The thing about uncertainty that is so powerful is how it influences your movement. For some people it can have a paralyzing effect, making any movement slow and painful – even halting you altogether. For others, uncertainty highlights the persistent level of risk that is always at play in the world, reminding you that uncertainty is not a bad thing. Recognizing its existence and managing through risk is essential for any measurably significant and meaningful progress.

Risk is what defines and drives success.

Has anything you have accomplished in your lifetime —that was significantly meaningful — come without some kind of personal risk? Did you risk capital? Time? Or your reputation in order to accomplish something you were driven towards and felt it was necessary to accomplish?

Investments that have certain outcomes always offer low yields. Risks and rewards are intrinsically entwined in any free-market environment. It’s fine to have a low risk-tolerance and you simply adjust not just your strategy but also lower your expectation for outcome as a result. It is fundamental to the dynamics of financial investing.

For some people success may look like avoiding uncertainty – but measurably significant and meaningful success at anything at anything amounts to understanding the odds and defying them.

Anyone can get lucky and defy the odds once in a while, but to do so consistently takes certain habits of thinking. Managing uncertainty effectively takes real discipline. And discipline is a function of the habitual way you think.

Leaders are those who are tasked with managing the uncertainties that impact the wellbeing of those they lead.

During periods when the uncertainty seem easily manageable, leadership is barely consequential. When mediocrity is acceptable, companies and even societies manage to plod along – maintaining the status quo, so long as no crisis presents itself. A leader’s ego might even take credit for the equanimity that provides acceptable levels of peace and prosperity. But the tranquility always eventually turns to crisis and exposes the incompetence of those incapable of leading in anything but good times.

An exceptionally competent leader doesn’t view good times as a time to coast.

They capitalize om ways to create a greater advantage than their competitors when others are blissfully adrift in the calm waters.

But what truly defines an exceptional leader is by the preparations they make for the storms they know will surely come. It takes discipline to remain prepared for the things you expect might happen, but to be ready for anything, especially the things you might not be able to expect, requires extreme competence.

There are three steps you can take to become fully competent as a leader in today’s world.

1.  Get comfortable being uncomfortable. You must step outside your comfort zone if you want to grow. It is impossible to rigorously interrogate reality when you perfectly satisfied with the way things are. Exceptional leaders are never fully satisfied with their own performance or the performance of those they influence.

2.  Make yourself insatiably curious. Epictetus warned us that you cannot learn that which you believe you already know. Are you a knowing being or a learning being? Learning requires you to admit what you do not know. It takes humility to admit your ignorance, and emotional intelligence to understand that this is your greatest strength as a leader. When you demonstrate both the need and ability to question, you serve as the ideal exemplar for those you look to you for guidance. Having a trusted peer group to question your answers and challenge your assumptions is one of the best ways to keep you on a positive learning curve and on the path to personal growth and development.

3.  Lean into you fear. Courage is not the absence of fears, but accepting that we have fears and refusing to allow them to cloud our judgement. You only become paralyzed by uncertainty when you fail to allow yourself to recognize your fears and use them to sharpen your awareness. A certain amount of fear is what makes you feel truly alive. All the joy you experience in life is the result of accomplishing things that are measurably significant and meaningful to you.

It is in the sense of satisfaction you feel from your accomplishments that brings the moments of overwhelming joy – or MoJo to your life. Without uncertainty life would not only be dull, it would be dangerous.

The quest for certainty amounts to the desire for a security blanket.

Every great human achievement and discovery has been realized because someone had the courage to take the steps necessary to seize the power of uncertainty and use it for a noble purpose.

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