Build Strength Through Uncertainty


How do you do it? We all have strategies for the days when the clock is ticking but what we need is not happening. We all have strategies for getting through uncertainty.

There is no magic bean that will eliminate uncertainty. And uncertainty goes to the heart of what makes human beings most uncomfortable: we don't know what is coming next. Our brains have evolved to keep us safe by predicting the future, but it's often an impossible task. There's no way to know for use what will come next and so there is no way to prepare for it without wasting resources we might need to guard against something unpredictable. So our brains go in circles, running their best predictions and then running them again with whatever new information becomes available.

But there are so many situations where we just don't know. We don't know how long, how much, or how often. We don't know the outcome of the project or the illness or the relationship. We can guess. We do guess. We do what we can. And then we have to wait it out. If we do the right things, we emerge stronger and wiser when we hit the bit of solid ground.

Here are three ways I make the most of my uncertainty:
  • I make multiple plans. This reminds me that there is always more than one way to get there from here. It builds my optimism, my analytical thinking, and my creativity.
  • I journal. There's nothing like uncertainty for facilitating the dialogue between the self I know (frustrated, limited me) and the bigger self that holds all my automatic processes, my memories, and my brain's brilliance at making new connections. I don't journal to whine: I write to specify the problem and ask myself for better ways forward. These don't emerge in beautiful clarity: they are planted in the journal and break out of the dark when they are ready for the light.
  • I pray. You might not be a person who prays, but it's what I do to connect me with the widest and kindest perspective. I may be pretending that there is a perspective that makes meaning of all this uncertainty. I am comfortable with that. The whole of the scientific method is also based on pretending (they call it hypothesizing) that order exists beyond what is immediately knowable. I do not pretend to know God, but I reach out when I am uncertain. It might help because it changes the world, but it for sure helps because it changes me. It reminds me that there are lots of things about which I am absolutely certain and I can build on those.
These are things I do to wait productively when I know that I will have to wait in any case. They are like exercises done with resistance: over time, I have noticed that what they make stronger is my ability to imagine a better future even when I can't know how to get there.

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