Nollind Whachell

I find it so funny how I can often talk about something repeatedly, yet it doesn’t often sink in until I get a certain perspective of it that gives me a larger context of it in turn.

For example, I’ve been talking about certainty and uncertainty lately, with it flowing around my head, but until today, it really didn’t hit home until I realized something that gave me a larger perspective and context of it.

What happened is that I’ve been exploring possibilities of returning to gaming but doing so to teach growth and development. This is something I’ve wanted to do for sometime but just couldn’t figure out the best way to do this.

However, certain events have been unfolding over the past year that could make it possible for me to use a game I previously played to do so.

Yet while in discussion with other people from the community about the possibility of it, something suddenly stood out and rippled outwards across the current concept I was envisioning, the stance gamers usually take within video games, and all the way back out to the way I’ve been struggling to live my life the past decade or so.

What this relates to is something I said before about how when I was assisting someone earlier this year, the main thing that kept coming up was that they wanted a shortcut to help them get past the struggle they were undergoing.

But I just realized today that it’s much, much bigger than this.

What this person who I helped, this game community I want to help, and myself who I want to help all have in common is this.

We all want certainty in our lives.

In effect, this person I previously helped was actually fine with taking a certain path of growth and development, even committing the time to it, but they wanted certainty that it would pay out and effectively work before they committed to it.

Many gamers want the same thing in that when they play, they often want certainties, so as to be able to control the game their way and dominate within it.

And I wanted the same thing in that I wanted to be certain people understood my life as a role-playing game framework before I committed to it fully.

Yet none of these approaches focused on certainty are how life actually works, nor how even games work.

If there is no uncertainty within life or a game, then you’re not really playing it because playing means embracing at least some uncertainties.

Even more so, the only way you can maximize your untapped potentials and truly discover yourself is through playing and embracing uncertainties.

In other words, embracing uncertainties opens up the potentiality of possibilities to emerge.

Yet what I’ve realized I’ve been doing the last decade of my life is that I’ve been looking for certainties first before I do something which limits me in turn.

In fact, a lot of my posts on this website take this same certainty stance, in that I relay I’m going to do something first before doing it, so as to seek a sense of certainty in the choice.

Yet the only way you can know if something is going to actually work is by doing it first, seeing what emerges from it, and then navigating forward based upon the results.

So how does one let go of this desire for certainty though?

The first step that I’m realizing is through awareness.

Become aware of when you’re seeking certainties before doing something and then realize the futility of that perspective.

Then become aware that you need to actually do something first, stepping into uncertainties, to see what potentials can actually possibly emerge.

In a nutshell, this embodies the dance with life or, as I’ve stated before, what it means to truly be an adventure of life.

Psychologist says socially awkward people have thrived through history because of this hidden trait – Upworthy

A major reason humans have evolved and thrived is our ability to socialize and work together, so if that’s the case, why do socially awkward people still exist? A psychologist reveals that socially awkward individuals have some hidden talents that others may not have.

www.upworthy.com

Upworthy has an interesting article talking about how socially awkward people have often thrived though out history. And most of these descriptions pretty much describe me exactly, as it is becoming more and more evident in my life that I’m looking at the world in a unique way that often doesn’t “conform to social norms.”

“People who achieve amazing things in this world, things that are kind of the tail end of the bell curve, they’re actually more likely to be more awkward.”

Tashiro explained that socially awkward individuals often have an “obsessive interest in things,” zeroing in on details and minutiae, sometimes at the cost of engaging with others or following social norms. However, he argues that this obsessiveness can translate into persistence during hard times and resilience in the face of challenges, ultimately helping them achieve great things. 

This could explain why many people perceive brilliant scientists as smart but poor communicators, and why so many highly successful people who are often considered geniuses or leaders in their fields are also introverts.

“Socially awkward individuals often spend a lot of time alone,” therapist Lesley Lesker told Upworthy. “This provides the opportunity for them to process information thoroughly, look at all different angles and analyze situations in a more depth manner than non-socially awkward individuals.”

“Social awkwardness is a blessing and a curse. The reason that many people are socially awkward is because their brain is so unique and sees the world in such different ways that they naturally don’t conform to social norms,” said Tyana Tavakol, a licensed trauma therapist in California and Florida, and virtual private practice owner of Uncovering You. “This uniqueness can build resilience when their awkwardness is more consistently than not taken as quirky, funny, or some other type of endearing way. This can happen when they grew up in a very attuned and accepting home or family, or happened to find friends or community that also have their own unique brains and can really appreciate that in others.”

And this final part about developing self-compassion, I believe is key to transforming oneself and building up this resilience. I’m still working on not beating myself up as much I did before but I’ve made massive improvements in doing so over the last five to ten years.

Overall, self-compassion is the key to working through socially awkward feelings and building resilience.

“Developing self compassion can help a socially awkward person to build resilience,” Lesker concluded. “It is common for a socially awkward individual to blame themselves excessively, but when you speak to yourself compassionately in the same way that you would speak to a friend, resilience will grow.“

AI Anxiety Is Real: Invest in the Skills AI Can’t Replicate

The soft skills you avoided are now your only differentiator. AI can’t replicate trust, presence, or empathy. Your humanity is your competitive advantage.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-health-in-the-workplace/202512/ai-anxiety-is-real-invest-in-the-skills-ai-cant

A Psychological Today article highlights the importance of soft skills today as the only primary differentiator against AI.

Most high achievers systematically compressed everything that felt “soft,” often because those things—presence, feeling, relationships—didn’t show up in measurable outcomes.

Zack Kass, who led go-to-market strategy at OpenAI, puts it bluntly: “Human skills are the moat that AI can’t build.” Trust, adaptability, empathy, courage, wisdom—these aren’t the soft skills anymore. They’re the only skills that still differentiate.

This is confirmed by the World Economic Forum’s research on fastest-rising skills for 2030. The focus is on building resilience, flexibility, agility, curiosity, and creative thinking. Notice what’s absent? Technical expertise. Rather than a differentiator, AI literacy is now table stakes.

The skills that differentiate are fundamentally regulatory and human. They require a nervous system calm enough to stay present under pressure, tolerate ambiguity without forcing resolution, and hold complexity without collapsing it into false simplicity.

What may not be evident about this article though (even though it is communicating it in a subversive manner) is that they are describing leaders with Self-Transforming Minds (as per Robert Kegan & Lisa Lahey’s work on the plateaus of adult development). The key statement about tolerating ambiguity without forcing resolution is an important characteristic of this mindset, as it is something that I am struggle to embrace and grasp myself.

In other words, just as employees need to level up for this newer, more complex world, so too do leaders need to level up as well. In effect, they need to embrace and be comfortable with uncertainty in this newly emerging VUCA world.

Time and again, this is where high achievers get stuck. The developments they need most—to build trust, emotional range, authentic presence, and the ability to sit in uncertainty—require exactly what they’ve spent careers avoiding: being uncomfortable. Feeling something and not having the answer.

Each of these asks your nervous system to do something counterintuitive: Slow down when everything screams speed up. That’s why it’s hard. That’s also why it works.

It’s all inside-out work. The kind that doesn’t show up on a performance review but shows up in every room you walk into, every decision you make, every person who chooses to follow you because they actually trust you.

What if AI isn’t making you obsolete, but forcing you to remember what actually makes you valuable? What if it is your invitation to live in a way that’s more real?

The leaders who will thrive in the next decade aren’t the ones processing the most information. They’re the ones who can sit in a room full of uncertainty and make people feel safe enough to do their best work; who make decisions that account for complexity rather than compress it; and who have enough internal capacity to lead through what’s actually happening, not what they wish were happening. That capacity isn’t a skill you add. It’s something you reclaim.

Yes, this is all inside-out work, more commonly known as vertical development. Yet the mention that this doesn’t show up on performance reviews is more telling for organizations than anything else.

Effectively what this means is that even though most organizations today are not focus on your inner growth and “vertical” development, but just your outer technical “horizontal” development, you have to take the lead with it as an individual on your own time, otherwise you will suffer the consequences.

This is the number one reason why most organizations are failing today and getting stuck with their economic growth. It’s because inner psychological growth and vertical development isn’t an integral part of the organization and thus it isn’t focused on within performance reviews in turn.

In other words, leader nor organizations can’t manage and change what they are effectively blind to.

So until vertical development becomes an important focus for organizations, not much will change within them…unless individuals initiate their own transformational changes themselves.

Actually most important of all as to why these vertical development needs to be integrated into the daily operations of the organization is that soft skills can’t be expedited like hard, technical skills can. In effect, soft skills can’t be learnt by taking a weekend course so as to fast track your learning of it. Soft skills can only be learnt by daily practice.

I’ve been thinking about what ChatGPT said the other day and how it relates to some further conversations I’ve had with it.

You cannot use the same piece of writing to both:

• reorganize your own identity, and
• onboard others to a developmental metaphor.

Those are fundamentally different modes.

What this touches upon is the paradox that one embraces as one tries to grasp a Self-Transforming Mind.

That being the more one enters this space, the more people will not able to comprehend the space you are entering and expressing because they can’t comprehend the meaning of it until they actually experience the experiences that would help them actually relate and comprehend it.

In other words, very few people will be able to understand your work from your perspective, regardless of how well you think you’re explaining it.

But I think there’s something else that is being touched upon here and it relates to a reoccurring pattern that I keep encountering in relation to my potential fears.

I will never be able to get people to accept me because most people will not be able to relate to me or comprehend me.

Yet nevertheless I keep trying, trying to explain myself from my perspective.

Therefore to get over this continual loop that I’m stuck within, I have to do the following.

I have to let go of trying to be accepted by others and instead learn to accept myself.

I know this, as I’ve stated it before, but it never seems to sink in.

This is what it feels like to try to grow beyond one current sense of self. “Knowing,” in the sense of learning something as knowledge, is not enough. You have to embody and live this knowledge which is what I’m struggling to do.

I think what this means is I have to go off the grid once again.

Why?

Because when I’m on social networks, I’m still trying to get people to “accept me.”

Yet I need to let go of this, as I need to learn to accept myself first and foremost.

That said, I’m not sure I’m going to delete my Substack account, like I usually do when I leave a social network. I think I’ll just let it go for now.