Week 2023#06: doubts
Tolerating uncertainty is what makes you resilient
Celebrating passing the “Know the constitution” (“Põhiseaduse tundmise”) exam — the final piece in the puzzle of applying for Estonian citizenship.
What I’ve learned
I struggled with summarizing this week because it felt like not much happened and like I didn’t “learn” anything this week.
In the end, persistence paid off, and I found something!
Your ability to tolerate uncertainty determines how calm and composed you remain in stressful situations
I’m pretty convinced of the above statement by now, at least “tolerance for uncertainty” being the main factor for remaining calm.
Or maybe it is confidence.
Or maybe confidence is the ability to tolerate uncertainty 🤷♂️
How did I find out?
After talking to Lufthansa support 5 times in total on the phone, I had still no idea whether I’d be flying or not on Monday.
I had to ask my brother to drive me to the airport (~30km away) because I didn’t know whether I’d be in and out in 5 minutes because of a booking issue.
At the airport, I talked to two more service agents who did all they could do.
Talking to one of them I was put on the spot: pay 500 EUR now to secure your spot, or most likely don’t fly.
The next service agent had the proper solution to my problem: fix the root cause of the issue by paying the 95 EUR for the rebooking, which got refunded to my bank account for an unknown reason.
I still had to go to the gate to get final approval for my flight.
Apparently, that’s how you make it on the “standby list” for a flight (something I luckily never managed to do before).
In the end, it all worked out.
Not knowing whether I’d fly or not was bugging me the whole day.
Despite that, I mostly stayed friendly and composed.
How to handle uncertainty
Staying friendly and composed is one thing, understanding how and why that was possible is a completely different thing.
Looking back, I think the reasons were this:
the damage done by not making it back to Tallinn was pretty low (nothing urgent demanded my immediate presence + travel insurance to cover the cost of a new ticket),
I knew what my options were (new flight tickets), and they had price tags attached,
I knew how to navigate the environment (Frankfurt Airport is familiar by now, Roberto was still on standby to drive back to Aschaffenburg with me).
So maybe this is confidence or the expression of confidence at least.
Writing the above, I just realized that confidence comes from fīdere - to trust.
Putting it all together, I’d say now that “trust in your abilities” is the same as “confidence” which is the same as “ability to tolerate uncertainty” 🤔
What do you think?
Expectations vs Reality
This time I couldn’t come up with expectations again, so here are the expectations for next week:
The garage at Kotzebue 26 will be in good enough shape to rent it out (the floor has been redone),
The next “Decode Estonian” workshop will be a success,
I have clarity about how to proceed with “Talking To Strangers” in light of that project not really getting traction while the language classes do
What happened
Highlights of last week:
I’m back in Tallinn. Feels good to be home 🎉
Sharing the language courses at work was met with a very positive reaction, which really motivates me,
I reconnected with friends I hadn’t seen in a year on the weekend and this is part of what makes Tallinn feel like home.