Fighting Uncertainty, Part 2: Avoid Common Pitfalls

Hi, I’m Gregg. You may want to start at Part 1 (click here), which has links to all the other parts at the bottom of the page. The entire series is available as a free ebook at greggwilliams.co. Thanks for reading! –gw

When uncertainty strikes, strong and unpleasant emotions — anger, fear, confusion, or something else — may appear. You may be tempted to engage in unhelpful behaviors that draw your attention away from what’s causing them — namely, the uncertainty that you need to deal with. Getting distracted will lengthen your period of uncertainty, and it may even result in making your situation worse.

What follows are three common pitfalls you need to guard against, and what you can do to resist them.

Avoid negative self-talk

You know what I’m talking about. It’s the voice in our head that makes you feel bad before anyone else has a chance to do so. It doesn’t just report the facts (“Oh, I made a mistake”). Instead, it goes straight for the jugular: “How could you be so stupid?” and “You’re a failure” and “You’re pathetic, and you will always be that way.”

Your first step is to notice when you are engaging in negative self-talk. (To get better at this, make a list of the negative words and phrases you use and review them once a day.) You will miss many of these moments at first, but with practice, you will get better at recognizing them.

Techniques for dealing with negative self-talk

Whenever you do notice your negative self-talk as it is happening, try these techniques:

Relabel what you said as “just a story.” Stop your negative self-talk and tell yourself the following (changing the name in all-caps to your name):

“RIVERA, this is just a story you’re telling yourself. That doesn’t mean it’s true.”

Move from being to behavior. Most negative self-talk is about who you are (for example, “I’m stupid”). Pull back on the self-punishment by making the story about your behavior (“I did something stupid”). To eliminate all the self-punishment, replace judgmental words with neutral ones (“I made a mistake” or “That was unfortunate”).

Ask yourself, “What’s the evidence?” This is a well-known technique for dealing with negative self-talk. Look for evidence to the contrary. Examine your thinking to see if you are being fair to yourself. For example, if you keep telling yourself that you’re stupid, ask yourself things like “Do I actually have low intelligence?” and “How often do I do things like this?” and “Would I call a friend who has done the same thing stupid?” Feelings can be very strong, but they are not facts.

Refuse to be distracted

The impulse to avoid discomfort is powerful in every human being. This is your first and most dangerous enemy. It will distract you with useless questions and accusations — for example, “It’s not fair!”, “Why is this happening to me?”, “This is his fault, not mine!”, and so on.

Examine your thinking to see if you are being fair to yourself

Also, be wary of sentences that include the words “should” and “shouldn’t”: like “She should take responsibility for what she did to me!” or “That shouldn’t have happened!”

These distractions are also warning signs that you are not seeing clearly.

♦ Technique: When you catch yourself in such reality-denying thoughts, stop and tell yourself the truth: “No, what happened isn’t fair, but it happened anyway” or “No, that shouldn’t have happened, but nothing will change the fact that it did.” ♦

Watch out for distracting thoughts and refuse to let them eat up your time and energy.

Refuse to end the uncertainty prematurely

Bad job? Get a new one.

Your significant other wants something that you don’t? Find somebody else.

Your job is ruining your health but you want the money? Just do the work and hope for the best.

These scenarios have one thing in common: doing something — anything — to end the uncertainty as fast as possible.

The impulse to end the uncertainty can be overpowering — and it’s the wrong thing to do. Why? Because there’s usually more than one solution to a problem, and taking the one that instantly solves the problem means that you’ll never discover what the others are. You’ll never have a chance to evaluate your choices and choose the best one.

♦ Technique: Monitor yourself, watching for thoughts of any action that will immediately resolve the uncertainty. Also, watch for thoughts like “I just can’t stand this any longer!” or “I’m just going to get this over with!”

When either of these happen, ask yourself “What are the disadvantages of doing this?”, “What might be an outcome that would be better for me?”, and “Am I just taking the easy way out?” Decide based on your answers to these questions, not on your desire to resolve your situation quickly. ♦

Choosing short-term discomfort for the sake of a long-term gain is a fundamental skill of adulthood. If you stop at traffic lights, if you go to work when you don’t feel like it, you already have this skill. Use it to remain in the middle of uncertainty and work toward a better final outcome.