The Increase Your Impact Newsletter is your Monday morning edge, created for growth-minded individuals. Each issue is a 2-3-minute read that delivers actionable strategies and powerful stories straight from my work with the world’s top performers. I 'd love to have you join my weekly email list and join thousands of others who are striving to get better, just like you.
IYI Newsletter: how to navigate ambiguity...
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Approximately a 2-minute read Good Morning! Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about ambiguity. Not in some abstract, philosophical sense, but in the way it quietly shows up in everyday life when we are not completely sure what we are doing, why we are doing it, or whether we should fully commit to it. One definition of ambiguity is "a lack of exactness, " and that word, exactness, has been sticking with me because I’ve noticed how much hesitation and indecision can come from simply not making something clear enough for ourselves. I know what it feels like to overthink a situation, to look at a decision from every possible angle, to reconsider what I’m doing and why I’m doing it, and then to convince myself that one more conversation or a little more information will finally give me the certainty I’m looking for. Sometimes that is wisdom, but if I’m being truthful with myself, there are also times when my perceived thoughtfulness is just a way to avoid the discomfort of making a decision. Ambiguity gives us somewhere to hide, because if we have not fully committed, we cannot fully fail; and if we never clearly define what we're trying to do, we never have to face whether we're actually doing it. There comes a point when clarity is no longer something we can wait for; it becomes something we have to create. There are so many things in life we cannot make certain: we do not control the outcome, we do not know if every idea will work, and we do not know how every chapter will unfold; but even when the outcome is uncertain, our process does not have to be. Consider walking into the gym without a plan. When you do so, it's easy to drift from one thing to another. However, when you know exactly what you're training, what exercises you're doing, and what the intention is, you suddenly have something to commit to. I think the same is true in much bigger areas of life, because sometimes what feels like a motivation problem is really an ambiguity problem, and sometimes what feels like a lack of discipline is simply the result of never making the decision clear enough in the first place. It is hard to be disciplined around something that has never been defined, hard to trust a process you have never built, and hard to know if you are making progress when you have never decided what progress looks like. That is why precision, not rigidity or pretending that you have everything figured out, is so important. There is power in being able to say, "this is what I’m going to do, this is why I’m going to do it, and this is what it looks like today. If it does not work, I can adjust, and if I learn something new, I can change." I would rather make a clear decision, move, learn, and adjust than spend months standing at the intersection because I am afraid of choosing the wrong road. The question to ask yourself is: Where in my life can I become more precise? I do not think the goal is to eliminate uncertainty from our lives. I think the goal is to create enough exactness inside the uncertainty that we can still move forward with conviction. See you next Monday! Justin If you are interested in working with one of our process coaches or booking a keynote presentation for your organization, reply to this email, and we'll connect! If this email was forwarded to you and you want it to come directly to your inbox, click here to subscribe |
Justin Su'a
The Increase Your Impact Newsletter is your Monday morning edge, created for growth-minded individuals. Each issue is a 2-3-minute read that delivers actionable strategies and powerful stories straight from my work with the world’s top performers. I 'd love to have you join my weekly email list and join thousands of others who are striving to get better, just like you.
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