Embracing Uncertainty - Easier Said Than Done
2020 pulled the rug from under us. Even if you didn’t previously think of yourself as a ‘planner’, the new normal means that we can’t really think beyond next weekend just in case there’s a new spike in Covid cases, a change in the rules or a tightening of how many people can gather where. Jobs and potentially whole industries are vanishing or being profoundly restructured and a new vocabulary has sprung up in a matter of months to account for our new lived experience. Quarantini anyone? Guilty of being a covidiot? Doing a bit of doomscrolling to pass the time?
If 2020 has been a bit of a shocker, how then are we to think about 2021? Christmas cards are already in the shops (it’s mid October as I write this) and a shiny new year is just around the corner. Surely…. surely 2021 is going to be a bit better than 2020?? Who knows. Vaccine trials are well under way but nothing is official as yet. I’ve seen a slew of articles and ideas about “embracing uncertainty” - some of which were pretty fluffy but others gave me pause for thought. Having done some reading around the subject I put my thoughts together in what I hope are a few helpful ideas and suggestions.
Certainty - or a feeling of certainty - is a human default setting and one that makes us far more confident of our surroundings. Discomfort with uncertainty is a legacy of our survival instincts - the unknown could be dangerous. We look for affirmation for the things we plan to do and a feeling of confidence in the likely outcome of situations. Horoscopes - the cosmos’ way of telling us we’re on the right track - is an industry worth some £1.7billion globally. As the writer Caoillin Hughes says on the BBC Four Thought podcast “...certainty makes us feel less overwhelmed, fragile and vulnerable to chaos.”
Certainty doesn’t just function as a comfort blanket, it profoundly affects our psychological well being and chemical stress responses in given situations.
A study published in 2016 in Nature magazine showed that we are physically most stressed when we are most uncertain. Uncertainty is more stressful than predictable negative outcomes - it is less stressful to know if something hurts than not to know at all.
Interestingly enough, sticking to what you know - a way of controlling our lives and making us feel more secure - means you feel less confident when you inevitably encounter novelty and change. Further how much can we actually control?? Our habits, diets, lifestyles, relationships and careers all have a degree of agency to them but when you zoom out to a planetary level - say for example, a pandemic?? - how much real control do we have over our circumstances…?
Not much I hear you say.
Arabella L Simpkin writing in the British Medical Journal would agree with you,
“The global impact of Covid19 has been overwhelming and without pause… one thing spreading faster than the virus itself is the avalanche of news...and with it, unbounded uncertainty across all domains and from multiple sources: professional and personal, emotional and financial.” Later in the article she says “uncertainty spares no one” and - bad news for us planners - notes that Covid’s very nature is defined by uncertainty.
So if we have no way of escaping uncertainty, and the feeling of uncertainty is proven to have serious consequences for our health, what to do? I hate to say this for fear of sounding “fluffy” but the obvious answer seems to be to accept the uncertainty. If we can’t control the situation then we can work to control our reactions to it.
Key to this is to (try) be comfortable with uncertainty. This isn’t the perfect answer and I doubt one exists, but it’s so important — why? Because uncertainty exists and we should avoid retreating in resignation wishing life were different.
The overriding sensation when we feel that things are out of control is worry. Perhaps it makes you feel that you are preparing yourself for the worst or predicting what likely outcomes there might be - pre-empting any nasty surprises. As such, worrying reduces your feelings of uncertainty so you continue worrying and worrying and worrying. In other words, you keep worrying because it becomes a coping mechanism for making things in life appear more certain and more predictable – it helps you believe that you have more control. The question is though, has your worrying made anything more certain? Has worrying changed the outcome of what will happen or given you a glimpse into the future? I’m going to say ‘probably not’ and ask whether life isn’t just as unpredictable as it ever was?
It is only a perception that you somehow have more control by worrying.
All you have done is think of all the worst case scenarios and made yourself miserable. So ask yourself, is it really worth it? Does having a ‘fake’ sense of certainty justify all the negative consequences of worrying?
The US based Centre for Clinical Interventions (CCI) suggests two ways to address this perpetual cycle of worry and inaction. Challenging your intolerance of uncertainty and/or accepting uncertainty.
Challenging your intolerance of uncertainty means taking a good hard look at what our habitual reactions tell us to do. Do you tend to predict that something bad will happen, just because you are uncertain? Is this a reasonable thing to do? Could something good or neutral be just as likely to happen?
Are there uncertainties in your life that you can and do live with? How do you do this? Can you do the same in situations where you have difficulty accepting uncertainty?
Accepting uncertainty is the second part to their strategy and is much, much easier said than done. The key here is to move your thoughts away from theoretical future outcomes, to the present ‘here and now’. If you are focussed on the real-life present, then uncertainty about the unknown future is less likely to bother you. When you start to feel uncertain about something, the CCI suggests a 5 step process to counter the direction of your thoughts:
#1. Be aware - what do you notice yourself doing when you need certainty?
#2. Don’t respond - what can you tell yourself to help you not respond to this?
#3. Let go - what can you do to distract yourself, or tell yourself, that will help you let go of this need?
#4. Keep the present in mind - remain present focused
#5. Deal with a wandering mind - what can you do to help when your mind wanders off into the future
In the present circumstances, I particularly like question #4. Given that for now we simply have no idea what is around the corner, keeping a firm grip on what we have in front of us is crucial. It allows us - or me at least - to appreciate what I have in that very moment and enjoy it for what it is rather than lamenting what it’s not. As I’ve already said, this is SO much easier said than done, but you have to start somewhere.
The final question you could ask yourself and another one I find particularly valuable is “can I ever achieve certainty?” Unless you are psychic or have a time machine, the answer is no. There is real beauty in possibilities you don’t set out to arrive at. You can’t predict a silver lining but you can open yourself up to the idea that something good might be just around the corner. Or, if that’s a stretch too far, the idea that something not too bad might be just around the corner.
How do you cope with uncertainty? How has Covid19 upended your plans and how are you adjusting to the new normal? As always I would love to hear from you so please get in touch.
Main sources:
Caoillin Hughes speaks beautifully on this subject in the BBC Four Thought Podcast https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l7zh
For more on hormonal and chemical reactions to stress, check out Nature Magazine https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-019-0228-0
The British Medical Journal has extensive writings on Covid19; the Arabella L Simpkin article I quote is available here https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/04/16/embracing-uncertainty-could-there-be-a-blueprint-from-covid-19/
Finally the Centre for Clinical Intervention’s workshop on accepting and challenging uncertainty can be downloaded here https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/~/media/CCI/Consumer%20Modules/What%20Me%20Worry/What%20Me%20Worry%20-%2009%20-%20Accepting%20Uncertainty.pdf
