Mastering the unknown is a key skill of high-level Mental Endurance. With this skill, you can
Reduce the number of opportunities you pass up on or miss out on.
Push through fear and open yourself up to MANY more experiences, skills, and fruitful growth.
Rise head and shoulders above the competition as you regularly take on unusual or challenging projects with ease.
I’ll start from an endurance standpoint, then explain its benefits in professional life.
As an endurance rider, I repeatedly had to evolve through all kinds of unknown quantities as I built up to being able to put out a 100-mile ride at will. To give you a sense of scale, a 100-mile ride is up to 9 hours long, involves a round trip riding 50 miles from home along different outbound and inbound routes, and takes me across the span of a day's warmth as well as through through multiple temperature zones. Some of the unknowns I dealt with along the way were:
Finding new routes as I built my riding distance to over 50 miles from home (100-mile round trip) while also ensuring they were safe for a solo rider (traffic, neighborhood, road conditions, etc.).
Becoming skilled in dressing to meet expected weather changes over the span of a 7 to 9 hour ride, since I had to survive the entire ride in whatever cycling kit I left home in.
Learning my own performance levels so I could layer on the miles and intensity correctly and know I could go the distance.
Developing self-sufficient solutions to possible in-the-field perils, such as multiple flat tires.
Over and above these training developments, once I had logged the miles and hours such that I knew the performance levels of my bike, myself, the usual route, and my endurance, there was “the big unknown” that’s just part of every ride. Every ride represents heading out into 7 to 9 hours of the unknown overall, even with your prepared knowledge bank. Each day’s traffic, weather, and physical performance is always unique. I learned that that overall unknown would have me feeling vague discomfort and worry -- until I actually headed out and got into the flow of the ride itself.
Ultimately, I made managing the unknown a habitual response that let me respond strategically, rather than avoid or put off or delay. In doing so, I had greater willingness to take on longer, harder, and more complex efforts.
Engaging with the unknown more willingly translates directly into an edge in professional life as well. How often have you held off from reaching out for help or mentoring, picking up the phone for info, launching an ambitious project, asking for a raise, looking for a new and better position that fulfills your purpose, all from the great unknowns involved?
Turn your avoidance of the unknown on its head! Here are some tips to engage with, rather than avoid, that which involves the unknown.
Know the “unknown” phenomenon exists so you can get an intellectual grasp. The next time you shy away from something, change your thinking. “Oh yeah, this is fear of the unknown - pretty natural and I’ve probably also been taught a few bad fear reactions by family and society. I’m going to manage this so I get out there, do more, go farther. I can treat the unknown any way I like, so I’ll regard it as a springboard to success.”
Get into action. Action changes unknown into known. Action dissipates fear. It does it by transforming the unknown into the known. The secret of dealing with the unknown is, once you've done it once, it's KNOWN. You just have to tweak and refine it. Get doing and experiment with your action, project, or endeavor in manageable ways. Until you actually do it, you’ll never learn.
Cultivate willingness to get into the flow. If you feel really reluctant, commit to 10, 20, or 30 minutes doing the action that translates unknown into known, and see how that works out. It usually takes only a few minutes to get into the flow and your consciousness to be fully engaged in doing, rather than worrying. Once you get into flow, you're on your way!
The secret of dealing with the unknown is, once you've done it once, it's KNOWN. You just have to tweak and refine it.
Understand that once you’re in the flow, your consciousness is effortlessly dealing with the issues. In other words, it’s taking care of business getting the effort (ride, project, session) done. The things you wasted so much pain on worrying about “what if THIS happens?” before the event become a matter-of-fact issue you just deal with. Or they never happen at all.
Treat each prototype session as an experiment. Give yourself permission to try, learn, and try again. To do it and fail gives you much more valuable information than to never do it at all, which gives you zero information.
Remember that the unknown is a shifting target. As you translate more and more unknown into known with action and prototyping, the unknown doesn't go away, it just changes. A new route, a new project, speaking to a larger audience, a different business skill.
Except - now you know how to roll with it!
The more you can manage the unknown habitually and as part of your professional skill set, the MORE success, achievement, and fulfillment you can create as a natural part of your daily work.
What UNKNOWN area that you've let stop you will you engage with today?
Keep Growing,
Katherine Lieber coaches and trains on self-leadership, limitlessness, energy health, inner power, and healing the wounded professional to recover core vision, joy, and high-powered performance in the workplace. She is the founder of TitaniumBlue Leadership. Be limitless - be the hero in a world that needs you.
© 2019 Katherine R. Lieber & TitaniumBlue Leadership
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