The best way to deal with uncertainty

If you had to look a five different online sources of weather forecasts for Cape Town right now - you will get five different forecasts for the days ahead.

Weather forecasting is big business and very fast, expensive and impressive machines crunch massive quantities of data to give us the forecasts that we have today.

But weather forecasting isn't always accurate - it is in fact notoriously difficult to predict the weather.

We want to have 100% certainty as to what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, but we know that there is always an element of uncertainty baked into those forecasts.

We've come to accept this; and we're comfortable with it.

So especially in Cape Town - if the temperature is predicted to be 28 degrees for the day, it's still always wise to take an extra top alone for that late afternoon walk on the mountain.

Because we've accepted the uncertainty associated with the weather - we embrace it and plan ahead should the predicted hot afternoon suddenly turn cooler half way up the mountain.

Knowing that uncertainty in everything else, besides the weather, is a fact of life; why do we try to avoid the reality of uncertainty in other parts of life?

Why are we so uncomfortable about not knowing?

Why do we regard people who say "I don't know" with so much scepticism?

The best way to deal with uncertainty is not to seek certainty, but rather to just make peace with and embrace the uncertainty.

We live in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world; make peace with it.

If you make uncertainty your friend, you'll be far more inclined to not deny its existence and rather make provision for the possibility that you may end up in a future that wasn't the one you that you originally intended.

Resilience will be baked into every decision that you make, because you accept that you can never be 100% sure.