How to Overcome Your Fear of the Unknown

人类对未知的恐惧与生俱来。这就是为何不确定性在宏观层面（全球经济、卫生或地缘政治危机），和微观方面（比如我会得到那份工作吗？这家企业会成功吗？我是否走上了正确的职业道路？）都会让人伤脑费神，甚至神经衰弱的原因。然而，这种直觉反应导致人们错过了一个关键事实：不确定性和可能性是同一问题的两个方面。

Humans are wired to fear the unknown. That’s why uncertainty—whether at the macro level of a global economic, health, or geopolitical crisis or at the micro level (Will I get that job? Will this venture be successful? Am I on the right career path?)—can feel nerve-racking, exhausting, and even debilitating. However, that gut reaction leads people to miss a crucial fact: Uncertainty and possibility are two sides of the same coin.

回想最让你引以为豪的成就，改变人生的时刻，以及让生活变得有价值的人际关系。可以肯定的是，这些都发生在一段不确定的时期之后——这段时期，你可能会感到压力巨大，但仍然坚持不懈，最终完成了伟大的事情。

Consider the achievements you’re most proud of, the moments that transformed your life, the relationships that make your life worth living. We’ll bet that they all happened after a period of uncertainty—one that probably felt stressful but that you nevertheless pushed through to accomplish something great. 

今天的英雄都有类似故事。罗莎·帕克斯（Rosa Parks）拒绝让座时面临着巨大的不确定性，于是引发了蒙哥马利巴士抵制运动，并为废除种族隔离铺平了道路。埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）和团队着手彻底改变电动汽车并推动世界走向更加环保的未来时，几乎每个人最初都认为，他们会失败。如果他们惧怕不确定性，就不可能取得突破。

Our modern-day heroes all have a similar story. Rosa Parks faced great uncertainty when she refused to give up her seat, igniting the Montgomery bus boycott and paving the way for desegregation. Nearly everyone initially thought that Elon Musk and his team would fail when they set out to revolutionize electric vehicles and push the world toward a more environmentally friendly future. They couldn’t have achieved their breakthroughs if they had been afraid of uncertainty.

不确定性不会让人失去思维或活动能力。过去的十年中，我们研究了很多已经能够熟练驾驭不确定性的创新者和变革者，回顾了对不确定性进行适应和容忍等主题的研究。结果很明确：我们都可以熟练地管理不确定性，让自己有能力、自信地踏入未知领域并抓住机遇。以下四个原则可以帮你做到这一点。

Uncertainty doesn’t have to paralyze any of us. Over the past decade we have studied innovators and changemakers who’ve learned to navigate it well, and we’ve reviewed the research on topics like resilience and tolerance for ambiguity. The findings are clear: We all can become adept at managing uncertainty and empower ourselves to step confidently into the unknown and seize the opportunity it presents. Applying the following four principles will help you do that.

大多数人厌恶损失。多项研究表明，人们构建事物的方式会影响决策方式。例如，如果对一种新疾病的治疗效果进行两种不同的表述：95%有效和5%无效，那么即使两者在统计学上完全相同，人们也会更喜欢前一种表述。每一次革新、每一次变化、每一次转变——无论是个人还是专业性，都会伴随潜在的优势和劣势。尽管大多数人会本能地关注后者，但也可以改变这种心态，并减少我们的恐惧。

Most people are loss-averse. Multiple studies demonstrate that the way you frame things affects how you make decisions. The research shows, for instance, that if one treatment for a new disease is described as 95% effective and another as 5% ineffective, people prefer the former even though the two are statistically identical. Every innovation, every change, every transformation—personal or professional—comes with potential upsides and downsides. And though most of us instinctively focus on the latter, it’s possible to shift that mindset and decrease our fear.

我们最喜欢的一种做法是由纽约大学的詹姆斯·卡斯（James Carse）教授开发的“无限游戏”方法。他建议：不要再将你正在玩的“游戏”的规则、界限和目的，即你负责的工作和项目、正在从事的职业道路，视为固定不变。这会让你产生一种非赢即输的心态。这种心态中，不确定性会加剧焦虑。相比之下，无限玩家将不确定性视为游戏的重要组成部分，它不仅增加了惊喜和可能性，而且使他们能够挑战自己的角色和游戏参数。

One of our favorite ways of doing this is the “infinite game” approach, developed by New York University professor James Carse. His advice is to stop seeing the rules, boundaries, and purpose of the “game” you’re playing—the job you’re after, the project you’ve been assigned, the career path you’re on—as fixed. That puts you in a win-or-lose mentality in which uncertainty heightens your anxiety. In contrast, infinite players recognize uncertainty as an essential part of the game—one that adds an element of surprise and possibility and enables them to challenge their roles and the game’s parameters.

当然，当不确定性来袭时，我们通常需要进行重建。以艾米和迈克尔为例。夫妻两人都是职场人士，养育四个孩子。2017 年，由于迈克尔的工作需要，他们从美国搬到法国生活。疫情开始后他的职位被裁，接着，最初向他承诺工作机会的公司开始拖延。2020年7月，艾米和迈克尔计划飞回美国，但直到离开的前三天，他们仍然没有找到工作，甚至没有住处。家人和朋友一直都在确认他们的情况，连孩子们也对他们大声疾呼：“你们是最糟糕的父母！你们怎么能不知道我们接下来要去哪里？”

Of course, when uncertainty is forced upon us, we often need help reframing. Consider Amy and Michael, a professional couple with four children who moved from the United States to France in 2017 for Michael’s job. When the pandemic started, his position was eliminated, and then companies that initially promised him job offers started stalling. In July 2020, Amy and Michael were scheduled to fly home to the United States, but three days before they left they still didn’t have jobs or even a place to live. Family and friends were asking for updates, and their teenagers harangued them: “You are the worst parents ever! How can you have no clue where we’re going next?”

起飞前两天，艾米在午餐时向我们透露，迈克尔找到了一份工作，但家人都不希望他接受。“我们应该接受这份工作吗？”她说出了心中的疑惑。“我感觉我们好失败。”我们鼓励她重新计划。她和迈克尔展示出了坚韧和勇敢，不断探索所有可能的方向，并坚持正确的做法。他们的孩子非常幸运，因为这对父母勇气可嘉，知道自己真正想要什么，并且一直等待它的到来！最终，这对夫妇带着好奇心和勇气回到美国，夏天结束时，他们都找到了自己喜欢的工作，并且在一个有趣的地方买到了有待翻新的房子。

Two days before their flight, Amy confided to us over lunch that Michael had been offered a job, but neither of them wanted him to accept it. “Should we just take the bird in hand?” she wondered aloud. “I feel like we are such losers.” We encouraged her to reframe. She and Michael were showing resilience and bravery by exploring all possible next steps and holding out for the right one. How lucky their kids were to have parents bold enough to know what they really wanted and wait for it! The couple returned to the States with curiosity and courage and, by summer’s end, had both found jobs they loved as well as a fixer-upper home in a fun location.

2. Prime Yourself for New Risks

虽然创新者经常谈论不确定性，但如果你深入研究，就会发现一些奇怪的习惯。保罗·史密斯（Paul Smith），一位以大胆的色彩组合而闻名的设计师，在旅行时，总是住在同一家酒店或同一个房间里。我们研究过的其他人每次乘坐航班时都会预订相同的座位，遵循相同的早晨活动，或者穿着一样的衣服。史蒂夫·乔布斯 (Steve Jobs) 一生都喜欢穿黑色高领衫。

Although innovators often talk about eating uncertainty for breakfast, if you dig deeper, you discover some curious habits. When Paul Smith—a designer known for daring color combinations—travels, he always stays in the same hotel, often in the same room. Others we’ve studied book the same airplane seat for every flight, follow the same morning routine, or wear the same clothes. Steve Jobs had a lifetime supply of black turtlenecks.

这些习惯都可以提供平衡。通过减少生活中某一部分的不确定性，可以帮助你在其他部分忍受更多不确定性，例如许多人依赖于长期稳定的关系。连续创业者萨姆·雅冈（Sam Yagan）是《时代》杂志评选的最具影响力的100人之一、Match.com前CEO。他解释说：“我最好的朋友来自初中和高中。我娶了高中时的恋人。鉴于我在工作中会遇到很多模棱两可的事情，所以在生活其他领域寻求的不确定的东西确实更少一些。”

All those habits provide balance. By reducing uncertainty in one part of your life, they prime you to tolerate more of it in other parts. Some people ground themselves with steady, long-term relationships, for instance. As the serial entrepreneur Sam Yagan, one of Time’s 100 most influential people and the former CEO of Match.com explains, “My best friends are from junior high and high school. I married my high school sweetheart. Given how much ambiguity I traffic in at work, I do look for less in other areas of my life.”

你还可以通过了解自己天生厌恶或喜欢的风险类型，为不确定性做好准备。可以参考下面这个例子：内森在硅谷读博士学位，苏珊娜创办了一个尚未盈利的服装生产线，他们抚养着四个孩子，仍然依靠学生助学贷款生活，住在校园里。一天午餐时，内森对他的导师蒂娜·西利格（Tina Seelig）说：“面对现实吧，如果我足够勇敢，就会成为一名企业家，但我不是一个冒险者。”

You can also prime yourself for uncertainty by getting to know the kinds of risk you have a natural aversion to or an affinity with. Case in point: Back when Nathan was pursuing a PhD in Silicon Valley and Susannah had started a clothing line that wasn’t yet making money, we had four children to support and were still living off student loans in a few hundred square feet of on-campus housing. At lunch one day, Nathan told his mentor, Tina Seelig, “Let’s face it, if I really had any courage, I would become an entrepreneur, but I’m just not a risk-taker.”

蒂娜表示不同意。她解释说，风险有多种类型：财务的、智力的、社会的、情感的、身体的等等。从内森的情况来看，通过追求稳定的学术生涯来避免财务风险，同时仍然要承担智力风险，是一个谨慎的选择。一条重要的经验是，了解自己能够很好承受风险的类型可以帮你明白，从哪里可以更大胆地进入前沿；了解自己不能承担哪些风险可以助你做好准备，这样，你就可以更有信心地接近它们。

Tina disagreed. She explained that there are many types of risks: financial, intellectual, social, emotional, physical, and so on. In Nathan’s situation, avoiding financial risk by pursuing a stable career as an academic—while still taking intellectual risks—was a prudent choice. The important lesson is that knowing which risks you tolerate well can help you see where to push more boldly into the frontier, while knowing which you don’t will help you prepare so that you can approach them with more confidence.

同样重要的是，你也可以通过承担较小的风险来提升风险承受能力，即使在其他领域。以亚马逊和飞利浦的前高管皮特·柯立维（Piet Coelewij）为例。当他考虑辞职后在欧洲市场推广搜诺思（Sonos，当时还是一家初创公司）时，他决定去练习跆拳道。柯立维认为自己“天生害怕进行身体对抗”，但是尝试跆拳道可以帮助他锻炼肌肉，以便应对不确定性。他说，这使他“在其他信息不完整的情况下，能够更好地适应风险更高的决策”。“一旦你处于降低恐惧和培养勇气的循环中，你就会创造一个良性循环，帮助自己不断进步”。

Just as important, you can increase your risk tolerance by taking smaller risks, even in unrelated fields. Consider Piet Coelewij, a former senior executive at Amazon and Philips. When he was thinking of leaving the corporate track to head the expansion of Sonos—then a start-up—in Europe, he decided to take up kickboxing. Coelewij describes himself as “naturally fearful of physical confrontation,” but trying kickboxing helped him build up his muscles for dealing with uncertainty, which made him “more comfortable with higher-risk decisions in other settings with less complete information,” he says. “Once you are in a cycle of lowering fear and developing courage, you create a virtuous circle that allows you to continuously improve.”

采取行动是面对不确定性的最重要部分之一，因为你可以在每个步骤中不断学习。蒂莫西·奥特（Timothy Ott）和凯瑟琳·艾森哈特（Kathleen Eisenhardt）的研究表明，大多数成功的突破都是通过一系列的小步骤，而不是孤注一掷的巨大努力产生的。与立刻努力做所有事情相比，适度开始可能会更有效，引起的焦虑也更少。

Taking action is one of the most important parts of facing uncertainty, since you learn with each step you take. Research by Timothy Ott and Kathleen Eisenhardt demonstrates that most successful breakthroughs are produced by a series of small steps, not giant bet-the-farm efforts. Starting modestly can be more effective and less anxiety-provoking than trying to do everything at once.

当在线服装租赁平台Rent the Runway的创始人詹恩·海曼（Jenn Hyman）和詹妮·弗雷斯（Jenny Fleiss）第一次想到在网上出租名牌服装时，他们还是哈佛商学院的学生。不过他们一开始并没有撰写商业计划书，筹集资金，然后尽可能快速做大做强。相反，他们只做了一件小事：收集整理了一些衣服，为哈佛大学校园里举办的一场盛大舞会设立了一个更衣室，直接观察女士们是否会租用它们。然后，一次又一次的实验，一步迈上一个台阶，最终他们建立了一家成功的大型上市公司。

When Jenn Hyman and Jenny Fleiss, the founders of Rent the Runway, first had the idea of renting out designer dresses online, they were students at Harvard Business School. But they didn’t begin by writing a business plan, raising money, and then getting big as fast as possible. Instead they made one small move: They rustled up some dresses, set up a dressing room on Harvard’s campus before a big dance, and observed firsthand whether women would rent them. Then, one experiment after another, one step at a time, they built a large, successful public company.

有时你需要快速提高学习速度，以看清下一步该如何走。企业家们一直都面临着这一挑战。关于最有效的创业推动人的研究表明，帮助创始人迎接挑战的最佳方式，是让他们尽快与来自尽可能多的不同背景的人交谈，而不是因为担心有人可能会偷走自己的想法而守口如瓶。优秀的推手往往会迫使企业家在短短一个月内结识200多人，其中一些人来自看似无关的背景。

Sometimes you need to quickly ramp up your learning to blow away the fog that obscures the view of what to do next. Entrepreneurs face that challenge all the time. Research on the most-effective start-up accelerators demonstrates that the best way to help founders meet it is to make them talk with as many people, from as many different backgrounds, as quickly as possible (instead of keeping their ideas to themselves for fear that someone might steal them). Leading accelerators often force entrepreneurs to meet more than 200 people, some from seemingly unrelated backgrounds, in just one month.

极有价值的意见可能来自意想不到的地方。一个新平台致力于帮助包括宗教组织在内的慈善机构。最初，其创始人对推手安排他与《花花公子》（Playboy）营销副总裁共同参加反馈会议感到犹豫不决。不过，令他震惊的是，这位副总裁不仅是一位按时去教堂做礼拜的人，还给他提供了一些迄今为止，他收到过最有用的建议。

It’s not unusual for invaluable input to come from unexpected corners. The founder of one new platform dedicated to helping charities, including religious organizations, initially balked at the feedback session his accelerator had arranged with the vice president of marketing at Playboy. To his shock, the VP not only was a churchgoer but also gave him some of the most helpful advice he had received so far.

最后，当你向前迈进时，应该专注于价值而不是目标。戴维·海涅迈尔·汉森（David Heinemeier Hansson）是Ruby on Rails的创建者，是包括贝斯卡公司（Basecamp）和Hey.com在内的多家初创公司的联合创始人。他认为目标“会让人感到压抑”，设定目标甚至不会起什么作用。“是否能拥有1000万美元，不会因为你把它作为一个目标而发生。”他解释道。

Finally, as you make your way forward, focus on values rather than on goals. David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails and the cofounder of multiple start-ups, including Basecamp and Hey.com, views goals as “oppressive” and argues that setting them doesn’t even work. “Whether you meet $10 million or not does not happen because you set that as a goal,” he explains.

相反，如果你的目标是实现自己的价值观，对他而言，包括编写好软件、善待员工，以及在市场上行事合乎道德，那么无论世界如何反应，你都会信心满满地去采取行动，因为你已经重新定义了成功对你的意义。他说，即使一个大项目失败了，“我仍然会回顾走过的这条道路——我们花了两年时间和数百万美元来开发这个东西，并且感觉良好。”

If you instead aim to fulfill your values (which for him include coding great software, treating employees well, and acting ethically in the market), you’ll have the confidence to make the moves you need to, no matter how the world responds, because you’ve redefined what success means to you. Even if a big project fails, he says, “I will still look back on the path—the two years and millions of dollars we spent developing this thing—and feel great about it.”

当苹果公司开始对他最近的项目Hey.com征收高昂的应用商店费用时，他采取了这种做法，并威胁要在苹果公司启动收费后，立即关闭新的电子邮件服务。他承认，就连他自己也会像其他人一样对不确定性感到焦虑。但是，他对价值观而非目标的关注，尤其是对科技行业公平的关注，“让我们可以自由并全力以赴地”进行反击，他说。他的处境成为企业家们的焦点，由此产生的新闻自由成为“我们能够想象到的最伟大的启动活动”。

He took that approach when Apple began imposing exorbitant app store fees on his most recent project, Hey.com, threatening to shut the new email service down just after it launched. He admits that even he felt anxiety about the uncertainty, just as anyone else would. But his focus on values, rather than goals—in particular, on fairness in the tech industry—“gave us freedom to go all in” fighting back, he says. His situation became a rallying point for entrepreneurs, and the free press that resulted became “the greatest launch campaign we could have imagined.”

本·费林加（Ben Feringa）因研究分子机器的设计和合成而获得诺贝尔化学奖。在他看来，科学发现只有在面临不确定性后才会发生。他说，这意味着你必须“在处理随之而来的挫败感时，变得很有承受力”。他的方法既包括情绪保健（照护情绪——就像处理身体上的创伤一样，这样它们就不会变成令人麻痹的自我怀疑或者徒劳的沉思），也包括现实检查（你会认识到失败只是这一过程的组成部分）。

According to Ben Feringa, who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for work on molecular machines that could one day power nanobots that repair the pipes in your house or keep diseases out of your blood, scientific discovery happens only after facing uncertainty. That means, he says, you have to “get resilient at handling the frustration that comes with it.” His approach includes both emotional hygiene (attending to emotions—much as you would a physical wound—so that they don’t turn into paralyzing self-doubt or unproductive rumination) and reality checks (in which you recognize that failure is just part of the process).

费林加承认，失败是一件很痛苦的事情，他允许自己感到沮丧，即使几天也可以。但是，随后他会停下来扪心自问，我能从中学到什么？下一步我可以做些什么？无论他自己是否意识到，他都采用了可以帮助人们重塑挫折的多种方法中的一种，例如学习视角（你可以从他们身上学到什么）、感恩视角（你仍然拥有什么，而不是失去了什么）、时机视角（现在不是合适的时间，但这并不意味着以后永远不是），以及我们最喜欢的挑战视角（直面障碍才能成为英雄）。

Feringa admits that failing hurts and that he allows himself to feel frustrated, even for a few days. But then he stops and asks, What insights can I take away from this? What’s the next step I can work on? Whether he realizes it or not, he’s adopting one of many lenses that can help people recast setbacks, such as the learning lens (what you can learn from them), the gratitude lens (what you still have, not what you lost), the timing lens (it’s just not the right time now, but that doesn’t mean it won’t ever be), and our favorite: the challenge lens (you become the hero only by facing obstacles).

我们研究过的科学家、创造者和企业家用来保持自我的另一个做法是，专注于对他们有意义的人和事。通过紧紧把握真正重要的事情，你可以渡过所有难关，包括对潜在损失的恐惧，和真实损失带来的痛苦。

Another practice that the scientists, creators, and entrepreneurs we’ve studied use to sustain themselves is to focus on the people and things that have meaning for them. You can get through anything—not just the fear of potential losses but the pain of real ones—by holding tight to what really matters.

具备韧性、能够承受打击并保持屹立不倒十分重要。但我们主张：学会将不确定性转化为机遇。所有人利用新可能的唯一途径，就是通过未知之门。如果你认为自己有能力驾驭它，那么这不一定是个痛苦的过程。希望你可以利用以上建议改善你与变化的关系，并且将这些方法介绍给更多人。

Resilience—being able to take a blow and stay standing—is important. But we argue for something more: learning to transform uncertainty into opportunity. The only way for any of us to tap into new possibilities is through the gateway of the unknown. And it doesn’t have to be a painful process if you believe in your ability to navigate it. Our hope is that you can use our advice to transform your relationship with change and inspire others to do the same.