Fighting Uncertainty, Part 1: Start Strong

Your company is downsizing, and you don’t know if you’re going to be laid off.

The most wonderful man has invited you to move to France with him. But you’d have to give up your current life, and what if the relationship blows up?

Your life has been blah, the feeling is getting stronger, and you don’t know what to do.

Living with uncertainty is a universal human experience. We all go through periods of uncertainty — and we don’t like it, not one bit. At best, we feel uncomfortable. At its worst, it is intolerable, maddening.

Fortunately, there are things you can do to fight back during a period of uncertainty — you can feel better, cope better, and make your life better.

This series will tell you how to do all this.

Prepare to be successful

I’m not going to lie to you — uncertainty is a very tough opponent.

For this reason and this reason alone, you need to give yourself every advantage possible before you arrive on the playing field. You need to be as strong as you can make yourself.

When you are up against uncertainty, your strength comes from how you see yourself and how you see the situation.

It is extremely important that you understand and embrace the ideas in this post. If you do not, you will be walking onto the playing field with heavy weights on each leg. Everything you do will be harder than it needs to be, and you will have less strength for fighting against the uncertainty that you are facing.

While in uncertainty, your strength comes from how you see yourself and how you see the situation

I can’t overstate how important this post is. Uncertainty is tough to deal with, and you owe it to yourself to be at your best.

Why small actions make a difference

This post is about ideas, but the rest of this series is about things that you can do — that is, actions that you can take. But there’s a problem: They’re small actions like “focus on one day at a time,” and you may be thinking, “The ship’s going down, and you’re telling me to focus on today?” In short, you may ignore the actions this series recommends because you don’t think they’ll make a difference.

The first reason that these small actions make a difference is that when you put them together, they make a big difference. Few big problems — and believe me, dealing with uncertainty is a big problem — are solved by doing just one thing differently. It is usually a number of small improvements that make things get better.

The second reason is more subtle, and it is very real. Stated simply, people do better when they have something they can do. (It’s probably why people follow fad diets, even when they make no sense.)

Here’s why this works: When there’s nothing you can do, you feel helpless. But doing something, no matter how small, makes you feel better. It pushes feelings of hopelessness and defeat further away. It proves that you can change the world around you. It gives you hope that you will be able to make larger changes later.

But there’s a danger you need to guard against. Uncertainty makes everything look bad, and it robs you of all of your energy. You will be tempted to say, “Why bother? This won’t make any difference, and it’s just too much work.”

Resist the temptation to do nothing and give up. Doing nothing takes no effort, but it also delivers no results.

Seeing clearly

See what you make of this: Imagine you’re the art critic for Le Monde, and you have it all — you’re a talented painter yourself, you have decades of experience, and your writing wins prestigious awards every year. Because of this, the editor-in-chief turns to you alone to cover an important new exhibition at the Louvre.

Resist the temptation to give up. Doing nothing takes no effort, but it also delivers no results.

Before you leave, your boss hands you a pair of oddly-shaped glasses and says, “We believe these glasses will give you a unique perspective that our competitors cannot match. Your job is to wear them at all times while you are in the museum. But remember, you must deliver the kind of excellent story we expect, or things will go very bad for you!”

You put on the glasses, and you cannot believe your eyes — literally. The colors are all wrong, objects change their shape when you move your head, and you don’t even recognize the person in front of you.

Now I ask you, if you’re covering an important story, does this sound like a good idea? Will you be able to do your job well?

Okay, this is a silly example, but here’s the point I want to make: When you are in the middle of a period of uncertainty, you’re not going to be effective if you’re not seeing clearly.

It is important that you see your situation clearly. For you do so, you must accept that:

• You are undeniably in the middle of uncertainty; how you got here, who to blame for being here, and the unfairness of being here do not change the reality of the situation
• Such periods are usually not some gigantic disaster — just part of normal life
• The only effect of denying the uncertainty will be to make it harder for you to deal with it

When you first realize that you are in a period of uncertainty, it is important that you do the following exercise. You can also repeat this exercise whenever you find yourself denying the reality of your situation.

Exercise: Find a quiet place. Breathe slowly and deeply until you feel calm and a little detached from the worries of the day. Repeat the following sentences, aloud or to yourself, pausing after each sentence to think about whether or not it is a true statement. Replace the name in all-caps with your name; hearing these words as you would from another person (i.e., in the second person) will make this exercise more effective. Repeat these sentences until you accept that they are true.

“ROBERT, uncertainty is a part of everybody’s life. No one gets to skip this, not even you. You are in a period of uncertainty now. You have gotten through uncertainty before, and you will get through the uncertainty this time, too.”

Once you have finished saying these sentences, look at your situation — not as it used to be, not as you want it to be, but as it actually is. See it honestly, objectively, and completely, even the parts that that you don’t want to look at.

Look at your situation — not as it used to be, not as you want it to be, but as it actually is

Seeing your situation clearly is very important. If you do not, you will miss opportunities to improve your situation, and you may make decisions that will make your situation worse.

Have courage. Make a commitment to start with a clear view of yourself and your situation.