79 | The Remembering Self

This post is Part 2 of 3 of the "Building Resilience Instead of Grasping for Certainty" series.

We're all scared of change and uncertainty, but their respective barks are many magnitudes bigger than their bites.

Complete certainty seems to be something worth longing or grasping for, but it's because we've been misled - ever increasing certainty imperceptibly transforms into boredom, loneliness, and lifelessness over time.

Uncertainty is unnerving, but it is where our most profound life moments and stories are shaped and formed.

We go to movies, concerts, and sporting events because we're uncertain of the outcome.

We go on vacations because we've never seen a place before and want to discover it.

We get coffee or lunch with people we've never met because we are curious to find out who they are.

Our greatest life experiences are often a result of living through the most uncertain of circumstances.

The uncertainty creates the tension required for the magic to happen.

The irony is that in areas of life that we could make certain, we actively seek out uncertainty and in our money life where uncertainty is the only option we desperately seek a certainty that can't exist.

With our money, we've created a system, language, philosophy, and frame of mind that has allowed the fear of change and uncertainty to control us unlike it does in any other aspect of our life.

Part of this compounding is because we've replaced a clear big picture with infinite, disorienting details.

Part is because we've replaced elegant simplicity with unnecessary, ever-increasing complexity.

Part is because we've replaced clarifying our purpose with the empty search for tactics and hacks.

Part is because we've replaced trade offs that refine us with the endless pursuit of perfection.

Part is because we've made what was always intended to be transparent completely taboo.

Part is that we've forgotten that our "remembering self" cleans up the story that our "experiencing self" so deeply fears.

As Brian Portnoy says, “The fact is that the good ol' days were rarely all that good. Even so, the stories we build in retrospect are usually very clean, with well-specified events (start and end dates), connected through a clear causal chain (this led to that) and an overall ‘this narrative makes sense’ vibe. Welcome to what leading behavioral economist [and Nobel Prize winner] Daniel Kahneman calls your ‘remembering self.’”

Change and uncertainty are more inevitable than we care to believe, but fortunately our "remembering self" knows and accommodates these realities in a way that serves as the final green light to slowly stop grasping for certainty and begin building resilience...