Chapter 17
Don’t Force Machinery
When you feel the anxiety that comes with uncertainty, it can be tempting to grab at anything certain to escape the discomfort of the unknown. We instinctively want to figure things out as quickly as possible, but sometimes patience is precisely what is needed for an opportunity to emerge, an answer to surface, the path to become clear. An old idea from medicine, iatrogenics, teaches that sometimes the best treatment is doing nothing at all. Time can resolve injury, and uncertainty, sometimes better than action can, and research confirms that taking a little time can increase our willingness to take risks.1 The maxim “don’t force the machinery” comes from a friend’s grandfather, a master mechanic, who constantly ...
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