Why Uncertainty Feels So Hard and What to Do About It – Episode #642

On this episode of the Dentist Money Show, Dr. Naomi Win from Orion Advisor Solutions, joins Matt to explore the powerful role that uncertainty plays in our lives. They unpack the psychological and physiological effects of uncertainty, including why our brains often crave certainty, even when it leads to unhelpful choices. Dr. Win shares how discomfort and ambiguity can be catalysts for personal growth and why building resilience is essential in today’s changing world. Whether you’re navigating life changes or simply trying to make better choices under pressure, tune in to hear some valuable tools and perspectives to help you move forward with confidence.

Related Readings

Why Dentists Struggle To Retire on Time

Navigating Stock Market Volatility

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Podcast Transcript

Intro: Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Dentist Money Show, brought to you by Dentist Advisors of another amazing show for you today where I get the opportunity to interview Dr. Naomi Win. She’s a friend and colleague of our friend Dr. Daniel Crosby. They actually work together at Orion. She’s a clinical psychologist, by trade and she specializes in uncertainty and we talk a lot about that. perfect time to be talking about that nowadays. Around uncertainty, how it impacts our decisions, how it impacts our ability to, to invest properly. She brings such incredible insight, with her work around uncertainty. As always, hope you get something outta the show and hope you enjoy.

Matt Mulcock: So I am so curious about this topic of uncertainty and what drew you to specialize in uncertainty.

Naomi Win: Oh, I like that framing. Um, it drew me in because I think it’s, I think it’s the foundation of everything. That’s why I think what I’m trying to say is every question I asked, at some point along my effort to answer the question, I would encounter uncertainty. So at some point I started to recognize it was a universal feature rather than a sort of factor. To be considered or a variable or a bug. It’s just a feature of the whole thing. Um, and I think that’s something when we think about cheating behavior, across, you know, my background as a psychologist working in schools or private practice or working with advisors, wherever it is, if we think about uncertainty as like a, a factor, I.

We’re missing some key things about it. It’s really a framing. it’s like if we have an illness, for example, you’re looking at just symptoms. If you’re just treating the symptoms, you might miss the real etiology of what’s happening. So when I think about, you know, my interest in certainty is because I think it gets the root of the matter and so that’s, that’s really what got me going there. And I think especially when we think about finance, we’re thinking about, oh, oh, we’ve got this heuristic, we’ve got this cognitive bias. We don’t wanna shortcut this, this decision making process. And that’s all fine and well, but I would really make the argument the root of all of those things. There is that reaction to uncertainty. and it’s, it’s maladaptive to a sense, in terms of just kind of if reacting to the fear of it, rather than integrating it as a, as a thing, we have to accept.

Matt Mulcock: That totally makes sense. Just the different, I like this. You’re getting to the root of it, you’re getting to the co like the actual cause of all these things. we talk about this all the time on our show when we speak and, and obviously you work with hundreds of dentists. Um, uncertainty is such a big piece of all of this. We say it as far as how much people hate uncertainty, but can you speak to the actual data, like how much do we hate un uncertainty as a, as a people?

Naomi Win: We hate it so much that the researchers indicated we would prefer to be in pain to know a hundred percent for sure. We’re gonna be in pain. We would choose that option over the choice of 50 50, maybe you’ll have some pain. Um, which is, it’s wild when you think about it. And that started, I mean, there’s a lot of data around this. I think one of the fun studies that I like came out of the University City of London, uh, where they had participants come in and sit down and look at screens and they were virtually clicking on rocks. That kind of turned over. And a snake might appear, or it might not appear, if the snake appeared, the participants would get like a little electric shock, just something a little bit uncomfortable.

Um, and so they’re going through and at some point during this game, they start to realize, oh, there’s a pattern to the types of rocks that I turn over, so whether a snake’s gonna come out and bite me. But then the game shifted the rules, and all of a sudden that idea of, oh, I’ve fi figured out the system, out the window. So they were uncertain again. They were measuring physiological, um, stress, stress, arousal. And what they found was that people had the highest rate of that when they were feeling that uncertainty of, I don’t know if I’m gonna get a shock or not. If they knew they were gonna get a shock, they, they just resigned themselves to it.

Um, and it’s not pleasant, but, but it’s, more, more doable, which I think it makes sense too, if you think about it on an anecdotal level, when you’re waiting for a flight, for example, and it gets delayed if you’re told how long it’s delayed for. I mean, there’s no real reason why that delay won’t just continue to push the, you know, hit the can down the road. It’s, it’s, it’s just almost like a false sort of sense of security. But we do prefer that. Or, you know, for in healthcare for example, if you’re waiting for a diagnosis to come back and test results to come back, that period of waiting is excruciating. And it’s not as if getting diagnosed with a chronic illness is a walk in the park, but in some ways when you know what’s actually, you know, what’s on the table, you can start to grasp, kind of claw back that sense of control. In terms of what you can do to deal with it. If you’re in that waiting period, you’re just suspended. That’s it. And nobody, nobody enjoys that. Apparently human beings are not programmed to, to find that fun.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. I love that you just referenced that study, Naomi, because, we’ve used that as an opening for so many times. We, like, I can’t even tell you how many times we’ve used that as far as when we speak. Uh, and so I love that you just, that you just referenced that and did a much better job explain explaining it than we ever have. So, can you, can you speak a little bit more to this like. Is it just sense of, it’s, it is the sense of control it sounds like, is what you’re saying. Can you, can you focus a little bit more about that? Like what’s happening in our brain of why we hate it so much?

Naomi Win: Hmm. and not to be too reductionist, but I think what’s, what’s really happening there is. And again, I, I don’t subscribe to evolutionary psychology at all in terms of the idea that our brains are wide this way and therefore society should be built around this wiring. there is something to, to the e evolution of the social contract that our brains are not necessarily designed to react to or respond to directly. But it’s good for us to learn how to manage our brains in a, in the more modern atmosphere. So I’m not, I’m not an advocate of evolutionary psychology, but I will say that we do have ancient brains. There’s no getting around that. And they’re wired in such a way that, um, we respond to risk by trying to, to gauge what that risk is and respond in real time. And so I think with uncertainty, what happens is that that throws a little, some of that kind of out the window. So if we think about our sort of ancient brain situation, see a Tiger Tiger’s coming towards you, or that tiger could do any number of things, probably not very pleasant. And so we’re wired to say, okay, there’s a number of things that are gonna happen.

Your brain recognizes the threat, recognizes how, how bad it could get. And there’s all kinds of things. Your, your eyes, your pupils dilate to receive more light information. Your adrenaline starts going, your heart starts pumping because you might need to start running at any second now. And there’s sort of this immediate physical reaction to it. Um, and so that’s in a, in a way, you’re sort of primed to, to respond to that fear of risk. With, with those things like you’ve probably heard of this, a fight or flight reaction. It’s well studied in areas. Um. I mean from everywhere, from sports psychology to to trauma psychology for working with children at schools, for example.

When we’re in that particular state, we don’t make good decisions. The only decision we make is get out of here. That’s really all we’re able to do. Have this kind of immediate, impulsive, reactive sense. We’re not, we’re not able to kind of, I dunno if you’ve seen that kind of, that meme of like record scratch and it goes to the narrator in this moment. We don’t have that ability to do that in real time and say, okay, hang on a second, what’s actually happening here? That that wiring we have tells us to react and react now. So uncertainty happens. Uncertainty is more. We see something and we say. Is that a tiger? I don’t know. Was it a weird shadow? I’m not sure.

Do I go into fight or flight mode or do I not? Am I overreacting? I don’t know. And so it kind of puts us into this bizarre zone. We’re not entirely sure how we’re supposed to respond, and so we’re kind of at risk of being highly reactive, um, and not sure how to temper that. And that’s where the control element comes in. We try to either get more information or we’re trying to figure out what to do next and in, in a financial, um, atmosphere if we’re, if we’re translating it to that, um, how that can show up. Well, it can show up in a number of different ways. It can show up in ways that circumvent or a short circuit, our ability to make those good rational decisions.

So if we think about the, the current market climate, for example, it’s completely reasonable that people would feel uncertain, um, given, given what’s happening. And so what happens is there’s a sense of desire for control. And if you, sorry, I’m on a tangent here. If you don’t mind. I’m gonna mention another

Matt Mulcock: I love this.

Naomi Win: Okay, cool. There’s a study that I really enjoy it. It produced an instrument, uh, that measures people’s intolerance for uncertainty. So it looks at kind of distress reactions to uncertainty. And he asked a bunch of questions about whether people feel uncertainty is unfair, um, how they feel when they have to sit with uncertainty, all these kinds of things. And what it does is it categorizes results into a way that, um. That puts, it’s almost like a profile that comes out at the end. Like how, how well can you handle uncertainty basically? And the facets that come out, the dimensions of uncertainty that are pres presented in people’s kind of manifesting conditions would be agitation, avoidance, um, denial and paralysis. So you have these four different sorts of facets of uncertainty. And I think what happens when you’re experiencing that, I, it makes sense on, on just an anecdote, everyday level, you feel uncertain. Some people are a bit more agitated around that, some people are just avoidant. For example, if you feel uncertain about the way your portfolio’s going, they might not even check just absolutely not ears closed, just gonna go about my day.

Or you might have somebody that ends up in, in denial. so that might be somebody who’s, who feels like, well, you know, they feel uncertain about the market and the reaction is. To paper over that with overconfidence and just be like, it’ll be fine. I don’t need to do anything. I’ll just keep X, Y, Z. Don’t have to be cautious at all. Somebody who’s more on the kind of paralysis facet of that, they might react to the uncertainty by just, feeling like the safest thing to do is just to not do anything. Um, and now they can’t make decisions. They have no idea which direction to go. The ambivalence is, is paralyzing for them. Um, and what ends up happening here is that we just have this emotional reaction that leaves us an a position where we can’t make good decisions. And so. But sometimes we have to make decisions, even though we’re in that position, and this is where the control part comes in, we start looking for ways to handle that distress of uncertainty by grasping at straws of control. So I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but this thing over here seems in control.

I’m gonna grab that now, how that can look if we’re still talking about a reaction to, to the market downturn, for example, that might look like grasping for, a headline that you saw on a Facebook cyber, or you heard a random tidbit on a podcast or. Your favorite person on Twitter or X everything app, uh, told you to do X, Y, Z. And so you, that sounds really interesting. Maybe you’ll do that. What we end up doing is we’re kind of drafting off someone else’s opinions. We don’t know what to do, we’re uncertain, but this dude over here seems to know what he’s talking about ’cause he talks fast and he’s confident. So I’m gonna go this direction. And what, what that really ends up doing is we’re following kind of partial predictions. It’s partial knowledge, this forecasting thing. And we know from the research that forecast, especially on the market forecasts are, they’re about as accurate as a coin flip. and that’s, that’s not, that’s not great.

If you’re feeling uncertain and someone’s like, let me flip this coin on what you do with your life savings. You’re probably gonna say, no, thank you. But if somebody gives you advice and you’re feeling uncertain. The, your, your brain has an amazing ability to sort of selectively cherry pick out, you know, disregard that information. But he sounds really confident on this podcast. So she sounds really great on this article she’s written and then we’re grasping, we’re going for partial information. Um, the reason why partial information in these predictions and forecasts aren’t great is ’cause they’re not only predicting what’s gonna happen, the event.

But they’re having to predict the outcome as well. And we saw this in the 2016 election. It was, I think it was Paul Krugman who’d made an an, um, he’d kind of forecasted that Trump was not gonna win in 2016, and then if he did win, the market would crash. So there was, there was kind of two openings for incorrect prediction there. And if you bet on that forecast, you’re gonna be in trouble. But at the same time, being aware that humans are likely to want to bet on that forecast because we feel safer when we reach for something that gives us a sense of control over environment. Um, that’s something that we’re, it’s, it’s a liability to be honest. Um, if we handle it well, I think it can be a benefit, but for the most part we, we do tend to, to run at that and it becomes a liability.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, for sure. And tell me if I’m wrong, but it feels like if you combine this. There’s kind of like this concoction we’re dealing with right now in the, in the, in the modern world, which is, it feels like we have a maximum level of noise coming at us from so many different angles, even from like 10, 20, 30 years ago or before. The other part of this, and again, I want you to maybe speak a little bit about this, of like. The, the level of, um, negativity bias we seem to have on top of this as well. So you’re, you’re speaking a lot so well to this idea of uncertainty and our grasp for control, but it also feels like we’re always more like our ears perk up more to negative news. Can you speak to that kind of, that combination and how that, that impacts people as well or these decision making processes?

Naomi Win: Yeah, definitely. Um, in a way it sort of makes sense, right? If we’re trying to, if our brains are wired to look for risks so we can respond to it, then we’re gonna be kind of on the hunt for things that are a bit negative because they pose a risk to us or sensibly. Do they actually pose a risk to us?

Probably not given the fact that news already knows. Um, you know, that’s what generates the clicks. And so we’re being manipulated in a way. And I think even when we’re aware of that, we’re still doom scrolling. We’re still looking for it just in case there’s a real piece of negative news that we can kind of get ahead of to control our environment. So I think, I think that that comes up, I mean, there’s research done around this. Um, I think it was Kahneman’s stuff around loss aversion that really sort of perked up some of the, the, um, research interest in this. The idea being that we are. Really averse to loss. We’re more reactive to loss than we are to gain. So if I was to give you a hundred dollars, you would say, yay. Thank you very much for about this level of excitement. If I was to take a hundred dollars from you, you would be distraught to this level. 2.5 times you’d have this reaction of di like upset around that, that loss. So. It’s not commensurate with the gain or loss, it’s, it’s worse.

So we, we are rigged mentally, you know, neurologically and also psychologically in a way to experience that worse and focus on it. and I think something, when we talk about this in psychology, I think some of, I mean, psychology spends a lot of time studying what is it to be happy as a human? What is it to feel good as a human? What can we do to, to optimize our wellbeing or whatever is a human. And I think part of that is okay, well be positive, think positive, combat the negative with the positive. Um, and I, I don’t, I don’t know that I subscribe to to that. I think it’s, it’s certainly one instrument we can use, but I think there’s more to it. I think we have have to accept that our brains are naturally kind of drawn to hovering around this sense of negativity, uncertainty, and take some, take some steps to accept that before we do anything else, um, I think with you mentioning this kind of noise. This noise angle. Um, I mean the research is really clear and it’s, I think it’s clear to people just kind of on a almost, um, spiritual and cognitive level or an emotional level that the news is manipulating them to focus on this negative thing because it gives us a spike, in, in, in kind of neurochemical reactions and also physiological reactions cause we perceive it as a threat. And that becomes addictive. We are sort of in a, in a particular cultural mil where that stuff’s not just, um, it’s not just addictive. It’s profitable because it’s addictive. And so part of that has to do with the fact that, um. Like you mentioned, we’re surrounded by all this noise.

We’re in an attention economy is what it really comes down to. And the way that they, you know, they, the way that big media, I guess, capitalizes on the attention economy is to keep injecting little spikes of negative news. and it’s, it’s not that there isn’t negative things happening. I’m not trying to downplay that at all, but to obsess about them and use them as a remedy for kind of getting the dopamine hits, that can be a really dangerous pathway to go through. And it gives us remarkably skewed. Skew perspective on what is or isn’t happening. I’ve noticed that too, and you might notice this too. Uh, just the more I sort of pay attention to, to news and media and things like that, the more my perception of, I mean, it just shapes your perception of what’s happening. And the event, the actual objective event of what’s happening is never separate. Then the perspective you have on what’s happening, those things are completely tied. and there are objective events that you can’t argue with in terms of what’s happening or. The level of casualty or loss or the death toll, those things you can’t argue with.

But the way that our attention economy is focusing, um. Giving a particular perspective, would it, everyone we subscribe to that changes how we experience those objective events as good or bad or anything in between. And I think that leads to a point around immediacy, which is directly related to uncertainty we’re in, in that it’s kind of a tension economy. We are goaded into having these immediate reactions. We are, um, we’re given sort of like the, the thumbs up for having immediate reaction. Somebody says something on. Twitter that you don’t like, clap back, you are hungry for a salad. Get on your phone and click, click, click here. A salad comes to your door with your toppings that you want. It’s, it’s a very immediate culture. I want a new book. Click Amazon. It arrives the next day. It’s very immediate. And so I think it plays into uncertainty because it gives us a false sense of control that, oh, something’s not right. We should be able to fix it like that, which is not really how anything meaningful works in life.

Because if we think of all the times in your life where you’re uncertain, it’s. If they’re often related to really big decisions, should I start a business? Should I have kids? Uh, should I build life with this person? These are all things that instigate uncertainty, and if we treat those things with immediacy. We’re going to for shorten our ability to have any sort of meaning or happiness in life. And so I think those things are called sort of all, um, connected. And I think my argument in all of this, my tangent here, is that being able to accept uncertainty and resist immediacy, catalyzes growth, I. Sitting with that discomfort and the ability to, to enlarge our, ability to handle discomfort and sit with it and sit inside of that and occupy that space without falling prey to just dropping off into a doom school of negativity, that’s going to be where we, we really catalyze catalyze growth.

Did that answer your question at all?

Matt Mulcock: No, this is amazing. Uh, there’s so much good stuff here, and I, I want to get to this idea I have here on my list. Oh, I wanna talk about this concept and relationship between, um, uncertainty and meaning and what this can lead to. I, I want to drill, uh, I’ll focus on that, but, um, I want to just to, to the kind of the, speaking of immediacy, if we’re talking about uncertainty, what people that are so, so I’m thinking of dentists, right?

Naomi Win: Hmm.

Matt Mulcock: I think of the fact that I’d say more than most of the population. I’m gonna guess just based on the career they chose the dentist, hate, uncertainty, maybe more than a lot of people, because dentistry, like, I think of, uh, Nasim, his book, um, uh, randomness, he uses dentistry as the cons, as like the example of someone who’s like picking certainty. So I think dentists have this personality already that they want. They want certainty or they crave certainty, they want more control. It’s kind of a personality thing. I’d say. Uh, really high achieving population. So I guess, what are things that, that dentists can be thinking about? Like I could sit here and be like, Hey, turn off the news, focus on what you can control. Obviously, all good things, but from a, from a behavioral side, Naomi, what are things people could be thinking about? I, I’d imagine awareness number one. Uh, just being aware of it, but what are other things they should be thinking about practically to, to kind of help them make better decisions?

Naomi Win: That’s a good question. I think the first thing is to, to sit with uncertainty as a concept to gauge how you typically respond to it. That would be the first thing. Like you said, it’s the awareness factor. You wanna kind of, anytime you do, and maybe this will appeal to dentists on a scientific level, anytime you’re dealing with change or you want to assess, um, assess like a prognosis, you need a baseline. If you’re going to progress monitor the patient’s healthcare and how they’re doing, you need that baseline first. So I would say take a baseline of where you’re at with uncertainty. I think recognizing that, maybe a career like dentistry gives a false illusion in some regard that things are inside your control. Um, and maybe sit with the idea that actually they’re not, it’s not within your control. There, there is never an ability to, to divest the future of risk that is inherent. You can try all you want to buffer against it. but what we’re looking at is almost like building that skyscraper in a place where you might have an earthquake, you can build the best building possible.

You are never going to be able to get rid of the fact that you might have an earthquake. All you can do is build something that might be able to withstand the earthquake. Now the funny thing about that, if you think about the example with dentist is the idea, I’m just gonna build a really solid. Clear, clear cut, like down the line structure. But that’s actually not the building that’s gonna withstand the earthquake best. The building that’s gonna withstand the earthquake best, if he wants any heights at all, which dentists do, is high achieving. Um, in, in, in so many ways, they do want that height. Okay? If you want that height, you’re actually gonna have to build a flexibility. So you’re gonna have to build this really solid base. Then you’re gonna have to build something that’s flexible. And I think that that is a challenge for personality types that are drawn to seeking out, I checking boxes. I know I have the right partner because they check these boxes. I know I have the right career cause it checks these boxes. It’s like in a, it’s like a, um. It’s like obsessional, kind of neurosis on along with that axis of personality type thing. And I say that with full sympathy because I’m somewhat on the axis myself.

Matt Mulcock: You’re like guilty.

Naomi Win: Yeah, it’s, it’s absolutely, it’s like I’m, I’m con, I’m contingency, I’m somebody who contingency plans a lot. I’ve got three kids. I’m contingency planning a lot, making sure the pieces fit, making sure I’ve kind of mitigated against. So, you know, I get, I completely get it. But I think a lesson for me in that has been that. You build that solid base and then you have to be flexible with everything else. You cannot shed that risk. There is no such thing as risk-free returns. Um, when, for example, if you even think about it and you know, God forbid this happened to anybody, but you’re in dentistry. You picked a career where you can make money there, there will always be a client base. Um, the hours are more predictable. You get to leave work at home and you go home.

These are all fantastic things. What happens if you have an accident and your hand is no longer functional with that fine motor skill? Now what? Can you prevent against that? Not a hundred percent. The number of times, you know, somebody have a freak accident closing their hand in a car door. Just really weird things can happen to people. And God forbid that happens to anybody. But now what? It would be devastating. So my point being in using this horribly Maca example, is the idea that we can’t prevent against everything. And so in that case, once we get to that point, sit with that. See why you see how you feel about that. Does that terrify you? Does it make you wanna grab control harder? Do you think I’m talking rubbish? There’s your baseline for how you sit with uncertainty. And then I think we wanna explore the idea that. If we only made decisions where we can feel certain, we’re gonna foreclose on every opportunity and possibility. If you think about, for example, somebody who wants to have children, for example, if they wait until they feel certain.

You might, you might find that you’re not able to have children or you foreclosed on a particular window in time where you could have had children. Who knows, at some point there’s a dice rolling. And I, I think a way that I think about that is the idea that all decisions are bets. Um, every decision we make is a bet. I think we like the idea that, oh, I make, I’m making a good decision, but we don’t actually know if it’s a good decision or a bad decision until we’ve already made it. And a little bit of time passes down the line and time is in none of our control. So at that point, what we realize is you make a decision, it’s the best bet, it’s the best decision we think we can make at the time. So bet. And later on down the road we get to figure out was it wise or not. And all we can really do is learn from that. And I think there’s a sort of discomfort to that. that’s, um, we can kind of again, assess kind of baseline around how you sit with it.

Matt Mulcock: I love this and this, that one hit me, that hits me deep because I, I will fully admit, I’ll be vulnerable here, that I am someone who struggles, especially with these, you’re saying that these uncertainty is usually at its highest point with these big decisions.

Naomi Win: Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: And I struggle so much. I’m very indecisive. Naomi, I’m gonna admit, um, I’m gonna turn this into my own personal therapy session, I think, but I do struggle with this concept of thinking. there’s a right path for these big thing or there’s a wrong path. And I had to shift my mindset. And I wonder if you’re, I think you’re speaking to this of like, one way that I’ve, I’ve had to shift my mindset over just the recent years is like, there is no necessarily right or wrong, there’s just decision. And the way, and like you said, in a lot of ways, you have to accept that and move forward. And then you’re gonna kind of find out later what that result was. that, that’s been a huge mindset shift for me, that I’ve noticed is like most of these things are not binary. Like, yes, no right or wrong.

Naomi Win: And I think what you’re talking about there, and this is the question that I think, being ambivalent and indecisive and engaging with uncertainty like that, I think this is the thing that it, that that task keeps us busy from is dealing with the, the undercurrent of self-trust. How much self-trust do you have? That’s really what that comes down to. Um. I completely, I un understand exactly what you’re talking about. It’s really, really difficult once you have, like, you know, if we think about developmentally, you grow up thinking, okay, there’s a right way to do things. There’s a wrong way to do things. And when we’re talking about that on kind of a global scale, that’s, that’s certainly true.

There’s a right way to treat other people and there’s a wrong way to treat other people. Absolutely. When it comes to your own personal, alive decision making, and sometimes I think about this like a tree, when I think about my own kids. The tree trunk stage, there’s all these decisions that they could make. And then as we get older, we go out on a branch and now there’s only these many decisions we can make. But if we make the wrong one, the weight of that decision can be pretty hefty, so it becomes kind of scary to make the wrong decision. Worse yet when you realize there is no right or wrong decision, there’s just decisions, that’s kind of where we get to the point where it’s really uncomfortable and sitting with that uncertainty is so uncomfortable. The plus side here is when you are uncomfortable, you can be confident that when you’re sitting with that discomfort, you’re doing something with your brain right there that is. Opening up for learning experiences. So there’s a lot of neurological studies that have demonstrated that when we’re in the discomfort of uncertainty, that’s actually synaptically speaking when our brain is most open to learning new information.

And so I think when we’re having that discomfort. It feels terrible, especially when we recognize that at some point we may actually have to make a call if we don’t just wanna stall out forever. we are learning, our brain is open, that discomfort. We want to try and pair that idea of I’m not dis, I’m not uncomfortable and therefore I should run away from it. I’m not uncomfortable, therefore I should just close my ears. I’m not uncomfortable, therefore, it’s wrong call. It might be that you’re uncomfortable ’cause your brain’s learning something new. It’s being challenged and I think maybe dentists can relate to that. They’ve spent a long time in their career getting where they’ve, they’ve gotten through, not by running away from challenges, but sitting with the discomfort of having to learn something new at a really high volume.

And kind of put that into practice. So maybe this is a new challenge. What happens when you sit with that discomfort? Well, your brain’s open. It’s gonna learn something new. What can we learn? We can learn. Whether or not you have the self-trust to, to make a decision. And if it goes wrong, pick yourself off of the floor.

I mean, I see this in private practice a lot with relationships too, is people are like, well, should I stay? Should I go really hard decision? Really, really? And the weight of it can be crushing. Absolutely. And a lot of the time, what ends up helping the most is working on self-trust. Well, if you stay. This might happen, but we don’t really know. Do you have the self-trust to work through it? If you leave, you might be, I don’t know, unburdened with regret, whatever else it is you have going on. do you have the self-trust to pick yourself up the floor and keep, keep going? So I think if people are able to hear this and feel like, oh yeah, I relate that discomfort.

Think about how you react to it. Do you run away? Do you hide from it? Do you take that as a sign, it’s the wrong decision? And then see if you can sit with that discomfort a little bit longer and ask the second question, which is, how much do I trust myself to make it through whatever happens next? even if I don’t, don’t know what that is. I think if you’re able to do that, you are looking at making much better decisions.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, again, that hits pretty deep. ’cause I’m realizing maybe self-trust is, uh, something i, I struggle with.

Naomi Win: It’s hard for everyone. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: I like what you just said there at the end of saying, do you do, do you trust yourself enough to withstand whatever comes next? so before we again, truly turn this into a personal, uh, session for me and I take full advantage of it, I want to. This is just making me think a lot about, um, how this relates to investing and this, and coming back to what you were saying about, I think this whole thing of like grasping for control or being uncomfortable with uncertainty because. We talk about this all the time, for you to have, any level of growth, whether it be personal growth or uh, growth with, with your wealth, you have to, it is either as a requirement, you have to accept uncertainty.

So, and the other thing I was thinking about as you were going through that, our, our mutual friend, Dr. Dan Crosby, he wrote in his book, uh, I think it was Laws of Wealth. He talks, and I want you to, I’d love to hear you speak about this, of this idea of like. it almost creates this paradox of the thing we fear brings about the thing we fear. He talks a lot about that in the book, and again, in this concept of investing, we fear the uncertainty of the markets. So we sit in cash, but the thing we’re actually fearing is. Not growing our wealth. So because we’re so afraid of that uncertainty, we sit in cash guaranteeing that we don’t grow our wealth. It am I, am I on this? Like, tell me just what your thoughts are about that concept of the requirement to accept uncertainty and you kind of have to give up control to, to, to actually give you a chance of seeing the result you want.

Naomi Win: No, absolutely. I, yeah, I remember that actually. In fact, I’ve just used that in a, in a different thing about uncertainty. So I think we’ve picked up on the same, same undertone, I think when he’s talking about this idea of fear. Well, I think it’s something that’s been commodified in the kind of social media culture, this idea of manifesting, but there is, there is some truth to it. The way that you think about something will change how you experience something changes the decisions you make about going forward with something that much is true. So if we don’t engage with uncertainty, for example. Then if, if, if uncertainty is kind of the experience we have and we’re not really sure about something and we don’t engage with it, then we’re never gonna bridge from the distress of uncertainty into development.

If we engage with uncertainty, now we’re building a bridge, we’re going from distress to development and there is no development that doesn’t come with a level of distress, not, not when the stakes are high like this. When it comes to material wellbeing, careers, relationships, all those things, those stakes are really high. If we don’t engage with the uncertainty, we’re just gonna stay in distress forever. Or we’re going to be sort of in denial if we engage with it. Now we’re moving into development. So I think if we, you know, doing the thing we fear, and Daniel actually mentions a, Dr. Coby mentions another study, um, about people who, um, respond to the distress or uncertainty of the market by jumping in and out. Took cash in, cash out, and they end up losing like time after time. They, they, every single time they just end up losing. And it, it seems almost counterintuitive. It’s like we have to react to our own brain by saying, no brain, that’s not actually going to work. Um, it’s something called action bias. I mean, this, again, this is not, this is just a, a, a widespread, universal thing.

Our brains are wire to think that the more we do, the more we’ll see as a result. And often that’s not true. Like imagine if you’re trying to grow a plant. You really wanted to feed your family carrots, whatever. So you’re growing plants. If you kept digging it up to check, if things were growing and you kept looking and kept pulling it up every couple hours, it’s never gonna have a chance to put down, it’s never gonna be able to grow. You’re just disrupting the soil over and over again. There has to be a level of, however you wanna phrase this, faith, hope, commitment, whatever, whatever word you want to put to it. There has to be a level of I have done everything I can to make the conditions, um, I cannot control the weather. I’m going to do my best to just kind of sit with this and let it do its thing.

Um, and that, that’s kind of an approach to that. So I think if we, if we don’t engage with that uncertainty at all and we run away from that distress, then we lose out on the opportunity to cultivate life. We’re gonna lose returns. We’re not gonna see that material growth. Um, if we want that growth. We can’t divest if the uncertainty. So the only other option is to fully engage with that uncertainty, engage with that fear. Not engaged with it in a way that we’re reactive, but we’re deliberate. So as Daniel said, you know, fear begets fear in that regard. If we experience that fear, that’s quickly gonna spiral into bad decision making unless we kind of develop that ability to sit with that distress, to sit with the discomfort and be deliberate about what we do. Daniel as well talks about the idea of kind of falling to the level of your systems, which I think is, is, is um, kind of talked about in a couple of the other areas and popular books. Um, but make sure that your systems and your habits are as good as you can get them. ’cause most likely in a period of distress, you will fall to the level of what that looks like.

And so, you know, we anticipate that stress, anticipate that anxiety, and then that kind of barrier of like the stress and anxiety of uncertainty. That becomes something that if we embrace it and we step onto it. We’ve now leveled up. Um, so it goes from being like an obstacle to a step stool if we let it become, become that way.

Matt Mulcock: I love that. How much of this is just, personality? Like, I’d imagine like most things, this is, you’re kind of born on a spectrum somewhere with this. How much of just this aversion or acceptance of, of uncertainty is something that’s just personality driven?

Naomi Win: I think a fair amount. I actually don’t know what the data would be on that. I’d have to kind of look, look into that. I’m sure there is some sort of experiments that have projections around it. Um, I do think that there is a relation, well, let me think about this. We think about those facets of uncertainty.

If we go back to that study on intolerance for uncertainty, we deny agitation, paralysis, avoidance, all those things. let’s think about what uncertainty is. Well, uncertainty is ambiguity. It’s novelty, it’s unpredictability. Those things can be terrifying. And also imagine a life without any of those things. If there was no ambiguity, you would not be allowed to make your own. Meaning if there was no novelty, you can never be surprised by something. In fact, something I thought about when I was thinking about this was I ran into a, a really old lady in the airport one time. I think she was in her nineties. And she told me she was flying out to see her boyfriend.

And I was like, oh, that’s wonderful. And she was like, life just always surprises you. She, she’d had a family and she was a widow and she was just so open. And she was like, yeah, I’m just walking down the street. And I met this guy and she was just so open to life, surprising her. And I realized like as somebody who is, I do, I don’t like novelty, the idea of a surprise birthday party, I’d rather die. And it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s something that I think there is a personality element. Some people are naturally prone to recognize that, see the, the flip side of novelty as. Who knows what will happen next could be amazing or more like me, where it’s, who knows what will happen next? Oh my God. Like, what’s gonna happen next?

So I think there’s, there is, there is a personality element and this also, um. There’s also things, something to be said for your upbringing. We think about it on a financial kind of level. If you were brought up in a house where there, there was very real scarcity, you might have developed a sort of framework thinking about material security. That’s gonna be very, very different than somebody who was raised in a household that was just, the abundance was off the charts, that like nobody ever thought about money. Nobody ever talks about money. If you wanted something, you got it. That those are two very different upbringings. and in those upbringings we kind of develop, um.

It shapes parts of our personality, but it all shape also shapes parts of our perspective on money and security and, and whether or not things will always be there. And to have that confidence, whether or not you can kind of be playful with, with those sorts of aspects of uncertainty or not. cause for some people, I think, you know, uncertainty. When everything’s hangs in the balance, every, every cent really matters. And so the, the responsible uncertainty might be much bigger than somebody who, you know, what’s, what’s, what’s a thousand dollars? What’s $10,000? That’s a completely different thing. So I think, yeah, there’s personality and there’s environment, there’s all kinds of different things. And there’s culture, there’s different culture around this kind of thing. If something’s considered good for the collective or the individual as well.

Matt Mulcock: I, I love so much that you went to this concept of, um, going back to like your childhood and the way you were raised and, and, and we as advisors, you know, to, to hundreds of dentists. we talk about this stuff all the time and we found that, Not all the time. I think initially when we, when we engage people at this level of like, let’s talk about not just the return on investments and the spreadsheet type stuff, let’s dig into the meaning behind this. I think sometimes we get, either actually like an outward eye roll, but, or just like a level of cut of being uncomfortable, which I understand it’s not lost on me that you sometimes you engage an advisor for like what you think is on the surface, but really. Deeper, going deeper matters. Can you, can you speak a little bit more to that of like what you’ve seen, like the importance of understanding that, again, the way you were raised and how that, how that impacts the way you engage uncertainty as you put it.

Naomi Win: Hmm. Yeah, definitely. And I think as you mentioned that the kind of reaction of maybe the eye or discomfort, I think the responsibility falls on both the advisor and, and the client, and in this case, the dentist. It falls on both. Historically. Advisors have kind of come in, they report out. I. done and done a little bit discovery in terms of like, what’s your income, what’s your risk tolerance, which is great. What we’re seeing now, and I think, you know, McKinsey had a study on this in terms of what’s the future of wealth management in 2030 and Schwab did a benchmark study. Uh, Merrill Lynch has studies and they’re all demonstrating that adopting behavioral kind of finance tactics, is a value add. It’s.

There’s an a study done by Bain about kind of these elements of values, and they had this, it ended up being a pyramid. All the things that were of basic value were just those proficiencies, those, those proficiencies. You have to have to have any designation. Working as an advisor, those things are a hundred percent necessary. You need to be dealt in. Great. Once you’ve got those, however, the value for clients starts to shift. The research shows clients want advisors who get them, for example, which just means, you know, under really understand them, get on the level, but also are able to help them self-actualize or help them manage anxiety. There’s a couple studies done, but I think Vanguard had one of them too. One of the reasons why people saw benefits to kind of tech supported advising kind of practices, they saw benefits to human, was that human advisors were considered a little bit better offsetting anxiety. There was a human touch approach to it, so.

My point being here is that advisors do bear a lot of responsibility here in terms of having a client who is either, whether they’re on the eye roll level of the spectrum, or they’re just, they’re uncomfortable talking about my childhood spectrum, wherever they are. Advisors have a responsibility that if they want to be, you know, they want to move into the future of wealth management successfully. They have to be listening to this stuff too. They have to learn how to ask the questions in a way that’s not gonna lead to discomfort or an eye roll from the client. It’s going to lead to a and, and that’s a, it’s a tricky thing to do. Therapists go to schools to know how to do this kind of stuff, and advisors have to adopt some of those techniques to get ahead and it’s not easy.

They’re already expected to do a lot. I get it on the other side. Dentists being able to have those conversations is gonna be hugely beneficial to streamlining that process. So one thing I think I would think about is. what pushed somebody to choose the path of becoming a dentist? It starts in undergrad. Um, or, or it starts for, for most people it’s in undergrad. You take the requirements for the pre-dental requirements before you even start the application. At this point, it’s so competitive. You have to be in a lab, you have to be on a research paper. You have to have done X, Y, Z already. You have to cover a bunch of research letters. You have to have this course, this course, this course. Then you have to take the, is it the DATI think it’s the DAT. And then you are applying to schools and then you go to school and you’re in a lot of debt for it, blah, blah, blah. As you go along that path, um, it’s a little less typical for somebody to have a career shift in going to dentistry when they’re, you know, late thirties for example cause they have to go back and do all this over again. So you’re talking about a really young, relatively young part of your life where not a lot is set in. Sonya, what led you to dentistry? Why dentistry? Why not medicine? Why, why not? Um, you know, kind of. I dunno, detailing cars, what, what made you go into dentistry?

And then look at those kinds of things because there’s a fair chance something’s nested in that, in that choice and that pathway. It could be a reaction to childhood. you look at what your parents did for work, maybe your mom. I. Was a nurse and worked 12 hour shifts, on and off, on and off. Maybe your dad was a firefighter and he worked shifts on and off, and you thought shift work is not for me. Uh, maybe you saw your aunt, he worked as a waitress, um, and she was working, you know, 18 hours under going on a double shift. And that you just thought, okay, shift work is not for me. It’s too unstable. So what job’s not, maybe it was that maybe that led you there. Maybe it was the idea that, okay, I can confine my work to an office and when I leave my clinic, I get to leave it all behind.

And if you work in other fields, you don’t get to do that. Your work is just, you know, I, I spend a lot of time with teachers and yes, their work is in a classroom. I have never met a good teacher who closes the classroom door and goes home and just doesn’t think about her kids anymore. Every teacher I know goes home and they’re constantly thinking about, okay, when I have that kid tomorrow, how can I engage ’em? How can I help ’em see their potential, blah, blah, blah. With dentistry, the, um, dentists will worry about their client’s wellbeing and the help obviously, but to an extent, you do get to close the door and go home. If you’re somebody who, for example, um, you know, mentioned for personal disclosure, my ex-husband is a, is a dentist.

He likes to go home to his family and do music, for example. And so for him there was an element of. This career will buy me time to do the things I love outside of work. Maybe that’s why you went into it all is to say if you sit with the reason of why you went into dental school, that might be a good entry point to thinking about how do your current choices about your future, how are they almost reactions to the way that you grew up or your fears around the world? How were you trying to use this path to insulate against certain things? What were you trying to protect yourself against? And all this to say is that uncertainty if you let, it can be an incredible teacher. If you think about the way, the pathway that you took in life and you think about every juncture you were making decisions, whether you knew it or not at the time, at the time, when you get to a crossroad with this uncertainty, let it teach you. Sit with that. Why did I, how did I even get here? Um, and see what you can learn from it. Um.

Matt Mulcock: I love that, Naomi. And, um, coming full circle, and I, I, this is what I wanted to, focus on and we can kind of wrap up with this is, and you’ve, you’ve talked about other podcasts that I’ve listened to. And things you’ve even mentioned here is this relationship of uncertainty and meaning, and accepting, accepting uncertainty and all those like high stakes, big moments of like, you have to engage, you have to embrace uncertainty, and it almost always will often lead to more meaning and more growth in your life.

Can you talk a bit more about that relationship and, and I, I think, and I sense when you. Talk about that. Like you light up like that. To me it feels like is the, is the purpose behind this. Could you speak just more to that relationship of uncertainty and finding meaning in your life?

Naomi Win: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think when I think if I’m not wrong, you start this conversation with why uncertainty. And my answer is a really convoluted way of trying to explain that is because I think it’s at the root of everything I. I think it is, if you’re going to be a living, breathing creature, you’re going to deal with uncertainty. Um, you’re never gonna escape it. And so if you engage with it deliberately, rather than just constantly putting effort into running away from it, hiding from it, if you engage with it deliberately, then. You actually get to use it as a really important driver, um, in growing, um, as I mentioned you, that discomfort neurologically that happens, you know, from uncertainty, that’s you are in a position of growth.

Um, and I think if we’re not engaging in that, we’re losing chances to make meaning. So I think, how do I put this? I think in our current sort of culture, there’s, there’s sort of a lot of soft powers at play. There’s a paternalism about kind of turning things into products. You wanna sell your active labor, um, you need to, your political opinion only needs to go in so far as it as it serves your ability to participate in the appt of the state, blah, blah, blah. It’s all very sort of, um. Cogs in machines type things. and I’m not necessarily opposed to that, and I’m not, I’m not opposed to being a cog in a system in terms of our social collective. That’s not what I’m saying. But in terms of a commodification of that, that’s where I have a problem. So now, to me, at least on a personal level, the only way I’ve really been able to cope with the the, Overarching meaninglessness of the amount of control we have in, in our life, in society and culture and history, um, is, is through this. And so when I think about the things that matter most to me, what are the things that kind of spark me the most when I think about, you know, My children or the future or relationships, and a lot of studies back this up the most, the most, the highest prediction of like having a good life is meaningful relationships.

Any kind of, you look at the, was it the Harvard Happiness Project? Happiness just comes down to relationships. All this stuff. It comes down to the quality of relationships. Well, relationships, our characterized by uncertainty. You’re dealing with another human being that is a whole universe. They’re a whole different universe to you. And so there’s all this uncertainty, all this to say. There just isn’t any escaping it. So I think my response to that has been, we can’t escape. We can’t escape uncertainty. We have no idea how many days we have on this planet. We don’t know if we’re going to be here or gone from one day to the next. So we cannot escape uncertainty, so why not engage with it? And then once I started shifting to thinking, okay, how do I wanna engage with that uncertainty? it’s been a lot more fun and I think it’s, it’s a method of creating meaning if every day you engage with that question of uncertainty by learning it, be your teacher and so forth and so on, I think you’re sort of, um, honoring your humanity and the humanity of those around you more successfully.

And I think you’re actually making smarter decisions. something that I have my friend who’s a, she’s an art teacher, she sent me this. This little collage thing one time and she’d written on it. Something that I think about, I think about it almost every day. Um, she said in the discomfort of the, in the discomfort of absurdity, make, finish things. Um, and that’s something that I agree with. I don’t know what else there is to do in this life other than that. And so, you know, when we’re kind of challenged by the different systems that we have to play a part in or the areas of our life, we don’t feel like we have a lot of control. Um, I think that’s it in that discomfort just make, finish things. Um, and that’s how I engage with it.

Matt Mulcock: I love that and it again, this theme that you’ve spoken to is like the one thing you do control. We all do control is our. Acceptance or level of acceptance of the things that we don’t control, which is a lot of stuff, um, which is most things in our life. so I, I love that. It’s just like, I feel, uh, when I, when I hear you speak about this is like, I. As someone who has struggled with uncertainty and decision, big decision making and getting this kind of like para, I kind of fall into the paralysis, uh, category you talked about earlier. Um, it’s, it’s super, confidence building to say and like inspiring to say. I have control over how I engage with this thing and ac accepting it and talking like you’re speaking of this, this old lady at the airport, it’s like life always surprises you. Like we all have that ability to choose that.

Naomi Win: Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: Uh, I’d imagine this is something that everyone out there, like this is a skill. It sounds like the way you describe it is that how you describe it.

Naomi Win: No, totally. I think, I think one of the reasons why we shy away from that, I say we, but maybe it’s just me, is, is because it comes with responsibility the minute you move away from a premeditated or spoonfed framework of thinking. So for example, when you. When you’re a small child, everything’s black and white. It’s right or wrong. As you get older and you graduate away from that and you realize that it’s not how any of that works, it’s all remarkably relative in so many different ways. with that recognition comes a responsibility. Well, now, if you no longer believe in a subscription to Right, wrong as given to me on a plate, like now I have to take responsibility for what’s right or wrong for me, like that’s, that’s quite a weight.

So this woman with this in the airport who was like, well, I feel always surprises you. I think if you choose to take that, um, kind of, um. That purview. You now have also chosen the responsibility to stay open, to stay open-hearted, and that can be really painful. It’s when you choose that pathway, it comes with responsibility. In the same way, you can’t divest returns of risk. You can’t divest openness from risk, and so. I think in some ways it’s almost like a, a psychological defense against potential of more pain to close yourself off from opportunity. Um, if I’m somebody who’s like, no, life can’t surprise me ’cause that’s scary and I’m just gonna say locked in my zone, I could, I could choose that.

But if I examine that a little bit more and engage with it, it, well, maybe part of my fear of opening the door on like, well, who knows what life could bring is because that puts a responsibility on me to, again, have that self-trust, engage with that ability to just accept things as they come, which is a challenge for me. Um, and I think that’s it. So I think we want to just work on, and again, this prob this speaks to just my worldview in general. I think everything exists in contradiction. Anything that’s true is gonna be complex, and everything that is real is gonna be in contradiction. So when we open that door on novelty and ambiguity, but also opening the door and responsibility, um, and integrity, which I think isn’t, isn’t any easy, all to walk through.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, it’s really not. And I know for me, this is a very pertinent conversation. I, it, it’s, it’s, uh, again, so many things I’m taking away from this that I have to go, reflect on, on myself. tell me how do people wanna, if they wanna engage more or follow you, follow along, how, how do they engage Dr.Naomi Win?

Naomi Win: Oh no. Um, I technically am on LinkedIn. Am I active on LinkedIn? That’s a different question. I’m trying, I’m trying.

Matt Mulcock: You and I,

Naomi Win: A difficult space for me. It’s a, it’s a challenge, that, um, also to be honest with you, you can email me. I work with Orion, um, and I’m naomi.win at orion.com and you could certainly shoot me an email.

Matt Mulcock: Awesome, I feel like a book is in your future maybe at some point Is, is it?

Naomi Win: Um,

Matt Mulcock: Am I

Naomi Win: Know. I mean,

Matt Mulcock: that for you?

Naomi Win: Well, I appreciate the confidence, but I feel like after people listen to this podcast, they’ll realize I’m probably too frenetic to quite manage that. Um, I’m not quite on that level, but you never know. Never say never, eh, trying to keep that door open on novelty.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, I really enjoyed the conversation. I think there’s so much, uh, that people can take from this and such a pertinent topic that impacts every aspect of our life. Uh, and I know we engage with, dentists every single day who struggle with this concept of engaging with uncertainty. So very, very much appreciate. You, you sharing your experience and, and, and knowledge with us around this topic. Uh, really, really appreciate it. So they can maybe find you on LinkedIn probably as closely as they can find me at LinkedIn, which is not gonna happen. but, uh, Dr. Naomi Winn, thank you so much for being here. Everyone, thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate it. Till next time, bye-bye.

Naomi Win: Thank you.

Keywords: uncertainty, decision making, psychology, risk, control, negativity bias, self-trust, resilience, emotional reactions, cognitive biases, investing, relationships, financial advice, meaning, discomfort.

Behavioral Finance, Getting Organized