If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.
Eckhart Tolle
Uncertainty often manifests itself in our lives as a primary stressor. The longer we experience it, the more challenging it is to learn to embrace it, accept it, or to thrive in spite of it. And the more frequently it pops up in our lives, the more it becomes subject to our innate negativity bias and fills our emotional spaces with worry and anxiety.
The pandemic has fit this bill like a glove. But any situation that is unknown to us especially one that may bring hardship and chaos into our lives quickly shifts into something we wish to avoid. But summoning inner resources and resolve to face tough situations builds muscles of resilience that can help us become stronger over the long term.
So how do you go about finding a way forward and what kinds of tools do you need to develop?
Having a support network of family and friends to backstop you as you navigate the harder things in life has always been a top priority. Learning to use mindfulness techniques to stay in the moment and avoid ruminating about the past or projecting wishful thinking onto the future is often helpful. And at times easier said than done.
But cultivating a state of being curious about what you are facing can help you stay focused on where you need to be.
And curiosity often creates a sensation of playfulness or lightness, helping you stay out of judgment, and clinging to our unhelpful attachments to things. Using statements like “what other ways can I look at this” or “what if” can be useful when you are teetering on the brink and need balance to face what life is bringing your way.
Research shows that curiosity may help build tolerance for anxiety producing situations and encourages unconventional ideas to solve problems.
Being okay with uncertainty, letting things pass, trying to think about how you have both feet on the ground while you walk helps lighten the load when you are facing difficult circumstances. Reminding myself to be curious, to slow down and observe what I am facing, lets me tap into creative responses to life’s challenges.
And right now, I am going to remain curious about whether I can maintain this mindset when I need it most.
stay safe!
Visions of Transition 
Interesting topic. My way of looking at this is that the more comfortable I am during uncomfortable moments, the bigger my capacity to handle uncertainty, because they’re almost the same thing.
So what I do is the cliched ‘Do something that sucks every day’. Some days it’s easier, other days it’s harder, but I always try to prioritise that challenge. Anyway, thanks for this post!
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Thank you for your thoughts, Stuart! I appreciate how you are approaching the “uncertainty” challenge – it resonates!
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