When I was in school, feeling sure about an answer felt glorious

7 min readNov 28, 2020

Once I knew it, I put a righteous hand in the air, deploying a “pick me” glare at the teacher. Conversely, I hated exams, as the feeling of uncertainty was challenging to manage, so I would assume a worst-case scenario.

Now though, I believe the key to improvement, in all walks of life, lies with uncertainty. Or, as I like to call it, the circle of uncertainty. It goes like this:

Discover something you’re uncertain about.
You become curious.
You seek to improve and take action.
You reach a new level.

Sooner or later, you’ll become accustomed to the new level and boom, you’ve begun the circle again. At the core of the circle lies uncertainty. It would be easy for me to say you should just “be uncertain” about everything, but that is not sustainable. Here is how you adopt an improvement-based lifestyle by being uncertain.

Step 1: Discover Your Uncertainties for Yourself

The backwards law is the idea that the more you try to achieve something, the harder it will become. In this context, as the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Mark Manson writes, the backwards law can be described as:

“The more you try to be certain about something, the more uncertain and insecure you will feel.”

That, to some extent, is true. If your crush rejects you, you may want to know why. If you do eventually find out, it could destroy your confidence and make you more insecure than before. In this instance, however, you can invert the backwards law. As Manson again writes:

“The more you embrace being uncertain and not knowing, the more comfortable you will feel knowing what you don’t know.”

I’m not suggesting you become oblivious to everything in your life. Of course, some matters require your attention. Instead of obsessing over factors out of your control, find out through your experience. Being bluntly told is much more likely to hurt your feelings than if you had some epiphany yourself.

Actionable tip: Make a list of things you’ve meant to do, but perhaps haven’t found the courage for. That day, make it your mission to do at least one of those.

Step 2: Turn Uncertainty Into Curiosity

I was unsure about what I wanted to do as a career for months after I graduated from university. I wasn’t sure why I was getting rejected from jobs, and instead of looking inward and seeking to improve, I kept getting rejected and became insecure.

I quit job-hunting for about a month at Christmas, and it did me a world of good. I came back with a new, curious attitude. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I turned it into curiosity. I explored my writing talents and thought “how far could I take this?”

If uncertainty is the engine turning on, curiosity is the headlights searching for a way forward. If you believe you know everything, you will learn nothing. So, highlight an area of your life you are uncertain about. Then, activate your inner curiosity by looking into it. Ask yourself how far you could take it, and what you would need to do to get there.

Actionable tip: Spend a small amount of time — perhaps 15 minutes — scoping out what it would take to improve on the area you’ve identified. Be honest with yourself and ask if you have what it takes.

Step 3: Latch on to Curiosity and Take Action to Improve

Now you’ve identified what you need to improve; it’s time to take action. The most blueprints of the most successful people’s stories are their constant need to improve. To have that lifestyle, they need to exhibit ongoing uncertainty and subsequent curiosity.

When you take action, you are on the same level playing field as everyone else. In ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things,’ Ben Horrowitz writes:

“Start-up CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same.”

Your task is the same as everyone’s: to take action. To improve on yesterday. It comes in all shapes and sizes, too. You can do something little such as writing a to-do list or something more substantial such as finishing your latest manuscript.

By doing something, even if it’s tiny, you’re already becoming better at it than you were before. Make small improvements everywhere, and you’ll see a significant result.

Actionable tip: Give it a fair go. Most people quit something new once they don’t see immediate results. You’ve got to stick it out if you want to get anywhere.

The term “winter vagina” was used a few years ago by The Sun, in a headline asking: “Are ‘winter vaginas’ really a thing?” Yes, according to one midwife they interviewed, who said vaginas can dry out just like your (face) lips do in cold weather.

In the same article, though, The Sun quoted Jen Gunter, MD, author of The Vagina Bible, who’s known for debunking women’s health myths. She’d previously side-eyed the idea of a “summer vagina” (yes, tight, wet clothes can lead to thrush; no, the weather itself doesn’t lead to vaginal pH changes). And you can bet she had something to say about winter vaginas, too. “The Ice Queen cometh and she’s a cruel mistress,” Gunter joked in a post at the time. “The air is apparently so fucking dry in houses in the United Kingdom that it is going to suck the moisture right out of your vagina.” As you can imagine, the rest of the post explained all the reasons that this is not a real issue.

Even if you’re living among the polar bears in the most brutal of winter tundras, weather doesn’t impact how wet you get. Unlike your hands and lips, your vagina is lined with a mucous membrane, explains Karen Duncan, MD, OB/GYN, an assistant professor at New York University Langone Health, tells Refinery29. Cold weather doesn’t affect mucus production. Sure, the skin on your vulva or mons pubis could, theoretically, get a little dry if you tend to have dry skin in general — but a fragrance-free, natural moisturiser that’s formulated for sensitive skin should fix the problem (just keep it away from your labia). For the most part, the vagina is weatherproof.

One thing you may have heard about winter and vaginas has to do with diet, not weather: that the sugar in the holiday cookies we’re eating can lead to yeast infections. But in fact, most of the studies only showed this to be true in patients with diabetes. For people without diabetes, “munching on the occasional gingerbread should be fine,” says Heather Bartos, a Texas OB/GYN and the founder of MindShift Medicine.

If anything, your risk of certain vaginal-related issues is lower in the winter than in the summer. People may be more likely to get urinary tract infections in the summer, for instance, based on a study looking into when UTI medical sales spike that was published in the journal The researchers couldn’t say for sure why, though they speculating that the reasons may be behavioural — people may have more sex in the summer, and sex can lead to UTIs.

But in general, to quote Dr. Gunter, “Vaginas function quite well in all seasons.” If you get a yeast infection or a UTI, if you seem abnormally dry or itchy, or really, if you notice any changes at all, see an OB/GYN to get diagnosed and get the right treatment. Otherwise, you can hang out and continue to let your vagina take care of itself all year long.

When I was in school, feeling sure about an answer felt glorious

Step 1: Discover Your Uncertainties for Yourself

Step 2: Turn Uncertainty Into Curiosity

Step 3: Latch on to Curiosity and Take Action to Improve

Written by iop

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