Managing Uncertainty
An attempt to get to the point
“He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.”
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “THE EAGLE”
01. Fall
Here you may find yourself again: a place we’ll all be. A bad day. Those times when life punches us in the gut. A job loss, a breakup, an illness: the glittering sheen of our identities is shattered. The personas that served us for so long are now irrelevant, and what reminds in our mind is a pile of jagged edges that cut us as we attempt to recall pieces of ourselves. Those close to us may not even notice; we’re still all there, just no longer in the correct sequence. We try to continue on as our piecemeal selves, but we grind our gears. Ultimately, we see that our brains are the chalice through which we can drink both life’s whimsy and horror. We attempt to glue ourselves together and carry on despite our very visible cracks.
There’s an old quote that says something along the lines that we will now be stronger at the cracks. But that’s seldom the case. In fact, we’ll find this hand-me-down self to be a poor imitation of what we were. We try to relive our glory days in new times and circumstances that will respond curiously. “Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games,” said Babe Ruth.
We often refer to trying times as a crucible. It is not enough to merely repair, we must purge and reform our shattered selves so that we may be new and whole.
02. Diverge
Allow me to posit that our immediate response to these moments will dictate how we recover or drown in despair and chronic depression. The degree to which we suffer after a tragedy is measured by the amount of uncertainty we allow ourselves to feel. That’s it.
Further, this uncertainty grows if we meet it with what many call “negative mental habits.” I prefer the term “mental hygiene,” we must manage intrusive thoughts that clutter our mental space. Our brain hates uncertainty, and will ask itself a host of negative questions if we allow it.
We can all recall times when we were unsure of ourselves and what we believed, and in those times our brain ran wild with negative questions when tragedy struck. For example:
Breakups: Will I find someone like that again? Will I find the same quality of relationship? What does this say about us? What does this say about who I thought I was? How could I have been so wrong about the other person?
Job Loss: When will I find another job? Will I enjoy it? Will I have to move? Do I have enough savings? How could I have been laid off when I work so hard?
Illness: What does this mean about my future? Will I still be able to do what I love? What does this say about my previous lifestyle? How could this happen?
Our brain loves questions because it hates uncertainty. It wants answers, and if you don’t provide it with any, it will come up with its own, often negative explanations. Known as the negativity bias, we are evolutionarily wired to focus on the negative. The reward of not seeing that berry while walking through the jungle is minuscule compared to the consequence of not seeing that snake. Put another way, the potential loss of the latter outweighs the potential reward of the former. Greater uncertainty is created when we expect that there is a larger potential loss.
If we get into the mental habit of asking negative questions like “Why am I so stupid?” or “What does this say about me?” our brain hates the implied uncertainty, and responds with something akin to: “Come, let us review this catalog of mistakes and embarrassments that prove why you’re stupid!”
And if we accept those negative answers, we will continue to respond this way to each setback, and our despair becomes solidified into depression and apathy.
Then, we might end up needing the heavy lifting of therapy to retrain the brain with positive mental hygiene; drugs may provide your brain with raw materials, the protein shake, while therapy is the gym session.
In our daily lives, we forget that we are merely animals living in nature. We’ve created societies in order to increase all the things related to certainty: safety, health, contentment, etc. Yet tragic events often shatter this illusion, and reminds us that certainty exists nowhere in nature: that gazelle could wake up today and be eaten, or that lion might not find any and starve.
Many who achieve almost full certainty: lucrative careers, a family, big houses, expensive cars, still find themselves to be secretly miserable — their minds are now uncertain about what is next. And because they now find themselves unhappy, they ask themselves if this is what they wanted, and wonder why. Uncertainty is introduced into what they thought was a past they were certain about. They question whether it was worth it.
We need not be so dramatic. During tragic circumstances, we must diverge toward allowing ourselves simple choices, and positive, guided questions.
03. Embrace
Allow me to make your choices easy. Choose to respond to suffering with audacity. Suffering is not noble in itself. Your response can be.
Ask yourself the right questions.
How good would it feel to remember who you are? Allow your brain to count victories.
Do you choose to be a victim? You can’t have it both ways. Pick a personal ideal and behave according to it, with every decision.
Ultimately, do you enjoy allowing life to dictate terms to you? Many people do, actually.
How lucky we are to have so many examples of what not to be.
I’m being blunt because in these times we are most vulnerable. We are tempted to just make ourselves feel better. That’s not important. What is important is doing what is necessary.
Resist those that wear their mediocrity like a badge of honor. They’ve died a long time ago and wear the rotting pelt of life.
Resist those that espouse the shallow merits of their safety and less risky path. Theirs is a poisoned chalice.
Resist the neon candy flash of the listmakers. (7 Pointless Suggestions I Stole From Reddit That TOTALLY won’t SOLVE your PROBLEM!) Theirs is opium for idiots.
Resist those who stand outside the arena while instructing you on how to fight.
Replace uncertainty with possibility.
In 2010, I wrote:
To the great, a bad day is a slap in the face: it does not punish, it provokes. And when our bodies lie broken, our trust betrayed, our confidence shaken, our respect denied, our hopes abandoned — when we have no one and nothing and our future is uncertain, when the world shows its ugliness, we turn our faces to the clouds and we stand there, defiant in the rain, and we shout three simple words — “is that all?”
To dig deep, we must get dirty.
Only then will we embrace possibility.
Only then will we engage life not just as an opportunity for mastery but as a venue for play.
Only then will we graduate from the arena to the sandbox, and mold the future we deserve.
Shawn Mirza is an author, entrepreneur, and overall whimsical dude looking for answers.
Thank you for all your support.
All Views are my own.
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