Hi Reader,

I was supposed to be back in Amsterdam a week ago. Our flight was cancelled due to the war; then, rerouting via the US, we were refused boarding: apparently you need a visa to transit. One of the most expensive lessons I've learned.

If I had been told I could extend my time in sunny Australia by a week, I might have been happy to arrange more "last times": one more beach, more friends, more gelato. But once my trip was extended by circumstances I didn't choose, it became difficult to enjoy the extra time. Same week, completely different experience.

It reminded me of the time I left a stable job at university and moved to Amsterdam to redesign my life. I was technically unemployed but I had chosen that uncertainty. The discomfort was real, but what felt more prominent was possibility. Once the pressure to find work mounted and applications went nowhere, the feeling shifted to its opposite: fear. Until I decided to go solo. Uncertain but liberating.

The difference wasn't time. It was autonomy.

Uncertainty and a lack of control create stress that shifts our brain into survival mode: focused on what's immediate and necessary, closed to anything related to pleasure or creativity. My situation in Australia was, in the scale of what's happening in the world right now, a luxury problem - something solvable with money. But the brain response is the same, regardless of scale.

And many of us currently face more intense stressors: family or colleagues in physical danger, job insecurity, rising costs of living. These cause the same restricted brain capacity which is not helpful when we want to be at our best, creative, compassionate, and productive.

Which is exactly why this week's conversation with Roi Ben-Yehuda feels so timely. Roi built his entire company around the science of courage, specifically, the courage to choose uncertainty rather than wait for it to be imposed on you. The question that still resonates: which of the stressors in our life right now are truly imposed and which are actually choices we haven't yet made?

🎤 Waiting for you on the Unprofessionalism podcast:

Roi Ben-Yehuda has a formula for courage: Power x purpose, ÷ dragons. The dragons are everything that stops you: the doubt, the inner voice, the fear dressed up as reason. His whole work is about shrinking them.

Halfway through this conversation, he turned the formula on me. Challenge accepted. I named my dragons and gave one a silly name. Some of what I said surprised us both.

This is not an episode about being brave. It's about understanding why we already know what to do, and what's really standing between us and doing it.

🎧 Click here to listen to the interview

📥 Download my 1-page summary

​UP_012_Summary.pdf​

🎧 The workshops work Podcast Club

The workshops work podcast has retired and I am devoted to preventing the old episodes from gathering digital dust in the archives. The podcast Club keeps the conversations alive. You can stay updated for free monthly gatherings around a theme by joining me on Substack: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/ You'll receive one email - every 1st of the month with information about the upcoming gathering.​

Save the date for the next gathering: April 29th at 9 PM, CET.

That's it from my side. I hope to see you next week!

Myriam