#571 How to Get Better at Holding Uncertainty at Work

**Sarah** (0:00)
We are borrowing brilliance, I think, for the first time, from a feeling. What does it look like to live with uncertainty, to have the capacity to hold that uncertainty and to kind of find your way through it? The thing that people feel most uncertain about is careers.

**Helen** (0:16)
You can't ignore this. It's very useful to think, how do I want to respond to it so it works better for me?

**Sarah** (0:21)
You can't change uncertainty, but you can change your relationship with uncertainty, and that's much easier than you think. So what we are trying to unlearn is uncertainty to certainty. What we want to relearn is uncertainty to the capacity to hold.

**Helen** (0:37)
I always want to create clarity and take action in uncertainty and I'm not saying that is always good. This whole podcast has made me think, like, how could you hold it for longer?

**Sarah** (0:47)
Trust the process, but that can feel hard.

**Helen** (0:50)
Do you think there is a limit to how much uncertainty you can hold?

**Sarah** (0:59)
Hi, I'm Sarah. And I'm Helen, and this is the Squiggly Careers Podcast, where every week we borrow some brilliance and try to turn that curiosity into some useful action for you and your Squiggly Career.

**Helen** (1:10)
Make sure that you are subscribed to Squiggly Careers wherever you listen or you watch. It will mean that all of our episodes go right to the top of your playlists.

**Sarah** (1:19)
So today, we are borrowing brilliance, I think, for the first time from a feeling. Are we taking the idea too far?

**Helen** (1:25)
Who chose this one?

**Sarah** (1:27)
I did.
I was like, I think people are feeling really uncertain and there's a lot of uncertainty in the world generally, but also more individually for people when they think about their work and their career. So what about borrowing brilliance from a feeling? Obviously, I then got very carried away. I think I could now do a 90 to two hour podcast on uncertainty because I've done a lot of research.

**Helen** (1:50)
Sarah and I met this morning before this and we were having a conversation.

**Sarah** (1:53)
Are you going to tell people?

**Helen** (1:55)
I don't know. I mean, we'll come on to what we are. We come on. We learned about our own responses to uncertainty, but it was more after talking about it for about 45 minutes. And I was like, so it's all very interesting.

**Sarah** (2:06)
I was like, this is absolutely fascinating.

**Helen** (2:08)
Sarah has like read so many things. I mean, what I love about you, but you like read so many things. You've connected dots and you're like, that's brilliant. And I was so good. I listened to that podcast twice.

**Sarah** (2:16)
I did listen to it twice.

**Helen** (2:19)
People do not have to listen to this episode twice. Though somebody did email. Did you see that yesterday? Nicola Asker has emailed us yesterday. So shout out to Nicola.
Because she has listened to our episode on drawing twice. Cause it made such a big impact to her about kind of drawing. And I think we had like, you know, there was the episode where we had the post-it notes and we were kind of doing all the things. And she's really like taken it into action and she's doing lots more drawing to help her. It was brilliant.

**Sarah** (2:43)
I think I might have seen her share something on LinkedIn. That looks better than our drawings. Obviously.

**Helen** (2:47)
It's fine. It's fine. Take it and improve on everyone.

**Sarah** (2:51)
So should we talk about uncertainty?

**Helen** (2:52)
Let's talk about uncertainty. Let's do it. Sit in. Everybody ready.

**Sarah** (2:55)
It might get comfy. It's not going to be that long. Well, yeah, we'll see.
So I think the one of the conclusions that I've come to from reading, watching, listening to lots of different things is, you know, what's the job to be done here? And I think you can start off by thinking, well, I need to move from uncertainty to certainty. Yeah, because, you know, uncertainty doesn't feel great. You feel out of control. You might feel overwhelmed. So what's the opposite of that? Well, you know, I need to get to certainty.

**Helen** (3:24)
Just can I just one minute before we talk? Because I'm just trying to think about just some examples, which I appreciate you talking about in such a broad sense. And I'm trying to make it specific. So if you could just bear with me for a second.
Uncertainty at work for people now might look like, well, I'm just thinking of conversations we have with people just to make it like a sort of a factual feeling, if that makes sense. What are you hearing that people feel uncertain about?