This week’s Mental Sunshine is a bit of a slow burner.
Something that will take a bit of practice, but over time it will allow you to be much more content in your life.
This week it’s all about uncertainty and control.
We humans love to be certain about things, because it makes us feel like we are in control of the situation.
But the fact is that uncertainty is the rule in this life.
And most of what we think of as certain is really just probability.
Harvard psychology professor Ellen Langer tells a story about a horse eating a hot dog.
She was at an event, and someone asked her to take care of his horse while he went and bought it a hot dog.
Considering herself to be quite intelligent, she scoffed – of course horses don’t eat hot dogs!
Horses are herbivores, right?
She was gobsmacked when the man came back with a hot dog – and the horse ate it enthusiastically!
Probably around 99.9% of horses don’t eat hot dogs – so we say “horses don’t eat hot dogs” because that’s a more simple way of saying it.
But it’s not an absolute certainty that if you hold a hot dog in front of a horse’s mouth, it won’t eat it!
This is true for so much in life.
We want things to be certain, because then we feel like we have an amount of control.
And that seems like it will bring us some mental sunshine.
Ellen Langer says that control and certainty are an illusion which drives mindlessness
The opposite of mindfulness
And mindfulness is what will bring us mental sunshine in the long run!
So this week’s tip for bringing some mental sunshine into your life is to embrace uncertainty.
Don’t take anything for granted!
Assume you know nothing, and that everything is liable to change.
This will mean you need to be mindful
To pay attention to the present moment.
And the present moment is exactly where we can find our mental sunshine!