Why you should embrace uncertainty

Seven simple tips for living an extraordinary life

“The future torments us; the past holds us back, that’s why the present escapes us”. — Gustave Flaubert

Good old Gustave was right.

The fear of the future prevents us from enjoying the now. But above all, it deprives us of leading an enriching life full of adventure and discovery.
The future is uncertain. And we don’t like uncertainty. We want to be reassured. So, we imagine all sorts of stratagems to avoid it hurting us.

We choose to lead a life regulated like a piece of music. We do what everyone else does by getting into a 9–5 routine, imagining that it will free us from the risks of finding ourselves in a difficult situation.

Even if this 9–5 only satisfies us halfway or not. Many of us have made this choice. This explains why nearly 85% of us are not happy at work.
We might as well say we are unhappy in life.
Because we didn’t dare to express our uniqueness by doing something else. Something different that resembles us more.

We preferred to be unhappy rather than to risk being happy.

One prefers to choose a sad and ordinary life to which one has become accustomed to a hypothetical happy life.

What we know reassures us. What we don’t know terrifies us.

We have got it all wrong.

A 9–5 is infinitely riskier than an independent job. Because you can be fired at any time and be trapped in an even worse situation.

Cultivating side-hustles or taking your destiny into your own hands (by being your boss) is, on the contrary, safer. But this is not something we want you to understand. On the contrary, we do everything to ensure you don’t dare leave this well-oiled system. The carrot is the pension we dangle in front of you, which we know you will never enjoy.

To prefer the present comfort to the possibility of living enriching experiences is to choose to lead an ordinary and miserable life.
It’s choosing to grow old before time.
It is to deprive yourself of the opportunity to live an exciting life.

“Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust” — Samuel Ullmann.

To choose uncertainty over unhappiness is to choose to learn and grow.

• It is to accept to be surprised,
• It is to convince yourself that life is happening for you and not against you,
• It’s to be resolutely optimistic about what life has in store for you.
• It is to remain young at heart and let our inner child express itself by allowing it to be amazed by the tiniest discovery.

To fear uncertainty on the other hand is to allow cynicism and pessimism to invade our soul and risk one day being consumed by regrets.

A way to embrace uncertainty?
1. It is to face it.
2. By having fun challenging it. By doing something every day that you fear doing.
3. By writing the book you always wanted to write but kept procrastinating,
4. By creating your own business with all the effort and stress that comes with it, and with the conviction that you’ll succeed and learn things.
5. Or by starting a side hustle that you are passionate about, like singing, drawing, or teaching,
6. It is by daring to go to places you have never been before,
7. By engaging in a conversation with someone you don’t know and listening to what they have to say,

It is, in short, by discovering the world again as you did as a child, with the same curiosity.

Closing thoughts

One day forced myself to speak in front 2'000 students. The former French Prime Minister and professor of economics Raymond Barre was giving a lecture at my university. I was terrified. I stuttered, which made many people laugh. But I did it, and I realized that it wasn’t that complicated.
Nothing is certain except that not making uncertainty a way of life will make your life miserable and ordinary.
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