Change is a single constant. Oftentimes, with change, there can be much uncertainty about potential
outcomes. Uncertainty is uncomfortable and usually precipitated by incomplete information, unknown effects or consequences, and limited knowledge, which we saw a great deal of throughout the COVID-19 pandemic from uncertainty about whether patients with kidney disease were at greater risk for serious illness, hospitalization, and death with COVID infection to whether the COVID vaccines were safe and effective in
patients with kidney disease.

But the last few years have shown us how opportunity loves uncertainty. It is a simple statement with a tremendous impact. Uncertainty is the ultimate starting place for progress and improvement. It is a moment for openness, curiosity, spontaneity, and new ideas.

Uncertainty is a normal feeling, but how we frame it determines the result. Framing uncertainty as something to avoid will keep one safe from dealing with it, but framing uncertainty as an opportunity can precipitate many emotions, including fear, curiosity, hope, excitement, determination, and anxiety. Some of these emotions may come with the dreaded discomfort one desires to avoid, but, in the end, it is not emotions that determine the outcome of dealing with uncertainty and its re-framing as opportunity.

Once uncertainty is framed as an opportunity, the opportunity is further envisioned as something impossible or possible. For those who see opportunities as something impossible, all outcomes are condemned to be a hard stop. However, if one sees possibilities within the opportunities of uncertainty, the sky’s the limit. When the opportunities generated from uncertainty are deemed possible, the emotions they raise become irrelevant, because one sees past them and envisions what may result. The only limitation is how these opportunities are
defined.

Uncertainty provides a moment for openness, curiosity, spontaneity, and new ideas if one sees uncertainty as an opportunity. But one needs to adjust one’s mindset to see those uncertain moments as opportunities for
possible growth, maturation, education, progress, and success, with the potential for impactful outcomes. While opportunities for growth, maturation, education, progress, and success can stem from almost anything, reframing the greatest uncertainty generates the utmost prospect for the greatest outcomes with the greatest impact. This is why opportunity loves uncertainty.

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