The only constant is that things will constantly change. Uncertainty is especially more common in high growth environments.

It is a great sign.

Not something to be avoided.

If you seek stability and security as a goal, you open yourself up ironically to more risk.

However in a high growth environment, high speed, high intensity, it’s like being in the seat of a fighter jet.

Things are changing - rapidly.

If you’re not grounded in your outcome, you can lose consciousness as you “pull Gs”.

Here are a few things that I use consistently to keep myself in a state of strength, and grounded in my own reality.

Fear is not a fact.

Fear can be useful until it’s not. Fear is a signal, an alarm bell.

But fear is never a fact.

Fear is a potential fact... the thing is that the potential is anywhere from 100% to literally 0%.

Fear lives in a chronic state when discernment is not present.

Fear is a message telling you that something painful could happen.

It doesn’t tell you the likelihood that it will happen.

It doesn’t tell you anything rational, or common sense.

In fact, fear is there to serve as the knee jerk reaction, the limbic response to a bush that rustles in the wind, because it could be a lion, and there’s not time to actually look at that rationally.

The problem is that today in our modern world, that’s less useful.

Stress means everything's important.

However, in our modern world, we have a new set of problems.

The problems that come from having thirty tabs open on our browser.

Having forty unread emails.

Having three project management systems with every task marked as important.

Having seven calendars stacked with meetings with unclear agendas.

All these things increase the cognitive load in an unbalanced way.

We are overstimulated and off balance.

Our signal to noise ratio is tipped in the wrong direction.

High static, low signal.

This forces us to go to default where EVERYTHING is now important.

That in turn creates stress.

If that loop is unresolved, you and I get the gift of chronic stress.

Where everything is chronically important.

The way out to apply clear thinking.

Clear thinking is not complex thinking.

In fact, clear thinking is common sense.

And common sense is quite simple.

Analog.

Paper and pen.

Clarity - often is most reliable found in the stillness and calm.

Complexity is easy to create when you are splashing and thrashing about in the water.

The stillness lets the mud settle to the bottom of the lake.

Stillness and simplicity creates clarity.

That’s where simple models like First Principles come in to play.

They give you the power instantly to take the complex and make it simple.

Stay strong. Stay clear.