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Business Book — January 2016

uncertainty Walking in the Barnes and Noble back in January, I wanted to find a business book that spoke to me. One that screamed at me to read it. Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance by Jonathan Fields was that book.

With my photography business, I go through almost daily uncertainty. Uncertainty if I’m posting the right things, if I’m doing the right things to grow my business. Then on shoot days, I go through uncertainty if my world is going to go well or if they will hate me, my photographs, etc.

While somedays the uncertainty is crazy, there are other days were it is at a bare minimum. This book points out that it is hard to have genius without some uncertainty. Fields said, “Genius always starts with a question, not an answer. Eliminate the question and your eliminate the possibility of genius.”

Fields also believes that it is not uncertainty that we run from but the fear of judgement or risk of loss. With so much uncertainty in our lives, Fields suggests making routine and rituals to keep us calm about our uncertainty. He introduces the idea of certainty anchors — the practice or process that adds something known and reliable to your life when you may otherwise feel like you’re spinning off in a million different directions.

Fields had a lot of good points in his book, but the one that stuck out the most to me is about your story line of failure. We see one worse case scenario it might go and then we put it on repeat in our head. “The more repeat it the more we believe it to be the absolute truth, the only possible outcome.” Fields suggests that we should reframe the story. Write down what you happen if you go to zero (fail to recovery), if you do NOTHING (sideways story), and if you succeed. Still and spin it is what he calls it, but the final step is to add more detail to the success story and then put it on repeat.  I can tell you that having a success story running constantly in my head would be more affective than a story that tells me I fail. I guess I need to go try this.

 

Go read his book. Learn more about turning your uncertainty into something that will help you create the incredible stuff. If you want to find out more about Jonathan Fields or find out about any of his other books, go to his website.

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