04/18/2025
What is uncertainty? It’s not an emotion. It’s not an object you can touch. It’s not a thought.
I would offer that it’s a nervous system response to unpredictable external conditions that it has 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥 to identify as dangerous. I say “learned” because we live in a society that has taught us for generations that success = conformity and predictability. Change and unpredictability themselves aren’t inherently dangerous.
Uncertainty only becomes dangerous when you 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘵 to it rather than chart a new course through it. When you’re leading through change in your business or organization, especially in times of escalating pervasive uncertainty like is happening now, you need to rewire your nervous system by unwinding the learned patterns of conformity.
When predictability is low, the amount of directions, possibilities, and actions before you seem infinite, and emotion and energy is heightened, you need to build your capacity to pause. To resist the generational momentum to solve, fix, and try to force a solution. To breathe deeply and lower your heart rate, calm your emotions, and come back to poise. To remind your nervous system that you are safe in this moment.
From that place, you can access the illogical gut wisdom of your body that top leaders have relied on to guide organizations through uncertainty for generations. Whether it’s ...
• an intuitive knowing that pierces through you,
• a powerful energy rising up the front of your body,
• a pull of healthy willpower to take action on something,
• words that come out of your mouth with such clarity that they shock even you,
• an emotional power that is clear,
.. or another way that you hear it, your body knows what to do.
Your body knows the best action to take to get you on the best path towards a destination that is impossible to know logically. And when you allow the space for the autopilot reactions to be witnessed and calm, you can hear it. And let yourself be guided.
Once you’re on that path, now you can engage your mind and logic to move along it.