step you take, let more and more of your resistance melt away.

Your first challenge is to get your head right! Do you consider yourself flexible, adaptable, and open to change? Or are you more of the rigid type who is resistant? For the rest of this short book to have any impact on you personally, you need to see yourself as open to change. Adaptable. If this does not come easily for you, I suggest you do this simple exercise for one minute: Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Conjure up a good image of your face. Picture yourself with a big, proud smile. Feel the sense of pride and satisfaction from accomplishment. Know that you have the power to be flexible and adaptable. Think, I can take on the challenge of change. I’m adaptable. I got this. For the remainder of this book, keep seeing yourself as adaptable and flexible. Keep this picture of yourself in mind, and let’s get started!

The Powerful Source of Freedom Within You

Acceptance is far more freeing and empowering than denial or resistance are. When we do not have the power to change a situation or extricate ourselves from it, then our best alternative is to accept it and focus our positive energy on things we can control. Life is filled with those uncertainties you cannot control or change. Learn to accept them, so you can prepare accordingly rather than worry.

I was first confronted with this concept at the age of fifteen, when I was told I was going blind. It was a sunny spring day. I was enjoying a normal day at school. Or so I thought.

I was new at the high school in Warren, New Jersey. We had moved just in time for me to start...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• vNote
• viiPreview
• 1Scene 1: Introduction
• 9Scene 2: The Powerful Source of Freedom Within You
• 13Scene 3: Maximized Social Intelligence Minimizes Uncertainty
• 35Scene 4: Build Your Pillars of Strength!
• 43Scene 5: Get the Heck Out of Your Own Way!
• 49Scene 6: Life Is a Balancing Act
• 57Scene 7: Dude, What Are You Doing?
• 63Scene 8: You Are Your Own Brand
• 67Scene 9: Go for It!
• 73Scene 10: Life Is Cyclical, and You Are Not Exempt
• 77Scene 11: One Last Thought
• 81Roll the Credits
• 83Get Your Tickets for the Next Show