Uncertainty Is A Fact, Not A Theory

​A 2023 study by the American Psychological Association found that 61% of adults cite "uncertainty about the future" as a top source of stress. But if you dig into that, the uncertainty isn't the stress, it's the fight to eliminate uncertainty.

If someone asked me to list inarguable facts I've collected over my lifetime, maybe number one on the list would be: Life is unpredictable. As I write this article I am certain that today is Sunday. I am even more certain I have no idea what this Sunday holds for me.

No matter how much I try to plan a day ahead free of surprises, surprises are on the way. That is a fact.

That fact alone is not stressful. What is quite stressful is trying to force uncertainty out of my life.

I - and we - do this in many different ways.

We postpone making decisions believing a time will come when we will have a better understanding of the RIGHT decision. Only to discover that time never comes. And in that time we might have missed opportunities and have likely grown more anxious.

We try to control all variables before moving forward. This looks a lot like perfectionism. Since perfectionism is a myth, this creates a stressful and exhausting, endless battle.

Or we might overwhelm our friends and family with requests for reassurance. Tell me this will be okay. This is reassurance they can't offer because they have no idea if this will be okay. But we keep asking anyway.

Maybe we are catastrophizing. We take every piece of uncertainty we find and turn it into the worst case scenario. We skip reassurance and jump right to assuming nothing will ever be okay again.

Or - which has certainly been this uncertainty fan's go to throughout his life - you just numb it all away. Nothing makes uncertainty more tolerable than being too drunk to know how uncertain life is. Or escaping into the world of social media scrolling or television binge-watching. Surely the world will be more certain when I sober up or look up again.

But no. It won't be. That's a fact.

I am better than ever these days at dealing with that fact. And really, nothing eases the stress of uncertainty more than accepting that life is nothing if not uncertain. Uncertainty isn't something we escape in life, it's something we embrace AS life.

I am also better at planning my day. When you have small steps ahead mapped out, uncertainty might derail one small step, but it won't derail your whole life. When something goes off track, you’re not starting from scratch; you’re simply recalibrating the next step instead of questioning the entire direction.

And I'm also much better at talking through uncertainty with friends. Not searching for reassurance that everything will be okay, but as a reminder that no matter what, we are in this uncertainty together.

The world is uncertain. Uncertainty becomes an enemy and a threat to our well-being when we treat it as a theory rather than a fact. It becomes a battle when we treat it as something that needs to be removed from our lives instead of navigated as part of them.

Today will be uncertain. There are no work-arounds for that. So we might as well get good at working through it.