How Wise People Handle Uncertainty

**Chip Conley** (0:00)
I might live three more years, I might live 30 more years, and the scenarios are very different. What is certain for me is that I'm living today, in this moment, and how do I want to live in this moment? And that is a beautiful thing. Laura Karstenstern at Stanford Center on Longevity has shown that when people have a perceived shorter amount of time left in their life, they focus less on the future and the past, and more on the present moment, and in so doing, they're happier.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:26)
This is The Midlife Chrysalis. Welcome to Wisdom Wednesdays with Chip Conley and Derek Gehl, your weekly conversation about thriving in midlife. Together, we explore the questions, insights and practices that help you live this chapter with more purpose, vitality and joy.

**Derek Gehl** (0:43)
Welcome to another episode of Wisdom Wednesday. My name is Derek Gehl, CEO here at MEA. I'm with our founder, Mr. Chip Conley. Chip, how are you doing?

**Chip Conley** (0:51)
I'm good. How are you, weirdo? Yeah, weirdo.

**Derek Gehl** (0:54)
Well, last week, last week- Weird from last week, yeah.

**Chip Conley** (0:57)
Yeah, last week we got into the weird kick, yes.

**Derek Gehl** (1:00)
I recently saw a video of you dancing across the campus with a boombox on your shoulder too. I think Walking on Sunshine.

**Chip Conley** (1:08)
Oh yeah, Walking on Sunshine. Wait, that was recently I did that. Wait. Yeah. Did someone video me on doing that?

**Derek Gehl** (1:18)
Oh yeah.

**Chip Conley** (1:19)
Wait, you're talking about a long time ago or just recently?

**Derek Gehl** (1:23)
Just recently. Yeah.

**Chip Conley** (1:24)
I didn't know anybody was videoing. That's okay. I'd still do it. But yeah. It was a gorgeous day. We were here in Santa Fe at that time. It was a gorgeous day. I just wanted it. We like to dance.
We don't require people to dance. We like people to dance before we start the session.
Rather than having people dance in Santa Fe, a gorgeous day in Santa Fe with the light and the sun, and we just went into the courtyard and we danced and it was really fun.

**Derek Gehl** (1:52)
Yeah. That went around Slack. The whole company watched you dance.

**Chip Conley** (1:55)
Oh, I'm not on Slack.

**Derek Gehl** (1:56)
Yeah.

**Chip Conley** (1:57)
Oh, okay. Well, we're not going to talk about weird this time. We're going to talk about uncertainty. Oh, geez.

**Derek Gehl** (2:04)
Yeah. We're going to talk on uncertainty. I feel like it's a good topic and because there's so much uncertainty right now. I mean, if you look at the news, it's nothing but uncertainty, but there's real uncertainty, right? I mean, the economic climate, the political climate, AI, what that holds for the future. I mean, uncertainty, you've been an entrepreneur all of your life. I mean, your life has been uncertainty. It feels like a good conversation to have right now.
You've been facing all sorts of uncertainty over the last, really a couple of decades with health and now, I mean, business, you're always navigating uncertainty. How do you navigate that? What are your tools? What's in the Chip Conley tool kit of uncertainty?

**Chip Conley** (2:48)
Well, there are a lot of tools out there. One of them is to welcome it and just to say like, come on, bring it on, bring on some uncertainty. We have something called TQ, credit to Kerry Cardinale, who came up with that term and that we actually trademarked, Transitional Intelligence. The idea of learning how to roll with the punches is a skill that we get better at as we get older. Let's start with that.
To use some psychology here for a moment. When we're young, our brain is fast and focused, but it's like a pinball in a pinball machine. We can be very reactive. As we get older, we're able to roll with the punches partly because we don't catastrophize as much. We feel like we have maybe the capacity to get through something, and we've been through a bunch of crap before, and you just know you're going to get to the other side of it.
Don't sweat the small stuff in the course of your lifetime. How important is this? There's lots of ways to have the voice in the head to try to help. But I think one of the key things here when it comes to uncertainty is to, first of all, just say, that's life. Life is liminal. Dan Gilbert, the Harvard professor, said human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished. But he might as well have just said, the world is a work in progress that we mistakenly think won't change. The reality is the world is always changing. We are changing. We're evolving.