Simone Stolzoff

It is part of what it means to be human.

And in that case, you have to just accept the fact that you might not know until you know.

Yeah, there's some research about psychological distancing.

And so, for example, if you are able to talk about yourself in the third person or give yourself advice that you might give to a friend, it can help you sort of attach yourself from a situation that you're clinging to so deeply.

You can look for the potential upsides of uncertainty.

So, so often when we look at uncertainty, we see it as a threat because biologically we were hunter-gatherers in the jungle and there was a wrestling in the bushes.

Not knowing the source of that sound could have potentially been lethal.

And so our tendency as humans is to try and find certainty wherever we can.

It's the reason why we like music that's based on repeating patterns where we can anticipate what's to come.

Like I know where this is going.

This feels safe and secure.

But there's another side of uncertainty that we often discount, which is uncertainty is the source of mystery, of serendipity.

There is so much that we can't anticipate in life, and that's part of what makes life so magical.

I'll give one quick example from the business world that I think is a nice one to think about.

So in the early 2010s, there was a startup in the Bay Area, and it was called TinySpec, and it was this online multiplayer game

And it was super hyped.

They were covered in the New York Times when they launched.

They'd raised $17 million.

They had tens of thousands of active players in the first week.

And the founder decided to do something that others thought was crazy, which is he decided to shut the company down, sort of at the peak of its success.