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Foreign.
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This is Open Mind.
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Welcome to a brand new week. Here is your Mantra I am allowed to not have all the answers. I'm Jemma Speg and every Monday I give you a simple but powerful phrase to consider and bring into your life. A philosophy to guide you in the week ahead and hopefully even beyond. In each episode, I unpack what our Mantra really means, how it has shown up in my own life, and how you can bring it into yours with journal prompts, tips and psychological strategies to help you take this mantra and put it into action at Open Mind. We value your support, so please make sure to share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review and follow Mantra to to help others discover the show. For more exclusive content for your monthly bonus episodes for early access and on top of that ad free listening, join our Open Mind plus community on Apple Podcasts each month. I love responding to your questions, dilemmas, thoughts, comments in our bonus episodes. So if you want to be included in one of those, you can leave a comment on this episode or DM me on Instagram at Mantra Open Mind. Stick around. We'll be right back after this short pause.
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Okay, let's get right into it. It is time for this week's mantra. I am allowed to not have all the answers. What we're really talking about today is uncertainty, right? It's uncertainty. Being okay with uncertainty, being okay with unknown outcomes, being okay with fear, and having the compassion and the trust in ourselves that we will make it through even if we don't have certainty about what exactly we will be facing. Let's begin this mantra with just a really basic explanation as to why we as a species, you and I, seem to be so paralyzed by uncertainty, perhaps more than anything else. In fact, I think that it is basically like the root ingredient, the root of many, many fears. Our fear of sickness or illness, our fear of death, our fear of the future of honestly, most things. We can really trace it back to just being uncertain about how things are going to turn out for us. Uncertainty really frightens us because, you know, from an evolutionary perspective, the unknown has always carried more potential threat. Our brains are wired to prioritize survival, which means they are constantly scanning for danger. When something is uncertain or unpredictable, our amygdala, which is the brain's fear center, interprets it as a possible thing threat. And this activates our fight or flight response, flooding our bodies with stress hormones, things like cortisol, things like adrenaline. That's what gives you that, like, kind of tense edge. Even if there is no real danger, the absence of clarity in itself feels unsafe. And so uncertainty becomes something to avoid or in most circumstances, to attempt to control. You know, the thing I always say to people who really struggle with a fear of uncertainty is it's actually your brain trying to do something right. It's your brain trying to do the right thing. And we can commend our brain for that and thank our brain for that and still obviously realize that it's not entirely helpful, but it's actually not a sign that things are going wrong psychologically. Uncertainty, yes, it challenges our survival instincts. It also challenges our deep emotional and psychological and kind of spiritual need for control and stability. Another thing about us as humans, we love a pattern. We love predictability because this allows us to conserve mental energy. When we know what's coming, our brain can kind of create a blueprint or a map of how to act. And that reduces our cognitive load, leaving more time for other activities that allow us to kind of emotionally, physically, creatively flourish. Uncertainty, though, erases that map. There is no blueprint, leaving us with too many possible outcomes to process and for our brain to kind of place. And so the stress compounds. It gets louder, then anxiety and fear takes its place. And then I feel like it gets to this turning point where just, like, everything breaks loose and you feel very, very confused. This is why psychologists talk about this thing known as the intolerance of uncertainty, which is this exact feeling, the discomfort we feel when we cannot predict or plan counter to what brains really desire. Something to note, some people actually feel it more often than others, perhaps due to activity in the amygdala, which may be why you relate more to this desire for knowledge and for knowing than someone else in your life. Because it's not just about knowing what will happen. It's about wanting to feel powerful and wanting to be able to prepare. It's much deeper than just, I want to know. Finally, I think that uncertainty strikes at our sense of identity and meaning. Existential psychology highlights that much of our anxiety, at its core actually stems from some of those ultimate unknowns. Death, freedom, isolation, meaninglessness. When faced with uncertainty, whether in relationships, careers, health, life, we are reminded of how fragile and uncontrollable a lot of our life can be. And this awareness, I've experienced it, I'm sure you have too. It naturally unsettles us because it shakes our narrative of stability. And purpose doesn't mean that purpose and meaning doesn't exist. It just means that we can't really find the answer right now. What I found is that, you know, actually leaning into uncertainty and being like, okay, yeah, maybe I don't know, everything really actually helps with this. Let me explain this a little bit further. I love this one image I have seen a couple of times of someone being like, oh, my God, I can't control everything. And that being framed in a really negative way. And then there's another person in the image that's like, oh, I can't control everything. And that's, like, such a freeing realization for them. It's really a matter of perspective. I think instead of seeing this as a failure of agency or that us humans are powerless or whatever, whatever, it becomes like a recognition that actually life was never meant to be fully controlled in the first place. Like, that's actually not what we want to do. And having that understanding allows us to really tap out of that exhausting narrative we fall into sometimes that, you know, if we just tried hard enough, if we just thought about this long enough, we could predict everything, we could get all the answers, we could control it all. I'm going to be the one to tell you this. It's just never going to happen. And I'm saying this as someone who used to be obsessed with, like, knowing the future, knowing what was going to happen. You just can't. And that's either terrifying or incredibly freeing. And when you reframe it as something that is freeing and that allows you to just relax a little bit, you focus more on what you have right now, what you're grateful for, what you can think and feel, and what is real in this moment. And if you want an even deeper explanation for this psychologically, this taps into what we call cognitive reappraisal. And this is our ability to reinterpret a situation in a way that reduces stress and opens up new possibilities. By reframing uncertainty as an opportunity rather than as a threat, we release ourselves from, again, the exhausting and the ultimately impossible task of micromanaging every outcome. And just think about how much time you get back as part of that deal, like, how much time you have to just actually enjoy your life, you know? When we give ourselves permission to live in uncertainty, when we say this uncertainty is no more or less safe than certainty, something really interesting happens. I think we step into the present moment more fully, and we see the need for answers as the illusion that it is. The pressure to solve or predict everything in advance often pulls us away from the here and now into this, like, blurry, gray, cloudy, potential future. Whereas when we slow down, everything becomes a lot more clear. We quiet a lot of that mental noise. And we also, like, let in room and space for curiosity, for patience, for even really incredible human emotions like wonderful and awe. It also Stops that anxious cycle that I'm sure we're very familiar with of what if that what if spiral that our brain is so good at spinning. What if the worst case scenario does happen? I need to be prepared. Not realizing that, you know, you probably never will be. That doesn't mean you won't survive. What if it all goes wrong? How do you know it won't all go right? What if they don't like me? What if this one person I'm with isn't the one in five years? What if I've made the wrong choice? What if this is the worst decision ever? You know what I always like to say to people about uncertainty? I like to say that uncertainty loses its power when you realize that not knowing the outcome actually has no correlation to the outcome being bad. The feeling of uncertainty and the outcome are actually mutually exclusive. They are entirely separate. They are not talking to each other. Your uncertainty doesn't know anything more than you do. For all the scenarios it's cooking up and serving you, it literally has no more information than you as a conscious being do. It cannot predict the future. I think when we also live with uncertainty and we make it part of our day to day lives, it strengthens self trust. Yes, you might not be able to predict the outcome, you might not know what's coming, but you can trust that you will be okay. Because you are capable, you are flexible, you are adaptable. And this is I think the most liberating part of this. I also think that this is the space where we're able to really examine the counterbalance to uncertainty, which to me is curiosity. Curiosity at its core transforms uncertainty from something that is again threatening into something that's kind of entertaining, kind of engaging in a sense. Instead of like rushing to resolve the unknown, curiosity, it invites you to just like sit with it, to like look at it like it's a shell on the beach or a beautiful piece of scenery, and just to explore it piece by piece without demanding immediate closure. Maybe, just maybe. Like I said, you are excited by it. You're excited by the possibility of the positive outcomes that are to come. Psychologists describe this as, it's very aptly named as the curiosity mindset. And this is our willingness to replace judgment with inquiry. Where anxiety might ask you to predict what goes wrong. Curiosity asks you to think about what you could learn and what you could discover and what could go right. It's a subtle shift, but the subtle shift changes not just our emotional response, but our physiological biological response as well. Rather than triggering fear and Then, of course, avoidance curiosity activates the brain's reward system, releasing dopamine, releasing a cocktail of other neurotransmitters, and motivating us to seek out new information in a much lighter way. And so the same spaces, the same scenarios that once felt threatening actually become real fertile ground for growth. When we step back from the pressure to know it all, a lot more is actually seemingly revealed to us. We open space for deeper reflection, for patience. I think also a better understanding of life as it unfolds because we actually get to be there in those moments. So I'm going to share how I've tried to apply this in my own life and some further kind of musings about uncertainty right after this quick break. So stay with us.
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Welcome back. Now that we've looked at the meaning behind today's mantra, I am allowed to not have all the answers. It is time, of course, to get personal with you all and just share some of my own deeper insights and reflections about this phrase. I think especially in your 20s, and I talk about our 20s a lot. If you are in a period of like rapid transformation and growth, if you are experiencing a bit of a quarter life crisis or a midlife crisis or a crisis of faith, a crisis in general, things are rapidly changing and falling apart. Not having all the answers is probably going to feel a lot more threatening and scary in those moments and it may be actually contributing to the problem just as much as the actual real present stuff that is currently occurring in your life. I think personally, everyone goes through a chapter and has to go through a chapter of just completely not knowing what's next. It's a rite of passage for a lot of us. And I remember my own time, or I think maybe I should even say times when this has happened. And even times that were like actually great were still kind of scary because they were unknown. When I was traveling alone right after graduation, when I quit my job, when I was living alone right after a breakup, right after the end of a relationship, I knew I needed to leave. I still felt this like real sense of panic. And even at more severe moments of this, sometimes we do need everything to fall apart, to be allowed to add back in what we want. Not having all the answers, I think means kind of having the opportunity to create the answers or to create the future and the life that you want more directly. This is the importance of having a bit of a dark night of the soul, as they call it. I want to introduce you to this idea. You maybe have already heard of it, but for a little bit of a refresh. The phrase dark night of the soul originally comes from this 16th century mystic, Saint John of the Cross, who used it to describe a period of real profound spiritual desolation and uncertainty that he believed a lot of people had to go through, if not all of us. In modern psychology and in self growth language, it has come to really represent those times in your life, spiritual or non spiritually related, when everything just feels like so stripped to its bare bones, when you have no answers, when what once brought you meaning and stability or direction no longer does. In those moments, yes, we are totally afraid because the old maps that we were used to no longer work. We feel like we are in uncharted territory. Let's be clear, this state is incredibly painful and destabilizing at times. It also carries really incredible, powerful seeds of deep transformation because it forces us to confront who we are without the usual anchors of identity, of relationships, of success, of maybe some of the things that we've used as a crutch for a little bit too long. What makes the dark night of the soul important is that it interrupts autopilot living. Most of us construct routines, beliefs, narratives that give life a sense of order, even if they don't fully align with who we are becoming. And those are the things we have the answers for. But when those structures collapse, when we don't have the answers, through heartbreak, career shifts, grief, even, you know, the disorientating joy of freedom, we Are kind of left with nothing to hide behind. It's this liminal space, right? The threshold between what was and what will be. And as uncomfortable as it is, as much as it strips away certainty, it is again a rare opportunity for honest self reflection and, and reorientation. From a psychological perspective, these periods, they are particularly transformative because they break down ego attachments. You know, we're forced to let go of the things that actually no longer served us. Carl Jung, for example, he's another famous thinker. He really believed that suffering and disorientation were actually essential as well for individuation. The process of becoming one's fullest self is sometimes stripping yourself back to the most basic parts about who you are, not having the answers, and then adding things back in. I think ultimately the dark night of the soul teaches us that again, uncertainty can actually be rather beautiful. If we had all the answers, we'd never be surprised, we'd never grow, we'd never be challenged, we'd never discover the amazing stuff that awaits us after the uncertainty. So as for feeling empowered in this feeling and in this moment and needing to have all the answers, I do have a couple small exercises that you can try today that can kind of increase your exposure to this feeling. And the first is again, to expose yourself to small unknowns. Pick a low stakes area of your life, and deliberately don't seek certainty. For me, this is going to sound super strange. I always have to read the end of movies before I watch them. Don't know why, but I realize that that is probably me grasping and looking for certainty when I don't actually need it. I can just enjoy the movie. So I've been trying to do that less for you. That might mean sending a message without rereading it 10 times, not checking the weather before you leave the house, not looking at the menu before you get to the restaurant. These are really basic things. You're not going to be hurt by not doing these things. This uses exposure therapy principles, though. By repeatedly facing small doses of what you fear, in this case uncertainty, your brain does actually learn it is not as dangerous as it thinks. Another amazing cognitive restructuring tool is called probability thinking. So instead of demanding a definite outcome, so for example, this job interview will go terribly and feeling safe even though it's a negative outcome, Practice assigning probabilities to multiple possible outcomes. So being like, you know, there's like a 40% chance it goes really, really well, 20% chance it goes kind of okay, 30% chance it's neutral, 10% chance. It's hard. Research shows that this actually this small thing reduces black and white thinking, engages our curiosity, engages the prefrontal cortex, which can make and is involved in more active decision making. That calms the amygdala. It's not about knowing the answer. Again, that's not what we're asking for here. It's about learning to live in the ranges. I also really like to remind myself of how many people I admire who at some stage in their life had absolutely no idea that this amazing and remarkable life was being built for them and which they were building. Right. There were so many people who I admire who at some stage didn't know if things worked out fine and didn't have all the answers. And it's worked out amazing for them. And I admire their lives. And so I have to understand that if I want a life like that, just as they went through periods of uncertainty, I must also do that. And that vicarious learning, or maybe we call it vicarious projecting, is really, really personally helpful for me. Okay, we've unpacked what it really means to let ourselves not have all the answers, what it means to live in uncertainty. Now it is time to put that perspective into practice. When we come back, I'm going to share some journal prompts. I'm going to share our deep thought of the day and a little bit more. So stick around. We'll be right back after this short break.
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Experian.
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Welcome back, my lovely listeners. Let's take a few minutes to talk again about this week's mantra. I'm allowed to not have all the answers and to just kind of bring it into everyday life, starting with our deep thought of the day, which comes from another deep thinker like our third or fourth that we've mentioned in this episode, Socrates. This is the quote of the day. The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know. I love this quote because I think it invites intellectual humility. It shows that we are limited, but in those unknowns, there is a lot of surprise and a lot more that opens up for us. Realizing how much you don't know means that you have done something that very few humans will never do, which is move beyond the illusion of certainty. That often actually comes with ignorance. Psychologists sometimes call this the Dunning Kruger effect. When people know very little, they often overestimate their ability and they overestimate their knowledge. This actually doesn't help them. But the more you genuinely learn, the more you are curious, the more aware you actually become of the complexity of the world. And that awareness is actually a sign of maturity and depth. It's also really fraying this quote, because it really points to this impossible pressure to know it all. Knowledge is endless. No one actually knows the answers to anything. Like, you cannot expect to master what a lot of people have never been able to. And you can see that as the ultimate challenge, and you can see it as a wall that you want to push against. Or you can just see yourself as a lifelong learner, someone who is not here to be an expert, but who is just to, like, enjoy and experience life in the moment. Now, I'd like to guide you guys through a few journal prompts to get to this in an even deeper way. And again, if journaling isn't your thing, if you don't have one nearby, if you're in the car, wherever, that's totally okay. Just take this moment just to reflect. Just think about your answers to these prompts or save them for later. Firstly, how do you usually respond when you don't know what to do or you don't know the answers? Do you hide it? Do you admit it? Or do you push through anyway? Next, where in your life do you currently feel the most pressure to have everything figured out? How is that maybe holding you back? And finally, as a continuation of that question, how could allowing yourself to not have all the answers actually create more space for curiosity and possibility in your life? Now that we've made that space to reflect, let's give your mind a moment just to rest and maybe think on those prompts a little bit further. In just a second, you'll hear a music track. I just encourage you to take this opportunity to process this week's reflections in whatever way feels right to you. No pressure, no expectations. And if this is something you don't connect with, that's also okay. Just Skip ahead about 30 seconds as you settle in. Just keep our mantra in mind. I'm allowed to not have all the answers as the music plays. Just let this mantra shape your thoughts. Take some time to just connect with whatever it's bringing up for you. Beautiful. I'm so glad that we had that moment just to reset and ground ourselves before we wrap up this episode. As we wrap up this episode, I do want to share a few final thoughts about this Mantra. I want to let you guys know that this is something that I have struggled with. I've struggled with, deal with this in so many different forms. I think because I'm someone who maybe just innately believes that if I think about things harder, if I analyze them further, I can get to the bottom of it. Maybe because in a lot of other areas of my life I have been able to find answers through mulling things over more, or maybe through not acting and thinking that that in itself was an answer. I can tell you now, it has been a lot more freeing to just be okay with not knowing. And it doesn't mean that I'm lost, doesn't mean that you're lost, and it certainly doesn't mean that what's coming isn't going to be fantastic. You've got to remember, as much as your brain wants to predict the worst case scenario, often the best case scenario is actually what really occurs or a neutral scenario. So all this fear that you are placing in the unknown, you would have so much more time and energy if you turned it into curiosity and also just into an appreciation of the present and what is known right now. It's not a weakness. This space is inviting you to be patient, to trust yourself, and to see like where you are going to grow when you just let yourself bathe and lean into uncertainty. Thank you for joining Mantra, an exclusive Open Mind original powered by Pave Studios. At Open Mind, we really value your support, so please share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review and follow Mantra to help others discover the show. For ad free listening and early access to the show, make sure to join Open Mind plus on Apple Podcast. I'll share another Mantra with you next Monday. Until then, keep showing up for yourself and your journey. I'm Jemis Beg. See you next week. Mantra is hosted by me, Jemma Speg and is an Open Mind original. Powered by Pave Studios, this episode was brought to life by the Incredible Mantra Team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Stacy Warrenker, Sarah Camp, Jen Passavoy and Paul Lieberskin. Thank you for listening.
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Villagers. I'm hosting a Nothing Much Happens Live virtual event on Wednesday, November 19th. I'll share three handpicked bedtime stories, including one you've never heard on the podcast, along with live music and guided journaling to help you unwind and rest. Get your tickets now at Pave Live so you don't miss out. That's P A V E L I V e.