Seven Strategies to Help You Live With Uncertainty
It is very hard to live in a world of uncertainty. Humans long to obtain information about the future as a way to satisfy their basic needs. Our brains perceive ambiguity as a threat and try to protect us by reducing our focus on anything other than creating stability.
But sometimes—and perhaps always—it is more effective not to try to create stability. Although evolution has wired our brains to resist uncertainty, we can never know what the future will bring, and in the midst of rare events such as the spread of the pandemic, which disrupted our routines and ruined the best things we had planned for our lives, we need to learn to live with uncertainty.
"Uncertainty is the only certainty, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security," wrote the mathematician John Allen Paulos.
Seven Strategies to Help You Live With Uncertainty:
Here are seven strategies that enable us to better handle a situation when everything seems to be out of our control:
1. Do not resist:
There is no doubt that we live in difficult times, but resisting the current reality will not help us recover, learn, grow, or feel better. Ironically, resistance prolongs our pain and difficulties by exaggerating our painful feelings. There is an old saying that goes: "What we resist persists."
There is an alternative to resistance. We can practice accepting things rather than resisting them. Research by psychologist Kristin Neff and her colleagues shows that acceptance—especially self-acceptance—is an unexpected secret to happiness. Acceptance means contentment with what life throws our way. Because acceptance allows us to see the reality of a situation in the present moment, it frees us so that we can move forward rather than remain passive or stuck where we are due to uncertainty or fear.
To practice acceptance, we need to avoid resisting problematic situations and our feelings about them; For example, you may find that your marriage is challenging, especially in the moment, so instead of criticizing or blaming your partner - which are two tactics associated with resistance - you can calmly accept your marriage for the time being.
This doesn’t mean you won't feel frustrated, disappointed, or sad about your marriage’s state. A big part of acceptance is accepting how we feel about difficult circumstances and annoying people in our lives. But allowing our problematic marriage to remain the way it is now—and acknowledging our feelings about it—puts us in a better position to move on.
Let's be clear, acceptance is not the same as giving up. Accepting the situation does not mean that it will never get better. We don't accept that things will remain the same forever; we just accept whatever is really happening in the moment.
We can work to make our marriage happier while at the same time accepting the fact that this relationship or situation is complicated right now. Maybe it will get better, maybe it won't.
It is difficult to practice acceptance as a tool for coping with difficulties, but it is the most effective way forward.
2. Invest in your abilities:
What helps you most now to provide benefit to the world is yourself, and when you do not take care of yourself, you lose the most valuable thing you have. Which means that when we don't invest in our bodies or our minds, we destroy what's most important to better leading our lives.
Human beings do not do well when they put off protecting themselves. We need to maintain relationships that give us good communication and benefits. We should get enough sleep and rest when we are tired, and we also need to take the time to enjoy ourselves without thinking about anything else.
Don't worry; self-care is not selfish. Selfish people tend to refer to themselves using words like "I" and "mine", pursue superficial goals, and have restless self-centeredness. They tend to maintain a youthful appearance or present an idealized image of themselves on social media; they often crave more money, power, or the approval of others. This type of self-focus is associated with stress, anxiety, depression, and health problems such as heart disease. So, we urge you not to act selfishly, and we suggest relying on self-care and personal growth.
3. Find healthy ways to calm yourself:
One of the most important ways we can invest in ourselves is by comforting ourselves in healthy ways. If we want to be resilient, we need to feel safe. When we feel insecure or unsure, our brain tries to help us by activating the dopamine hormone, which encourages us to seek rewards and makes temptations more tempting.
Think of it when your mind pushes you to do something pleasurable, like drinking a cup of coffee instead of going to bed early, eating all the candy bars, or adding an extra item to your cart.
But instead of turning to social media, junk food, stimuli, or spending to calm our frayed nerves, we do best when we can relieve ourselves in healthy ways. So make a list of healthy ways you can calm yourself down. Can you go on a trip, walk with a neighbor, or schedule a call with a friend? Or can you think of things you are grateful to have in your life, take a nap, or watch a funny video?
These things may seem simple, but they allow us to be ourselves.
4. Do not believe everything you think:
Perhaps the most important stress reduction strategy of all is not believing everything we think about. In uncertain times, it's especially important not to think about the worst-case scenario.
Of course, it can be helpful to consider the worst-case scenario so that we can prevent a catastrophe, but when we believe those anxious thoughts, we respond emotionally as if the worst situation is really happening in real life, not just in our heads. So we feel afraid and insecure when we believe our thoughts.
Instead of focusing on every stressful thought, we can consciously imagine the best possible scenario as well. We can find beautiful thoughts to replace rumination, even though this goes against our natural tendency to overestimate risks and consequences.
5. Focus your attention:
Uncertainty is not the opposite of certainty but the opposite of attention; instead of imagining a frightening and unknown future, we can draw our attention to our breath, check in with ourselves every time we wash our hands, for example, ask ourselves how we are doing, notice the feelings you are feeling and where you feel them in your body, and bring curiosity and acceptance to your experience.
Even when we feel like everything is out of our control, we can still control what we pay attention to. We can stop thinking about the news or social media hijacking our consciousness and let go of negative ruminations and fantasies. By paying attention to what is actually happening in our inner world right now, in the present moment.
6. Stop looking for someone to save you:
When we act as if we are powerless, we get trapped in thoughts that make us feel angry and helpless and hope that others will save us from our misery.
Although we can feel good when others help us, most rescuers don't really help. Our friends may want to save us. This is because helping others makes people feel good; their intentions may be noble, and if we remain stuck in our situation, they will retain their role as heroes in our lives so that they can distract themselves from their own problems.
Rescuers allow us to avoid taking responsibility for our lives. On the other hand, emotionally supportive friends—or therapists—see us as problem solvers and ask questions that help us focus on what we want rather than what we don't want.
In short, to deal with uncertainty better, we need to stop complaining. When we let go of our focus on the problem, we can focus on the outcomes we desire. So how do we make the most of this mess? And what can we gain in this situation?
When we take responsibility for our lives, we have real power that comes from living the life we want.
7. Find meaning in the midst of chaos:
Social psychologists define meaning in life as “an intellectual and emotional assessment of how we feel that our lives have purpose, value, and impact.” We humans are best motivated by our importance to others. We work harder and longer, do better, and feel happier about the work we do when we know someone else is benefiting from our efforts.
For example, adolescents who provide physical, emotional, or informational support to people in crisis tend to feel closely connected to their community. Research shows that we feel good when we stop thinking so much about ourselves and support others.
When we see something that needs improvement, our next step is to realize what we can personally do to be part of the solution. What skills and talents - or even just interests - can we bring to a cause? And what do we really care about? How can we provide our services?
Meaning and purpose give us hope. When the world makes us feel fearful or uncertain, knowing our usefulness to others and having a sense of purpose can make us feel better than anything else.