Uncertainty Reframed

It's the nature of life

Edward Hopper, Morning Sun (1952). Courtesy of the Columbus Museum of Art.

It has been a couple of months that the term "uncertainty" has been on my radar. In many organizations and in different conversations, people discuss what to do in these uncertain times.

Recently, I watched some videos from the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. In one of the videos (couldn't find it), analysts were asked: What are the biggest challenges leaders face today?

She replied: definitely it's uncertainty.

At that moment I stopped watching the video because a question emerged for me:

Is uncertainty really a problem?

Why do we call uncertainty a problem?

Do you return home again?

Everyday, we get out of our homes with the belief that we will return and will see our loved ones. But the real world does not work with such certainty. At the end of the day, we may return or not. Uncertainty is the nature of life. Can we call it a problem?

We see constructs such as: "In times of uncertainty," followed by a bunch of advice, frameworks, and methods to overcome uncertainty in management articles, consulting firms, and even in the media. Their approach implies that the uncertainty era will end one day, just as it had a beginning. This could mean that our lives were in absolute certainty with complete control over the future.

In a deeper exploration of our minds and our emotions, we can say that we are afraid of losing control of our environment. Human history has always been filled with such fear. It seems we call this fear uncertainty.

Uncertainty is both what we don’t know and how we feel about not knowing it.¹

I don't mean to deny the existence of uncertainty. The truth is that it is an inherent part of everyday life and not confined to special occasions. In the meantime, I understand that the amount of uncertainty we experience varies with risk. For example, in a game where the result is not clear and the risk is low, we have less stress. However, when we talk about war, the risk of death is high, so we feel more anxiety.

Fear is Over (Young woman with her fears. The brown huge hands are symbol of fear.), Atilla Tar, Oil on Canvas

Non-denial approach to uncertainty

Like many others, I am fearful of the current economic and political challenges in Iran. I am afraid for the future of my 3-year-old daughter. I ask myself what should I do for her. At the same time, I remember the times that I and many other children were growing up during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. When I talk to friends around the world I realize that they have their own fears. Inflation is rising, and the economic situation is complex. We are not in a contest to see whose life is more miserable. Stress and anxiety are experienced in their own context. So I'm not talking about what's better or worse than others. Such pressures are our collective experience.

One practice I used during the past few months was non-denial, which helped me sit with my fears. Joan Halifax, a Zen master, says:

When we feel afraid, we don’t deny the fear. Instead, we acknowledge that we’re scared. But we don’t flee. We stay where we are and bravely encounter our fear. We turn toward it, we become curious about it, its causes, its dimensions. We keep moving closer, until we’re in relationship with it. And then, fear changes. Most often, it disappears.

The anxiety of uncertainty comes from a lack of facts and information about the environment and our emotional state because we understand there's an information gap. The non-denial approach is an acknowledgment that we feel uncertain. We can sit with our feelings in such moments. With this approach, uncertainty is not our enemy. It does exist in our lives. We can let our feelings start the conversation. We let ourselves be hopeful and hopeless at the same time. This situation can be called temporal integration² which means the combination of information from multiple independent “looks”.

It means we can have two different perspectives together. For example, we understand our desire for certainty, but we also understand that life is uncertain.

The most important thing is to know what's important now

When I feel uncertain, I understand that I want to find the answer to all possible questions. There are things we can change and there are things we cannot change. What I've learned is that the important thing is to know what's important now. You may say that how should we know what's important now? It's the tangle of uncertainty. In my experience, I think we know what we can do and what we can't. What prevents us from taking action is that we are stuck in a vicious cycle. This is where we realize we need some information and at the same time, we are more afraid of not finding out.

Rumi once said:

Sit, be still, and listen.

I'm not intending to talk about X ways to deal with times of uncertainty. It's an inner state and I don't believe in prescriptions. I tried to share my experience. I have no ideal solution but I understand that the key is not to deny the existence of uncertainty and accept it as the nature of life. I think even in the most complicated times of life, deep in our hearts we know what we can do. Even that is doing nothing.

What are your practices when you feel uncertain?

1. https://unstuckminds.com/2021/03/04/uncertainty-is-not-the-problem/

2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0095447003000111