What We Don’t Know Can Drive Us: My Experience with Uncertainty
“Uncertainty must be present in the quest to create anything deeply meaningful to you as the creator and, should you choose to seek value from others in exchange for your creation, to the world.” – Jonathan Fields
A lot of people ask me the following question:
“Pat, when you were laid off and decided to do business for yourself online, how did you know it was going to work?”
The answer is, I didn’t.
But that’s why I think it worked.
The fear of not being able to provide for my family and the fear of not knowing what was going to happen next gave me the drive to take action and go above and beyond my normal self to make something special happen.
Without the catalyst of fear and pressure, I would not be where I’m at today.
Think about that.
Fear – something that we as humans typically try to avoid – was an important ingredient in my success, and it’s an ingredient that we see in a lot of other people’s success stories too.
One story that truly spoke to me was a story from Jonathan Fields, a brilliant author and entrepreneur who I met briefly last year at Blog World Expo 2010 in Las Vegas. I really got to know him when I watched his 20 minute TED presentation, Turning Fear into Fuel, which I’ve embedded for you below.
After watching this I became very inspired, but it’s also when I realized just how important a role fear played in my own success story too.
Jonathan recently contacted me to see if I’d like to take a look at his upcoming book, appropriately titled: Uncertainty – Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance.
To be honest, I get asked to read other people’s new books all of the time and review them here on the blog. 99% of the time I say no and often I just don’t have the time, but since I already knew and respected Jonathan and his work and this particular topic of taking leaps of faith and going into the unknown is very personal to me, I was happy to accept and read a free copy to review.
I have seldom recommended books here are on the blog and there are only a select few that I would actually count as required reading – The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk and Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath – and I would absolutely add Uncertainty to that list.
We all know that the unknown can paralyze us and just stop us from doing the work that we need to be doing in order to reach our goals. In this book, Jonathan shows us how to harness that fear and actually welcome it and use it to our advantage.
A lot of it has to do with our mindset, obviously, but the book also reveals exercises and actions that we can take that will bring us to a level of certainty and confidence to move forward create.
There’s a chapter that I especially like called “See the Forest” that really struck a chord with me because it talks about balance, and what happens when things get in our way and the questions that enter our brains like whether to keep going, change course or just give up and start something new take up most of our energy.
Jonathan, if you’re reading this thank you for sharing your knowledge with us and allowing me to get an early read of your book. It’s very different from the other books I’ve talked about on the blog before, which is why I speak highly of it.
The book comes out on Thursday, the 29th of September – but you can pre-order it at the discounted price off of Amazon if you wish.
That’s not an affiliate link and I don’t receive any kind of compensation if you purchase this book. The only thing I did receive was a free copy to review and I would not write this post if I didn’t feel it was a book worth reading.
It’s always good to read a good book, and I’m always happy to pass along the good ones that I’ve read to you.
Have a great weekend everyone!
One more week until the Financial Blogger’s Conference, and if you’ll be in attendance I can’t wait to meet you there!
Cheers!
Tagged as: books, uncertainty
0 comments:
Post a Comment